Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Art Journal going great!

I  recently had a birthday ending in "0" and  the house was full of beautiful flowers from my friends, including these orchids. I can see this  becoming an art quilt.

A quilt design, this would be raw edge applique on the orange and green background.

The view from the back deck including  corgi Pixie and my husband's foot!

A bunch of roses also for my birthday, these were  exquisite deep yellow with red petal edges.

My rules of art journal drawing
1. relax. Don't stress about it. Take a cup of tea into your  drawing area.
Have a special place where you can leave all your supplies out.
2.  start in  or near the centre of the page, with the focal point of the scene and work outwards until you hit the edge of the paper. The location of each item is worked out by what is adjacent. This works well with flowers and landscapes but not so well with  horses and people where spatial  accuracy is important.

3. Don't judge it at all.
4. Be patient and keep going. Push through the stages where it looks awful ( and  you shouldn't be thinking it's awful as you aren't judging it)

5. As the drawing happens each day, it doesn't matter  if some  don't work out. Doing it daily takes away the preciousness of each work, allowing you to take risks and possibly ruin it by trying something new.
6. draw whatever comes to mind. If you are short of inspiration, look out a window, grab a magazine, pick up some scraps from the sewing room floor and scatter them on the page and join them with lines.  Another good idea is to choose an item and draw it each day for several days using different media, different scale, different angles.

7. After a short while it is easy to sit down and get into the drawing frame of mind (right brain) very quickly.
8. Stop when you've had enough, or filled the page, or   completed the sketch of the item to a point where it has come to a natural conclusion.

Enjoy your drawing!


1 comment:

Kitty said...

Happy Birthday Shauna! (For last week) The drawings are so beautiful and I love the idea of starting in the middle of the page and just working out - sheer genius! You are doing so well with this journal!