Painted Papers

Here are some more papers I have painted. Some I posted as a group earlier but this way you can see them more clearly. Plus I added some more.

I have been making papers recently in preparation for Module 6 activities for the City and Guilds course I am taking. Some papers are tissue attached with gesso and then painted. The one in the middle is composed of dryer sheets attached with gesso and then painted. The others are stamped with various items and then covered with a water color wash. I used textile paints, golden fluid acrylics and water colors to achieve the look I was after. I have many more to do but this is the first batch.

Today Rachel and I went to the Barnes Foundation. We had a fun time looking at all the Renoir, Cezanne, Picasso, Van Gogh, and other impressionist and post impressionist painters. No picture taking is allowed or is any sketching so I'll have to go back sometime to really absorb what I saw.

I have been reading a couple of books by Ellen Langer. One is "The Power of Mindful Learning" and the other is her personal artistic journey called "On Becoming an Artist". Her main idea is change how you think about things so that you are open to the possibilities what you are learning or seeing sticks in your brain better and is useful to you. Most of the learning we do is by rote-there is no choice in how we use what we learn. We learn facts taht apply to a specific situation or problem. We stop paying attention once our problem is solved and we miss how we might use that information in a different setting. We miss when it changes subltly so we aren't prepared for danger or adventure. Her ideas are more than simply "Pay Attention! they are about being open to other ways what we learn might be useful to us. Most of us are doing this when we use ordinary objects for creative ideas. Like the shape of the spatuala as a pattern for a block or repeat pattern...

Pears

Today is Mothers Day. My girls are here with me today and my son remembered to call. How delightful! I feel very loved.
I finished my final exam last night so I am free of school work until after labor day. I intend to use all my free time from now until then for studio art work until I have to get back to the books.

I had taken some pictures in the grocery store last summer and here is my sketchbook with the origianl picture and then my drawing of it done with water color pencils of some red pears.
Enjoy.
I am off to read about Nancy Crow and work on my new adventure - a website.

Assessment Piece

Here is a picture of the Bahn building that I took when I was in Berlin, Germany over Christmas. The second picture is a design in paper of this building that I created in preparation for making it out of cloth for my 3D assessment piece for my City and Guilds course. I painted watercolor paper with Golden Fluid Acrylics and water then added organza for the reflected building and painted with Gold Luminere the lights.