A Little Vacation...

Last weekend I was able to take a long weekend and fly up to Upstate New York with my bestie Rebecca. We spent the weekend with her cousin Brenda and family and we had an awesome time.

We flew in Thursday and Friday we spent the day at Niagara Falls. It was a blast.

























Saturday we visited the weekend farmers market and enjoyed some local breads and cheeses and Saturday evening went to Rochester to attend the Roco6x6 opening. It was quite an experience.






My art that I donated hasn't sold yet (5444 to 5449 in case you want to check it out) but it was a lot of fun and we hope to do it again next year.

Sunday was toodling around and checking out an antiques fair and attending a choral concert that our friend Brenda sang in. It was a lively blending of voices and they put on a great performance. Also including pics of the Village of Hamilton where Brenda lives. Lovely town with a great coffee shop we visited frequently called The Barge.








On Monday we went to Golden Artist Paints and had a great tour of the factory and artist residence by the lovely Emma Golden, granddaughter of the founders Sam and Adele.




















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More Art Time...

I had a lovely art/pajama day yesterday. I finished watching my online classes with the delightful Carla Sonheim and continued playing with Gelli prints. I have a ton of stencils (maybe a small addiction) but I went ahead and created some paper ones. One advantage is that they can eventually be used for monoprint collages.



Played with the new stencils a bit.









I also added some layers to previous prints. Here are some before and afters.
Before


After


Before


After


They aren't done yet but it is fun to see the transformation each layer makes.

My Gelli plate needed cleaning so I laid down a layer of red and set the paper on it to sit for a bit. I love the resulting abstract. Not sure if I will leave as is but leaning in that direction.


I also worked on a monoprint collage and I think this is done.


This is another one I added a bit more to but I haven't decided if I like it or not.


Hope everyone has a blessed week. Hugs!

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Taking a Gelli class...

Today was a lovely day home alone so I took the time to start an online Gelli class with Carla Sonheim

I usually start mine with pattern even in the first layer but Carla starts with solid sections first. I'm always interested in different techniques and here are the results from the first class. A couple of them are watercolorish to use up the last bits of paint on the plate. Next class is to add patterns with found objects and hand made stencils.


































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Catching up on March...

Well, now that we are in April maybe I should do a little catching up.

Through some friends I found out about Roco 6x6 for the Rochester Contemporary Art Center. Once a year the sponsor an art show of 6" x 6" art work from around the world as a fundraiser. You create the art and donate it and each piece is for sale for $20. So my bestie Rebecca and I decided it would be fun to donate art and go to the opening and our flights to New York are booked. So exciting!

Because I'm having so much fun with the Gelli plate I decided to create my contributions as monoprints. Below are the six pieces I'm donating, two of which are collages.

 

Here are a few more Gelli prints from just playing.

This is one I enhanced with doodles.

Why is the Gelli plate so addictive?  ;-)  Until next time happy creating!

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Some play time...

Today I managed to set aside a couple hours to play with my new large Gelli plate. After watching a video by Andy Skinner I pulled out some Nickel Azo Gold, Titanium White and Paynes Grey which are colors I don't use often and had some fun.



This one is on 14x17 mixed media paper but I think I need something heavier for the larger formats.






These two are from pulling left over paint from the plate and some brayer cleaning. The red is Lumier which seems to work good. I have started using Golden's Retarder to extend the drying times and it works great.



I also am in very first almost art show. My local Dick Blick store had a Tape Up art show in the store and I took in one monoprint collage I made last weekend. Now I need to step up my game and try for some others.

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Big Gellin...

My mom bought me the 12x14 Gelli plate for my birthday and it came yesterday. Could hardly wait to play with it. I need to get some bigger sheets if paper though.







I also found a line of stencils I hadn't seen before from Joggles.com and bought some as a birthday present to myself. I did manage to play with one of them today.



This is a monoprint collage that I did today and I'm really liking how it came out. My local Blick's is having a special thing next weekend where you can bring in up to four pieces to display and try to sell so this one is definitely going. If I'm productive enough this week I will take more.


This one is almost done. I'm thinking I'll add some hand drawn lines and circles.


This one is from cleaning the brayer and my hand carved stamp and may still be a work in progress or may be used in collaging.


Another play one.


This is another play one so we shall see what becomes of it. I want to start making collages from monoprints and my grand plan is to at least start one this week. As long as I don't fizzle after work that is.

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