Free Artist Workshops

Strathmore offers free workshops.  They are really good.  The current class is by Tracy Bautista, teaching doodling and mixed media techniques.  She is a wonderful artist and has written several books.

This is the link to the website:

http://www.strathmoreartist.com/blog-reader/items/strathmore-2012-online-workshop-series.html

This is a journal page I created using Traci's techniques.

I took the "Sketchbook Challenge"

The Sketchbook Challenge for February, was to draw and paint a close-up and personal picture.  I took the challenge and created this fish. 

You must checkout the Sketchbook Challenge blog. I love it. There are so many great artists sharing ideas and techniques on this blog.

http://sketchbookchallenge.blogspot.com/

More Mixed Media Imaginary Creatures

These creatures emerged from a water marking technique that didn't work.  The instructions were to paint card stock using a medium shade of acrylic paint and let it dry.  Next dilute a lighter shade of acrylic paint with water and paint over the first layer.  Then, while the paint is still wet, splash or drop alcohol over the paper.  Allow to dry.  The alcohol was supposed to dissolve some of the top layer paint and allow the other to show through.  Well, I tried it three times and nothing happened to the paint.  I started adding some acrylic inks and more alcohol and started to get some interesting stuff happening.  When dry I looked at the papers and because of Carla Sonheim's creature class, I started to see creature shapes.  These were the results.   This is so much fun.

I named this creature

 "Foaming mouth"

Big Mouth

Stand up bird

Mixed Media Fun

I taught a class last Friday doing mixed media on a canvas.  These are some of my examples.  I forgot to take photos of the artwork created in the class.  They were fabulous, would have liked to share them.