Index Card a Day 2023 (ICAD) - weeks 5,6 and 7

Here's a round up of weeks five, six and seven of ICAD 23.  Above is: Evergreen; Playground; Charcoal (another of my somewhat grumpy charcoal faces); Cottage.

Perspective; Summer and Astronomy (an inked 'galaxy' background).

Week six was Imaginary; Metallic (using an embossing folder and silver card with black acrylic paint brushed on and them wiped off); Zodiac; Levels (another embossing folder)...

...Chandelier; Float or Buoy (using magazine collage); Trivia.

Week seven had Patina (using an embossing folder and acrylic paint dry brushing); Repeat (using one of my hand carved stamps, made from an eraser); Millefleurs; Wabi Sabi (which I chose to interpret using darning)...

...Vermilion; Raindrops and Focus.

Two more weeks to go and the challenge is over for another year.
 

Wanderlust 2023 - Weeks nine to fifteen - Pencils

The Wanderlust course feels as though it is going very fast this year.  The focus for the next seven weeks was pencils. Above was an introduction to pencils in their many forms - graphite, watersoluble (like Stabilo Woodys or  Caran D'AcheNecolour II), watercolour, charcoal, crayons...

Week ten was focused on people. We had to paint the page,  then see the faces and characters and bring them out with pencil details.  We also had to include hands even if they looked weird (and they do!).  Chris made up quite a story about these figures.  I 'saw' the small person first, then the one on the left and the floating face.  I thought I had finished but the face on the right demanded to be included.  He looks a bit like a Disney character to me, but I added him in.

Asemic writing (which looks like writing but doesn't mean anything) was the next focus. I wrote about the week I had at work on the section at the bottom right, but then reversed the tracing paper to stick it down, so it isn't that easy to read. 

More layering and botanicals for week twelve.  I enjoyed the splodges on the right hand side where we drew the wispy bits out. 

Charcoal portraits were the next focus.  I do enjoy using charcoal.  We then used water or oil to add shading.

We should have added a selfie to this page but as I have an aversion to seeing myself in a photo, I passed on that one.  This didn't really grab me - some weeks are like that.

Using Derwent Intense pencils four ways: dry, as paint, mixed on the page and then dipped in water made for an enjoyable amount of playing for the final pencils week.  I do like the Derwent Inktense pencils - very pigmented, easy to use and versatile - my new favourite pencils! 

The final week was the 'Artful Musings' week where an art practitioner talks about what they do.  The trusty Derwent Inktense pencils came out again, to be used like watercolours for this page, which is loosely based on the water cycle.  It included lots of mark making, using the pencils wet and dry and with various brushes used like stamps.

As always, there has been lots of experimenting and some weeks are more enjoyable than others, but I have a go at them all.  Our next media to explore is Pens - I am looking forward to that!

Wanderlust 2022 - weeks forty-three to fifty - Papers and Fabrics

Wanderlust 2022 has finished and I really enjoyed the final theme of Papers and Fabrics.  Week forty-three was about exploring different papers and substrates and then make a patchwork page, joining the pieces together with sewing.  I used walnut ink and paints, archival ink, stamping, stencilling, mark making and texture paste and I loved every minute.  I love the end result too, which is always a bonus.

Eco dyeing was the next focus and I used blueberries and coffee (not together).  The blueberry dye was a lovely purple, but when I added bicarbonate of soda, it turned a teal blue, which was unexpected but lovely.

Week forty-five was using Tyvek paper, which is a plastic paper which melts when you apply heat and can also create bubbly effects, which is what we were aiming for. I did melt a hole initially but tried again and got the bubbly texture.  This was used to make a Humanimal - a mix of human and animal. 

Week forty-six was time consuming but enjoyable and quite meditative.  After creating our own stencilled papers, we then had to tear them into small pieces to make a collage.  Adding stencilling over a block colour background helped to show the collage off.

Portraits in charcoal, ink and stitching was week forty-seven's task.  My portraits are improving and I found I enjoyed using the charcoal with water to create some shadows.  Continuous line portraits were also included and we then collaged together some of the different images we created.

Week forty-eight was a layered piece and I used a favourite illustration from The Secret Garden as my focal point, which also dictated the muted colour scheme.  This was a really enjoyable piece to create.

The final week of the theme was more collage but also including stitching into images for added texture.  Another very enjoyable piece to create, with similar muted watercolours to the previous week.  The squirrel was sent to Chris in happy mail and worked so well as a counterpoint to the bird.

The final lesson was about binding pages into a journal and decorating the cover.  

My journal was held together with binder rings, so all I needed to do was to decorate the cover and I chose to collage lots of bits that had been left over from weekly projects throughout the year.  

So now its the end of this year's course, what have I learnt?  

• I am now likely to say 'I'll try that' rather than 'I can't do that'.  
• My portraits have really improved and using a tracing to get the correct proportions is a good thing to start with.
• I really enjoy using watercolours.
• Serendipity often adds something special to a page.

I am looking forward to starting the new course in January 2023. The first theme is pastels - not one of my favourite supplies - but I am looking forward to learning and experimenting more with them.

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.