A Piece a Week 2013

Happy New Year and a Piece of Art a Week

Happy New Year to all of you! This year is going to be one of art and I’m starting out with the attempt to get one Piece of Art COMPLETED per week. Considering my last post, completing is something I really need to do more of.

So here be my first Piece a Week and a short story to go with it.

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From a volcano

This is a photo of the view from our front yard. You’re looking at the peak of an extinct ( or according to some people, dormant) volcano. We’re parked between the two major craters – this is the pinnacle of the Valley Lake crater. Behind us is the larger crater of the Blue Lake. We’re at Mount Gambier and because I have a memory like a sieve, this is my first Reverb post.

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Things that make me nostalgic icon

Things that make me nostalgic

I receive Tracey Fletcher King’s blog posts straight into my email inbox (they are so entertaining and arty, they are totally worth it :D) when I came across her entry for List it Tuesday. Ooh, a challenge I haven’t encountered before. So I wandered over to Artsyville and, cool, what a great idea. So instead of furthering my fire and jewels mosaic, I have been doodling in my art journal tonight.

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Watercolour and masking fluid experiment cut2

Masking fluid experiments

Earlier this year I was introduced to the concept of an art journal. I’ve kept sketchbooks of my work all my life, but art journalling is slightly different. In March I started a journal of my own. A simple cheap bound sketchbook that within its pages I have permission to royally stuff up with abandon. I’ve been using it to experiment with my watercolours of late and that is where you will find all the originals for my Life Inspired series. I’ve found it extremely liberating to have this place to just play. I’ve never painted in a sketchbook before. All my paintings have been big events where I have tried to create something that will grace a wall someday. I can’t tear pages out of this book.

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Life inspired

For quite some time now I have been admiring pen and watercolourists like Tracey Fletcher King and Blue Chair Diary Illustrations and their techniques of mixing these two wonderful media. I have never attempted watercolour and pen together before and since my watercolour experience is minimal, I tend to find that part of the equation quite scary.

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Swirl stencil texture

T is for Texture

One technique I’ve found very inspirational is to create a background or texture, just slap in down, and create a piece of work from that. Half the challenge is taken once you have something on the canvas/page and textures are fantastic for doing that.

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S is for Stencil

I had a good time playing around in my journal and talking art today. Of course, instead of tackling my planned blog topic for today which had been ‘sgraffito’, I contented myself with playing with yesterday’s embossing and stencilling experiments and arranging them in my journal.

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Relief close up

R is for Rubbing and Recycling

Several days ago I was rifling through the Net looking for a way to make my own stencils. My sister has been experimenting with stencils and moulding paste and has gotten some interesting results, so I wanted to try it out for myself. But although I have a handful of stencils here, mostly lettering stencils, I didn’t really want to be confined to other people’s creations, I wanted to make my own.

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Love by Liz Powley

H is for Happy

And Happy is exactly what I’ve been for the majority of this long weekend 😀 I’ve been merrily arting and blogging away on various projects and it has been great fun.

A couple of days ago I posted G is for Graffiti where I mentioned my first art journal page. It was based on street art and a technique demonstrated for those of us participating in the challenge.

Well, I really liked the ‘Love’ page I threw together and being me, I couldn’t just leave it there. So I created a painting.

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Love by Liz Powley

G is for Graffiti

I had some great fun yesterday. Now considering the title of this post, you might wonder what I have been up to. But no, I’m far too much of a goody-two-shoes to actually go out and graffiti anything. But what I can do is a piece of artwork in the graffiti style…well, as close as a square cucumber like me can manage.

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