Wanderlust 2022 - weeks twenty-nine to thirty-five - Watercolours

I have absolutely loved learning all about watercolours.  I had used them before but until last year's Wanderlust, I had never really felt confident with them.  We have used them with gesso, as in the page above.

We have used them with salt and isopropyl alcohol, to create watery effects.

On week 31, we used them through stencils and created collage papers, layering them on tissue paper.

Week 32 was all about abstract florals and using the paintbrush to do the work for you.  I was meant to stick to just one leaf shape but I got carried away making different leaves and I wanted them all in there!

This was an extra page using some of our practise florals and leaves.  I have since bought a book on abstract florals and shall work my way through it.

My best portrait so far, using just two colours of paint and layering the colours, letting the layers dry before continuing.  We drew the features with a black watercolour pencil, which couldn't be erased if we went wrong.  I was really thrilled with how this turned out.  

Week 34 was capturing shapes and colours on a walk, or in my case, in the garden.  This top flap includes photos from the garden and some leaf gel plate prints...

...and here's the page underneath, capturing the shapes of the bricks and various leaf and flower shapes.

Finally (and I am really sorry to have finished watercolours, although I will continue to explore them and what they can do) was this collage explosion of colourful flowers, using doodled flowers copied from books, random abstract rose-type flowers, lilac-type flowers and imaginary ones too, leaves and berries and a few stamped elements.  I found this process such a relaxing and joyful one.    

We now move on to inks and I am sure there will be lots more experimenting! 

I have signed up to Wanderlust 2023 as I felt I wanted to continue my artistic journey and with the way things are going, I may well need that creative boost even more. I hope you'll enjoy coming along with me.

Wanderlust 2022 - weeks one to seven - Gesso and Gel medium

I have been thoroughly enjoying Wanderlust 2022 - the mixed media art journaling course.  This is my second year and the format is a little different this time.  The course is split into seven-week blocks and each block explores different media. The first block was about gesso and gel medium.

Week one began with an overview of the media and then a project using clear gesso and a photograph.  

Week Two was using gesso and seedheads, stems etc. as brushes.  It is supposed to be a view of poplar trees out of the window, but Chris thought it looked like a battlefield.

Week three was using gel medium through a stencil as a resist and then colouring around it with water soluble crayons to reveal the word. I had more success using water based Distress ink.

Week four was using gesso through a stencil, applying it thickly and marking into it, using it to cover materials such as lace and cardboard, stamping into it and mixing it with small amounts of colour.  There was a lot of layering involved!

For the fifth week, we used white and black gesso in thin layers. I cut the eyes out of magazines and decided to give only one figure a mouth.  This piece has a meaning to me as it represents how women have not had much of a voice throughout history.

The sixth week was about using coloured gesso in light layers.  I didn't have any coloured gesso, so made my own using a tiny bit of acrylic paint mixed in.  There was also stencilling and mark making in the gesso.

The final week of this first block was about using charcoal and gesso. Charcoal is not something I use very much, so it was good to be pushed out of my comfort zone.   It involved sketching flowerheads with charcoal and using gesso to blend areas, as well as scraping charcoal onto a page and blending with water.

I really enjoyed finding out what gesso and gel medium could do, learning new-to-me techniques along the way.  Roll on the next block - image transfer and modelling paste/texture paste.