Splashing Through Life - Art by Patricia Henderson

Every month I get together with a wonderful friend and we play! We try out different art techniques and media and  get our creative juices flowing. Yesterday we got out two books by Mary Todd Beam, Celebrate Your Creative Self and The Creative Edge . I was lucky enough to go to one of her week long workshops at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Tennessee about 4 years ago. It was great to get out her books and try out some the excercises. It brought back some wonderful memories. Here are a couple of experiments that I tried yesterday: I Dreamt I was a Dragonfly 9" x 7" Acrylic on Mat Board Under the Mountain 14" X 9" on Mat Board

Maybe it is appropriate that my last painting of this year is of a crow. According to some legends, the crow can be a sign of change. We are changing from the old year to the new, and that always comes with the expectation of changes, hopefully for the better. Wishing you all a Happy New Year full of wonderful changes, new beginnings and the comfort of things that we want to stay the same. Family, friends, and home. Patty A Sign of Change 5" X 7" Watercolour, ink, coloured pencils (Click on picture for larger image)

I've been participating in the Grumbacher Art Swap , where every month a new theme is chosen and artists create a small ATC (art trading card), send it in to Grumbacher and they swap it with another artist's card and send it back to you. They give you a punch card, so after every three swaps you receive a reward of paints or brushes etc. The first one I did was very fun and I received a nice card in the mail the other day. I was excited when they announced the new theme until I saw it was SELF PORTRAITS!!!! OMG!!! I have never done a self portrait, unless you count the time in a drawing class I took and that one was promptly destroyed! But I thought this would be a good way to stretch myself outside of my comfort zone. It sure is doing that! Not only is it a portrait, which I haven't done for a long time, but a selfie! And not only a selfie, but a teeny, weeny, tiny one! So....after a couple of attempts which I won't show you, here is something that kinda resembles me...

Sometimes when I'm stuck for what to do in my studio, I get out the Clear Tar Gel Medium. What is this stuff? Well on the container of the Golden Clear Tar Gel, it says it "Generates fine lines by dripping from a palette knife or other tool." Here is a little demo I did a couple years back that shows how you can use it. CLICK HERE FOR DEMO . One of these days, I'll learn how to set up a video demo, but for now you are stuck with photos! I have a few of these on the go right now. Here are two funky flowers! Each one is 20" X 7.0" on Peterboro Illustration Board. I used Fluid Acrylic paints. Yellow Flower                    Pink Flower And here are some closeups:

Today I'm veering away from my watercolour sketches and sharing three prints I created with my  Gelli Arts®  Printing Plate . I had recently purchased some new paint, Golden Open Acrylics . They stay wet longer than regular acrylic paints and I wanted to see how they work with the  Gelli®  Plate. So,  I went out into my yard to find something interesting to use. Well, something that I have an overabundance of is Dandelions! A couple of these are combined with some fronds of a fern that I have in the house. I have to say, that I had to force myself to stop after a while! This is way too much fun and ADDICTING!  I really liked using the Golden Opens for these prints. I think I will try to put together a bit of a step by step demo one of these days here on my blog. Although there are tons of info out there on the net about  Gelli®  Printing! Click on photo to see larger

It's the dead of winter and I'm daydreaming about summer days and dragonflies. I know that it is Watercolour Wednesday, but today I've painted in a mix of Water media.  What is watermedia you ask? Well in art circles it is basically any media that is soluble in water. So it includes watercolour paint, acrylic paint, inks, dyes, etc. This tiny painting was  started with watercolours and ink and finished with a washy mix of acrylic paint. You can't see it here, but the wings were covered in a pearly iridescent paint. Dragonfly Daydream 2.5 X 3.5"

Here is a quick sketch of a gaggle of geese in the snow. Reference photo courtesy of the great website Paint My Photo . It has given me an idea for a potential collage painting in the future....stay tuned! Gaggle of Geese 5" X 7" Watercolour and ink on Arches 140 lb CP

Today I thought I'd do a quick watercolour sketch of a bunny that was visiting our yard last summer. As a pure watercolour, it's a failure, because I couldn't seem to keep my hands of the ink pens and even had the oil pastels out! Anyway I did get a bit of watercolour practise in, even if it's not a total success. S ummer Friend 5" X 7"

One morning, last summer I was surprised while driving to work when a beautiful Great Egret landed in a ditch along the road. It was early in the morning and so peaceful. I thought it would be a great subject for a painting. I didn't get started on it right away, but in my mind's eye I could picture what I wanted to do. It was going to be a night scene with a dark blue background and a white moon and the beautiful white egret standing in the light of the moon. It was going to be wonderful! Well....not so much.. I decided to collage the whole background. It somehow ended up being a purplish blue monstrosity! I had made a big circular pattern in the background that was very distracting. The bird was too small in comparison to the moon. I used all the wrong colours and papers in the egret. The whole thing was a mess. I looked at it for a few days and decided I hated it. That's when I got out the gesso. It was very cathartic to slap that white paint all over the canvas. I...

I haven't decided on a title for this one yet. It might be because most of the time I start out with a title already in mind, but this painting kind of came about by accident! I had started a really cool painting with the background a collage of road maps with a very thin wash of gesso, and clear tar gel swirled over top.  I washed on some really nice blues and aquas. Over that I was going to collage some monarch butterflies, using my pre-painted papers.... Well, the background was great. The butterlies, not so much. I hate giving up on a painting, but I went for the gusto and took a big brush and gesso'd all over it. Not really knowing where I was going with this one, I took Mary Todd Beam's favourite colour trio of Golden Fluid Acrylics: Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold, Quinacridone Crimson, and Turquois (Phthalo), and did some random washes. The crimson kind of got left behind! The result reminded me of the sun and some twigs or branches. I had recently taken some phot...

Another fun thing I learned at the Mary Todd Beam workshop was playing with Clear Tar Gel acrylic medium. Taking a plastic spoon, I dip it into the Tar Gel and drizzle it onto some scraps of illustration board or mat board. This one turned out a bit messy because I was trying to do it left handed so I could take the picture! Drizzling Tar Gel You can adjust the thickness of the gel "string" by raising or lowering the spoon and/or adding more gel to the spoon. You have to experiment to get the feel of it. Once they have dried, I spray the board a bit to get it a little wet, then brush on some watery liquid acrylics, letting the paint mix and mingle.  I like to do a bunch of these and have them ready to put paint on after they have dried. They are great "warm-up" pieces...something to get you in the studio and getting your paints out. Here are a few of my recent experiments:

At the Mary Todd Beam workshop, she showed us an easy way to make stamps. All you need is a small section of foam insulation that you can score and break into small pieces. From a craft or dollar store get some of the thin craft foam that has the peel-off backing. You can cut shapes from that and stick on to the pieces of insulation and voila! A stamp! I used some of these to stamp patterns on some paper to make collage material. I stamped the pattern first and then applied watered down acrylic paint. Fun!

A couple weeks ago, I attended a workshop at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatllinburg Tennessee. Our instructor was Mary Todd Beam . What an inspiration this lady is! In her 80's, she still gets excited over every brush stroke and surprise mingling of paint. Mary is a contemporary watermedia artist, and loves to share what she has learned over the years. We observed and practiced her techniques over the span of a week in the beautiful setting of Arrowmont. Mary even invited the class to her cabin in the woods where we got to see her gallery and many of her wonderful paintings. \ This is Mary doing a demonstration with her hubby Don looking on. These are a few paintings that I did that week. The ones that I like anyway! These two are "Strata", layers of different acrylic mediums and tissue paper. The two above are an experiment with clear tar gel medium. This one involves scraping paint across paper.  And this one is a Trash Pai...

While I was working on my Geese collage, I had an idea for another mixed media painting.  For this piece I experimented with using various types of paper adhered to the canvas and did a wash of watercolours to get a muted background. Then using paper, twigs, leaves, feathers and an acorn cap, I made the nest. The eggs are hand painted paper. This was the first stage. After looking at it for a few weeks, I decided it needed a bit of  "oomph". (this photo is not the best, it was taken in bright sunshine and I couldn't get rid of the shine.) Today I added more hand painted tissue and rice paper, and it has a bit more of the oomph that I was looking for. I might be finished. Or not. But probably! 

I've had in my mind that I want to paint some milkweed pods with the seeds blowing in the wind. I'm having trouble, however, getting the picture that is in my mind onto paper...(isn't that always the way?) Last weekend's experiment went well until it came to the silky seeds. I had used masking fluid, and the filaments came out too thick. I tried to fix it with some white paint. I like the background, but other than that I don't really like it that much. This morning, I thought I'd play around on the back of a failed painting, and ended up with this: It's a bit more like what I had in my mind, but not entirely. I didn't use any masking fluid, but did resort to a tad of white acrylic for the fluffy seeds. I also used some epsom salt which gave some cool effects. I also had fun playing around with some unusual colours. I used lamp black, and Quinacridone gold, with a bit of Gamboge. Back to the drawing board tomorrow!