This 5 Minutes

Yay for Messy Fingers again!!

One of the things I want to do this year is a little more Art Playing. And....I was perusing one of my favorite artists blogs, Roben-Marie, who happened to mention that she was doing a new on-line art class...a FREE on-line art class. Hmmm, did I need more convincing...one of my art idols, free, playing art...it's just to perfect.

So this week I officially joined the Strathmore (yes the paper art people) Doodle Unleashed Mixmedia Art Class. And oh joy oh joy it was fun!! I spent yesterday evening playing with all kinds of art joys.

Tada here is the result.
First off I got some of the best comments ever from my family. My son even said: "Mom it should be hanging in a museum." I take this as a totally honest comment because beeeelieve me when I say that 10 year old boys are not known for their un-requested flattery unless they want something. Okay maybe I haven't ruled out totally that he wants something, but I do think it looks completely cool.

Just for grins here are a few pics of the process:

This one shows the first process of putting stencils on the paper and using misters or even in my case Fabric paint. I loved loved how this step turned out and was happy for a chance to break out the copper fabric spray paint! (Like any dumb animal, I sure do love anything that glitters a little.)

You can see some of the things that made the images from buttons to wooden sticks to flowers. One of my favorite images is the cat. The stencil smeared just right so the cat looked all fluffy like they do when they are angry. The pears kinda rock too though.

This second image was made after I added the Cray-Pas and paint.

I'm just going to say that even though I have a ton of art supplies, I never have quite the right thing. I don't think she used Cray-Pas, or watercolor paper, or Old Acrylic paint. This was all working against me. And to be quite honest I do not like it really at this stage. It looked very amateurish to me. I mean I can not make a straight line with the paint brush to save my life, the texture of the watercolor paper was working against me, and the india ink bled everywhere on this paper. And Cray pas and I are still not friends!

But I kept going and persevered. And heck the next step was using my new Copic Markers. So how could I not keep going? And well can you tell I do love markers, pens, and pencils more than paint still. It was at this point the piece came alive for me.

Maybe I will even hang it on the wall? Maybe...