I’m watching and listening to birds on the feeder outside at the moment. Spring seems to be in the air – where did winter go? This challenge has played with my sense of timing as there are no days off, just constant thinking, exploring, creating while fitting the rest of my life around it. So, although I eagerly anticipate Day 100, I wonder what will happen on Day 101?
Day 57
It was a very busy day and I only got to putting paint on paper when the sun had gone down. So, as the prompt was “the view outside” my options were a little limited.
As it’s not just me in the house, I couldn’t turn off all the lights in our living area. The only place of complete darkness was our bedroom. So, I got my exercise (and a few bruises when bumping into furniture I swear wasn’t there before!). I walked through the darkened room to the window, looked out, and tried to commit what I saw to memory. Then, I hurried out to my desk in the dining room to paint with soft pastel.
This took many trips back and forth and the end result is a bit of a childlike impression of a house. However, it does capture some of the glow of interior light, and that hugely annoying new BC Hydro lamp! Life in the big city of Westview 🙂
Day 58
Pen and ink was the prompt; I took it literally. I have a few bottles of coloured ink, and I regularly use pens for drawing. So, I combined the two.
I purchased the ink more than a year ago and have hardly explored it. Since then I have become a little more familiar with watercolour. I used the techniques learned in watercolour to work with the ink.
My husband offered one eye for the process. I always feel like it is magic when that element of light, the whitest part of the creation, is put into place. All of a sudden the eye ball looks like an eye ball, and the eye looks alive.
Day 59
Analogous colours. Today I learned what analogous colours are. Here’s a chance for me to share what I learned. They are the colours next to each other on the colour wheel. To create an analogous colour palette you use 2 to 5 of those colours.
This tissue box was in the kitchen. I liked how the tissue was folded and standing upright from the top. The box itself was very jazzy. Altogether, though, I could use violet, blue, blue-green, plus some black and white, to make the creation.
My favourite part of this is the tissue. I think the violet worked well for marking the folds, shadows and light. I also purposely created a hard edge of the table and nothing beyond, playing with the 10″ x 10″ composition space.
Day 60
Create glassware or a household object. So, I chose my glasses…which meant I spent an hour or so in the blinkered short-sighted world. I looked up and all was a blur, I looked down and all was in focus.
There are coatings on the lenses of my glasses and they translate reflected light into vivid green and purple. The glasses were on top of our shiny dining room table and thus created a nice mirror image.
The one thing I would do differently here, if I were to do it again, would be to paint in the table first. I spent a long time painting around the glasses, and the table didn’t end up as a smooth surface.
Day 61
Admittedly, this one is a little crazy. The prompt was to dance to music while painting. Hmmm. The mess would take days to clean up. Instead, when I listen to music it is my fingers that do the dancing. So, I decided to do some finger painting.
This took a little research. I looked online and quickly found there is a pretty good market for finger paintings. Iris Scott, one artist I saw, sells her work for $36,000 US or more! Worth a look.
I put on music by Whitney Houston, and poured out puddles of Tri-art liquid acrylic paint. Then, I dipped my finger tips into the colour and danced them over the paper.
To me, this looks like a cloud of moon jellies that have learned to colour themselves. Someone else said it reminded her of salmon eggs. I think I will do this again at some point 🙂
Day 62
Some days it is hard to come up with a subject to paint when there isn’t a prompt. This was one of those days. However, I finally found a vase that had been collecting dust on a shelf. Its glaze contains a myriad of different colours. I put it together with a napkin on the table and went to work.
This challenge is letting me explore new techniques. I have on days and off days with fabric folds (the tissue on Day 59 was an on day). This was an off day although I enjoyed the swirls and play of light and dark. The vase itself received the treatment of careful yet deliberate daubs of paint. These are the colours of the vase, but not in such a subtle way that the actual vase looks.
I decided to place the vase so that some of the handle is missing, playing with composition and letting the viewer’s eye fill in the rest.
Day 63
I think this is my favourite creation so far in this challenge. The prompt was to use the other hand. So, being right-handed, I chose to create a painting of my right hand using my left hand.
I went back to the Zorn palette of white, black, yellow ochre and red and used soft pastels. The paper is Evolon with a grey gesso on top. It created a nice surface to receive the pastel, and the shape was just right for my hand and wrist.
I found it remarkable how easy this was to do. I had thought I’d need to really try hard to make any mark that was in the right place using my left hand. However, somehow most of it worked. Yes, my skin looks a little on the baggy side around the knuckles at the base of my fingers. I forgot to add the veins on the top of my hand, so, unlike the previous painting of my hand (in that case, the left one) where I was told it looked much older than my hand actually is, I think this one balances it out by looking younger. What do you think?
If you had to paint using your other hand, what would you do? Give it a go!
Janet and Janet 