Mixed Media Owl

Feeling owly? Honestly, teaching art brings out the goofy weirdness in me I guess; this in-class demo was pretty fun.

They say that creative people are good decision makers; I BELIEVE!  That’s because to make even one piece of art takes SO MANY decisions!  For this piece I:

First intended to collage all the feathers. (Oh, by the way, it was an example I did in-class with my students.  I’m teaching them collage.)

Once I drew him in I decided to paint him so he’d look good if the paper showed between the collaged pieces 

Once he was painted, I didn’t want to collage him, so I decided to collage the background.

Once the background was collaged I decided to collage parts of the owl’s feathers around the edge to pull the whole piece together.

(And that ain’t the half of it! :)

Anyway, here’s looking at you!

Collage Art

One of my favorite things to teach my students is collage art.  SO MUCH FUN!  Here’s a collage I made which I’m using as an example.  I call him “Guy on Fire!”  Into each life a little flaming blue hair must fall, huh? :). Back to school!! 

Part the Sixth - Cat Painting

Part the Sixth of my creative endeavor featuring my cat painting.  See previous posts as they’re in order.  As creatives often do, I once again changed my plan, taking a different tangent and turning the entire painting upside down.  I decided I’d prefer the blue at top and the reds below;  all three - the blues, reds and golds presenting our cat Lupino in a very royal manner as he so justly deserves.  A step not shown is that I burnished the golds in the painting for permanent adherence.  Once oriented, I got out my handy dandy Lyra watercolor crayons and drew it out.  Lyra crayons are the adored but unsung heros of my art supply stock.  As sketching is my specialty, this is one of my favorite steps.  Crayon done I try to always walk away and leave it at least overnight.  When I come back I can see any little tiddly-pom discrepancies in my work and can correct them thusly.  This finished, it is finally ready for PAINT! 

Art Experimentation

I’ve been doing some experiments with oil sticks on top of mixed media and liking the results.  These are the pearlescent and metallic ones, and the illusion is that they’re actually floating on top of the watercolor.  Pretty cool.  Tonight I’m going to post a video of it to explain a bit more.