Artfest Day Three: Orly Avineri- Arboreal Messages

This was a workshop taught by Orly.  We each brought our own board book already gessoed or peeled away the illustrations. Orly began the class by talking about her childhood in Israel and how a tree made an impact in her life. We were all supposed to think about how trees affected us somehow.

We also brought a black and white photo of ourselves. Here I glued that down on one side.

Next we cut out a tree shape with a foamy sheet she gave us. We placed this over our photo and applied modeling paste around the stencil we made.

For this spread we used found papers we brought in. These were supposed to be  interesting papers we  picked up from the ground. We added masking tapes and applied paint. Lastly we sprayed inks ontop and blew with a straw to appear as roots of a tree.

Heres another spread I did in my book.

student examples

This is Orly's example of a tree shape with her pic

At the end we talked about everyones tree story and shared our pages.

Second Day at Artfest: Gina Armfield Watercolor birds of Prey

 These were two paintings I did in our Birds of a Feather Class. Look closely at the tips of the feathers to the right where we wrote a poem with tiny words using a magnifying glass.  I really enjoyed Gina's class. She was a Great Teacher and constantly helped us with our paintings. I loved the concept of layering the lighter and then darker colors. We used wet in wet for some of the mottled areas.

Gina gave us a lesson about types of paints, brushes and papers. The first step was to draw the shapes with our micron .001 pen.

This was the second step to add the lightest colors. We used a magnifying glass to see the blues and pinks in the beige colors.

These three birds were done by other students in the class. During our critique, Gina noted that everyone has their own style.

This was one of Gina's paintings.

At the end of the day we walked around the room and discussed each students paintings from the day. Note the cool light she recommended we get. Its a battery operated ott light with natural lighting. I could of used it. Also we needed a magnifying glass to see all the underlying colors in the image.

Back From Artfest!! Misty Mawn

These are three collages I  worked on in class. I need to finish the face here.

 Day one on Thursday My class was with Misty Mawn. She is a fantastic collage artist. We learned how to do backgrounds and some subject techniques. Misty demonstrated all these collages.

we used stablio marker to add design

 Misty put together collage piece and painted on a portrait overtop the image. Face Before,

This was a silhouette image collage.

These two pieces were done by other students in the class.

Assembling a vase of flowers.

Starting the Girl with a pearl earring collage.

She does a great job with faces. I wish I took the portrait class.

This "halo" was done with a stencil doily.

Here the collage face is painted with different colors.

Mile High Mixed Media Group

   Saturday I got together with our monthly art group to try some complicated papers that Anne Bagby is known for.

These are stamps we made with a peel and stick flooring square and foam shapes stuck on. We applied paint with our brayer to these stamps on the black and white paper.

Fat Book Pages for Artfest

One of the fun things about going to Artfest is the Fatbook you get to take home. Each artist creates one page (and enough for everyone's book) and mail it away to the hostess. She binds the book for us.

I did a three color reduction print for my page. On the back I used the printing technique from the previous post. I am almost finished. The deadline is March 7th!

Here are my two stamps I carved for the print. The first color was lime green, then turquoise, lastly black. Each time I printed a color, I carved more out for the next printing.

Printing with Golden's open paints

For this print I used three rubber bands along the top.

There are some new paints by golden called Open acrylic paints. They allow you to print with them without drying out. Therefore the paints stay wet longer.

We met at Simones studio to practice some printing techniques using these paints. Sabyl had a jelli square that was also used for the same printing technique. It can be used over and over.

Here is the first step. A square is blocked off with tape. You can use a plexi board, freezer paper, or palette paper.

Then you use a brayer as your painting tool to spread the paint thinly on the board. It takes some practice to get the colors to blend together but not turn to mud.

Then we pushed some stamps into the paint or layed objects ontop. Rubber bands are good as well.

Finally you peel off the tape and lay your paper onto the paint. Rub ontop with a clean brayer or  your hand.

Art Day in the Studio

 Satuday we met at Simone's very own art studio she rents in Denver. It was a very old printing building with wooden floors and ancient trim (and bathrooms).Each room different artist share for their studios. Simone showed us her current work for a juried show she will be in. It was so much fun to get together and talk about ART.  We practiced making sumi painting with ink. The chops were made from old erasers carved with linoleum blades with red ink. I decided this wasnt my thing. Here are some of the examples of the finished work of bamboo and plum blossom tree done on rice paper??