Monday, November 3, 2025

INSPIRATION

 Going through a beautiful little book about various art styles and saw a painting by a botanical artist, Marie Burke (marieburke-art.com) which inspired me to try it.  

(You can see her gorgeous painting in the left/bottom side of the book cover.)



I have never had the patience to be a botanical painter - so precise and small increments of change don’t make me happy - but I am not unhappy about the finished painting (quarter sheet watercolor).



I can see now that I look at it here that I did not get the flowing look of the one in the book, nor did I get the rounded shape in the top edges.  


Sunday, November 2, 2025

HALLOWEEN 2025

 


Having issues with Blogger - I go through all the steps to load a photo and it tells me it cannot do it and then I try again and get an Oops message and then I try one more time and it lets me do it - this has been happening for about a month now so if I disappear for a while it’s because Blogger is giving me fits at times.  Anyone else having problems or am I just the lucky one?


Monday, October 27, 2025

WHEN SIMPLE IS GOOD

 I am always signing up for short courses online - could be printmaking, sketchbooking, just anything at all, some more involved.  Every one brings me something simple - and good.  Here is what I did in the latest Jessica Swift Art Oasis course offered recently (a one week only freebie with various teachers).  A lot of the things were very simple (too simple and perhaps too crafty?) but some were just enough to peak my interest so I did them.




The first two are just colored/painted/drawn plain papers glued onto another paper and added to (if needed) later with markers, colored crayons, etc.  This was so fun to just make patterns and then cut them up and use them in other ways.  Playing and creating.













The next ones were just painting a mandala/circle shape while holding a thought or emotion and seeing what colors represented that thought/emotion.  I put the words in last.  

And then making patterns in waterproof ink/marker inside circles (a small, a medium and a large), cutting out the circles and placing them on colored matboard to make something else.  I really like this (and added a watercolor painted one in the blue set).  This is a nice way to slow down, stop thinking, just make a repetitive pattern - and see what you have at the end.

Friday, October 17, 2025

GEL PRINTER’S SUMMIT 2025

 Gel Printer’s Summit for 2025 began last week and I only have had time for this one - made the prints and then glued some to the front of one of my sketchbooks.  I liked it before I went a little crazy with the Posca pen markers but not too bad.  Two weeks’ of lessons and I haven’t had time to do more than these two sketchbook decoarated fronts, but it’s okay.  I can save them and do them later…






No additions to this one except the crow stamp because the far left blue mark looked like a crow to me.