Thomas More Institute

I discovered this place a few years back, but I did not have time to take any of their course until now. I kept an eye on their eclectic schedule every year. It is the only place I know where one can study such a variety of topics. The structure of the classes is different too, the students have readings to do and then they discuss them in class. Classes can be taken for credit, but most people take them for fun. I guess this helps create a relaxed atmosphere that I have not encountered anywhere else. I am taking a writing class and a theatre course. They are not he typical TMI courses because they are structured differently, but I have no doubt I will hang out there for a while and there will be other opportunities to study different things.

Trilogia della villeggiatura

Milan's Piccolo Teatro was in Montreal last week and they did few shows with Goldoni's Trilogia della Villeggiatura. I saw the play on Saturday and it was such a treat. They played in Italian of course, and this only added to the excitement. The play had subtitles, but I am happy I did not need them because they translated maybe 25% of what was said. Truth be told, they spoke a million miles an hours! It is not the first time they come to Montreal, but I missed the previous show. I have a hard time keeping track of what is happening in town, but I promised myself to get better at this.

Illustration Friday - Old-fashioned

I had no idea what to make for this topic. OK. That is not true, I had ideas, but they were all too complicated for my meagre drawing skills. I googled the topic and I found out that apparently the first cocktail invented was called "old-fashioned". Easy enough to come up with something. Then, I remembered about this old-fashined gesture of a gentleman kissing the hand of a lady. Nowadays, the gestures is almost embarassing, especially in North America where manners I are gone...I for one, like to be trated in this old-fashioned way.

The size was a challenge here as each drawing is about 2.5 x 3.5 and I don't usually do anything so small.

Sketches from books

I spent few hours at the library checking books on Ravenna's mosaics. These are some of the sketches I did from the books:

Art et manière

Automatic writing, gesso, acrylic, charcoal on canvass paper 6x6. This one was a size challenge - I don't like working this small.

Channelling Miró

Doodles in pen, watercolor ink for the background, sharpies and watercolor. I like the result, yet somehow it does not feel entirely "me". But then neither do other things I make. In fact, none of them is entirely "me" since I have not figured out who "me" is when it comes to art. I prefer geometrical doodles, that's as much as i can say about "being me" in this context. As for watercolor inks, I am afraid they will become the next addiction because I just love this yellow pigment, it is so much brighter that the watercolors that come in a pan. I will try using acrylics as watercolors to see if I get similar results.I would not want to spend more money on supplies I might not use. Already done that with pan pastels - and they've been gathering dust for one year already.

Blue thoughts

One morning, as I lied down in the twilight between asleep and awake, a blue image floated to the surface. I decided to pursue the idea and I made a collage using negative printouts of old journal pages. I just went whenever the papers led me. The words materialized as they ususally do - literally falling on my desk. They just happened to be the right size, color, angle ...And the inspired result is:

Illustration Friday - Acrobat

Fun topic and in my mind's eye, the sketch was fun too. As in real life, the results are not what one hoped for. When I went to Punta Cana last year, I decided to try flying the trapeze and I had some pictures taken. I used one of these pictures as an inspiration for a contour drawing of a trapeze acrobat. For the background, I glued some of the papers I made last week. This certainly is not what I imagined ... but such is life. These days it seems that whenever I try to make something, the result just isn't there. Luckily, tomorrow is another day... after all, a coat of gesso can fix the acrobat with arms too thin, torso too short and legs too long. If only all life's problems could be fixed so easily ...

Tea and tissues

Last week, I bought some tea from Le Panier down in the Pointe-Claire Village and I got a mug for free. Nothing spectacular about the mug of course, other than the fact that it came wrapped in 3 sheets of tissue paper. And what's a girl to do with that? Throw it to the garbage?! Of course not.

Instead, they morphed into this:

Craft paint applied with a brayer, left hand doodles.

Crusade nr 44 - In a scrape

This one was fun, fun, fun...and as usual, some pages turned out better than others.
Step 1 - scraped paint on found papers, first incarnation:

Step 2 - scraped paint on a journal page.

The page was wavy and the paint created some interesting effects. All of a sudden, I "saw" a crowd. This is what it became of this page:

Then, the bubbles. You know which ones, when Michelle says to spray water and then scrape. I first tried it in the journal on pages made of sewn newspaper pages. The water softened the pages too much and the scraping did not produce the expected result.

 So I tried again, this time on a piece of cardboard left over from a chocolate box. Better!

Next step in the scraping odyssey - stencils and masks. This were things took a sudden turn for the worse.
 The first attempts produced lame results, all the paint ended up pushed under the stencil so the design got lost. Maybe I should have cut multiple masks and glue them to the page. Anyway, I reused the pages for more stenciling and masking. These are the stencils and masks I used. Top left - that is a thicker stencil made for  high-viscosity paints, it is ment to create a 3D effect. I create 3D effect with regular staencils too, but I thought this one might be more resistant and might work better with spray paints. I have not tested it yet though. I cut the head (ha!) from leftover cardboard and the pink thing is a party crown bought from the dollar store. I also used number stickers as masks.

These produced the following:

And the final version of some of the above - drum roll, drum roll, drum roll ....here they are:

Illustration Friday - Proverb

Proverb? Seriously? Yougottabekiddinme....How am I supposed to draw a proverb?! What proverb should I draw to begin with? Hmm... So many philosophical questions, you see!

Google to the rescue. I found a list of proverb and I started brainstorming - how could I depict the proverb.
A rolling stone gathers no moss - I had this funny imagine in my head of a stone rolling chased but a bunch of moss plants. Here it is ...

Papers

When I am too tired to start solving artistic conundrums (!), I doodle or I make paper. This time, I used black and white photocopies of my journal pages to scribble on and I experimented with tinted gesso. The idea with the tinted gesso came from here: http://collagelabbytwo.blogspot.com/. I always use white gesso and I figured it was worth a try to see if I like it or not.

These are the pages:

For the tinted gesso exercise, I used a manila envelope and a folder. In my case, the gesso dried too fast or the contrast with the layer underneath was not strong enough. Or both. The idea was to make marks through the tinted layer to reveal the white leyer underneath, but the marks did not provide enough contrast for my taste. On the left, I used student quality heavt body acrylics and the colors are a bit stronger. Of course, I used more paint as well. On the right, I used only few drops of Golden so the colors are a bit lighter.

It's a fun exercise and not too complicated, but I think I will still use white gesso and then colors. I like colors with "personality".

More doodles ...

... and an one-eyed monster that looks more like a puppy. Left hand exercises.

Illustration Friday - Dessert

I am late this week... I had to improvise and draw from memory because I checked the theme too late - I had already eaten the dessert! Well deserved though - if I say so myself - after 32 km run. It was a chocolate mousse from La Fayette shaped as a mountain with some snow on the top. Simple enough to not pose too many problems to the begginer artist ...

The Friend meets Girl with Pearl Earring

A while back, I was browsing artwork by Klimt. Part of learning from the masters art education. I came across a painting called "The Friends". I liked the girl with the turban and I decided to use her as a model, but the results was disastrous. Covered the canvas with gesso and put it to sleep for a while.

Then, last week I finally managed to make black and white photocopies of some of my doodles and journal pages. I decided to use them as background for a second attempt to my own rendition of the friend. A small piece of scrapbook paper glued in a corner of the canvas dictated the pallette: Golden's historical colors.

Here is the result:

Some of the doodles still show and on the left side, I rubbed off some paint with alcohol to expose some of the paper.She looks in no way like Klimt's picture, but for some reason she reminds me "The girl with pearl earring"... She's cute, is I say so myself ...don't you agree?

Flea market finds

Temperatures here have been falling dramatically. Until Friday, we were in the high thirties, but since Saturdays things changed, mornings and evenings are getting cooler. On the pluse side, cooler weather and lower humidity ensured I survived the 32 km run from Saturaday. And what better way to spend the middle day of a long weekend then a visit to the flea market?

I googled flea markets in Ontario within a couple of hours drive at the most and I found this one: http://www.mchaffiefleamarket.ca/. The morning was windy and cool, but luckily most of the market is inside. It's a good thing, seeing that the market is opened in the winter too. I doubt the markets here are as good as in the States though. From what I hear, one can get really good deals South of the border. But maybe it is question of luck, as always ...

Here is what I found: buttons, few stamps, vintage paoers and photos, a wooden penny ...

Left hand doodles

Stuck on the phone yesterday... getting bored out of my mind ...I started wondering...what to do ... what to do ...I cannot loose my mind, what would I do after that?! Hmm....Oh ... I know! Doodles to the rescue! And this is the result:

I actually like them in negative too, maybe even more ...

Funny rings

I had fun the other day making these rings:

For the first one, I used a button I received after completing a scavanger hunt part of Carla's Silly workshop; for the second one I used a coat button and a clip earing. Fun ...