Wind and Honey Creations: 10/1/15

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Siamese Cat in Luscious Colors

Have you tried the Derwent Tinted Charcoal? The colors are so lovely. The lend themselves nicely to drawings of subjects in a more natural setting. And they are perfect for Siamese cats! Charcoal has a reputation for being bold, even visually "loud". If you love the colors but are a bit intimidated by the fact that they are charcoal, this is the workshop for you. I use techniques with charcoal that bring softer results than is typically imagined with charcoal. And these tinted colors are wonderful to work with.

Students at any drawing level can enjoy success in this workshop. I give detailed step by step instructions. You can even email me with your questions or scans of your drawing as you work so that I can help you. This is a video workshop so you can watch it as many times as you wish at whatever hour your creative juices are most active. Join me! We'll have fun.

Click here to join Siamese in Tinted Charcoal.

Wind and Honey Creations
Creative Pencils - Online Drawing Lessons

Thursday, October 1, 2015

Artful Prayer in Mini Session

My thoughts have been going in the direction of art journaling a lot lately. For one thing I'm working on a really big project that involves my art journal. But more on that later. But also I have been preparing to teach at a retreat this weekend and also another one next weekend. I will be teaching a mini session of my Artful Prayer Workshop at each of them. For the Artful Prayer Workshop we use only artist pencils of various kinds and markers. I love what I call "paint and paste" work. But I find that when I work on something with that approach, I get so caught up in the technique of it that I fail at the journaling part. But when working with the slow medium of artist pencils, my mind has the freedom and space to move forward with my prayer time.

You know I am a self professed paper snob. I have trouble finding a journal made just right with just the right paper to work with my various pencil supplies. So I've made journals for the weekend participants. Each one is different so they can choose and be unique. When I teach classes I'm all about making choices and about being your unique self.

Here is a smidgen sneak peek at a small part of the example for the weekend class. But one of the things I insist on whether my students are 5 or 75 is that no one can just copy mine. I teach concepts and techniques not projects. They must find a way to make it their own.

My penmanship is less that ideal. And sometimes I have students who are naturals when it comes to lovely lettering. I am not. And I find that for me to spend too much time focusing on the penmanship can ruin the prayerful mood of the moment. So, I just don't worry about it.

I've also been playing lately with Jennifer Frith's approach to journaling with a weekly calendar. Its kind of fun and I am thinking about ways to incorporate it into my regular format. Here are some of my first attempts. These were created in a hardbound Moleskine using graphite, Derwent Inktense, and Faber Castell Pitt markers.