Exploring Mixed Media - Inspiration

I recently took part in an online mixed media art workshop with Laly Mille.  I really like her mixed media work and this was an opportunity not to be missed.  It was a free course to celebrate her ten years as a mixed media artist. 

 The first thing we needed to do was to create inspiration pages in a book - either a sketchbook or journal.  The pages could be filled with images from magazines, colour, our own pieces of art work, images that we liked and which appealed to us in some way.  My pages came together really quickly and I was surprised at the amount of images I found with a similar theme - in this case, colour.  I raided my scraps box and also my gel print stash.  

I knew there were certain colours I was drawn to, but hadn't realised how many things I had which were these colours, collected without thinking about this. Above is the teal/blue page . These colours have been a favourite of mine for many years.

The next page was all about the rich jewel colours - pinks and purples.  Again, another favourite but also a surprise at just how many images and pieces of gel prints and papers that I had already got in these colours.

The third page was one I was more concerned about - neutrals.  I am not really a 'beige' person and have no clothes in these tones.  However, again I was surprised to find lots of images with these colours, beige, grey, cream and some light purple, which appealed to me and which I had kept, thinking they would come in handy.  The owl feather was sent to Chris from someone in America, as part of sendsomething.net.

So far, just three double pages, but they were so enjoyable to put together.  

The next part of the workshop moved on to using the inspiration pages and finding small bundles of collage to add to four small pieces of art work.  More to follow... 

Winter sunset

 Living in a city, surrounded by houses and at the bottom of a hill, we don't usually manage to see much of a sunset.  We occasionally see the pink clouds or some orange spreading across the sky.  However, Mum and Dad's house faces west with the most beautiful uninterrupted views across the countryside.  We were there yesterday, and the sunset was wonderful.

 The colours in the sky were beautiful...

 ...as were the colours in the clouds.

Even after the sun had set, the most lovely striations of oranges, pinks, reds and golds could still be seen.  I'm so pleased I remembered to take my camera with me as these may become felt pictures in the future.  I think the colours would translate really well into felt, especially the last one.