Hi art friends.
The mister and I have been in our home for 4 months. My studio is set up. Some items are still in storage for the time being – my scanner and paints. But I’ve had a hankering to make mixed media art and to revisit some of the mixed media classes I’ve started but not finished.
Truth be told, I also missed Tamara Laporte. I really enjoy her online classes and her teaching style so this weekend, I went back to Life Book 2012. It was a course I bought after the fact and the lessons are only with Tam (not the other LB teachers).
Among the random assortment of mixed media art supplies I have in my studio are my mechanical pencil, 9×12 watercolor paper. Yesterday, I drew the 3 portrait figures, photographed them and noodled about with one of them. It wasn’t going as I wanted so I set it aside and watched the lesson on honoring your future and making animals.
Tam took us through how she makes a butterfly (not an animal, but you know, go with it). So this is my version of Tam’s butterfly lesson. I drew the butterfly on 9×12 watercolor paper, outlined it with a Pitt Small pen in black, took a photo with my Canon Powershot Elph 180 then worked on it in Gimp 2.10.
For the border, I used Rebecca McMeen’s scribble border from the Awake class content, as well as a number of Awake class watercolor brushes. I tried to replicated the mixed media process using techniques I’ve learned in the Sebastian Michael’s Photoshop classes.
I like the way it turned out. It took me several hours to wrap my head around moving the mixed media art into the digital realm. It is a process not unlike how I have to take all the Photoshop tools and techniques and figure out how to do them in Gimp.
As I worked, I found I became as engrossed in the digital process as I do when I work with meat-space art supplies. I just caught myself up with Kaizen lessons but I want to continue this momentum so I’m going to work Kaizen along with revisiting the mixed media classes.
