Kerri and I held our "Let's Get Plastered" workshop over this past weekend. We had a blast with all eleven of our students. It was so much fun getting "plastered" together :) Kerri shared her magical technique using spackle and sketching into it with fun and interesting household items. She also shared her painting technique for treating the spackle once dry - so much fun! Her sample is, here, with the martini glass and I love it! She calls the piece "The Ultimate Abyss" - brilliant!I am also sharing my piece, here, from the workshop and I intend to do more with this technique - I love it! It was fun experimenting with transfers on the dry spackle (butterfly and bee) and it was successful with gel medium. I also shared a technique with students, creating a sampler on canvas board, embedding a variety of cool household things into the spackle. Each person had their own piece of canvas board to create their own sampler. I'm going to ask each student to send me pictures of their work so I can share on my Blog. They all created beautiful pieces! That is the thing I just love about teaching - well two favorite things; maybe three :). One is teaching with Kerri! She is amazing and not only offers and shares her artistic talents but a keen sense of humor to keep us smiling and relaxed! Love her!
The other thing I love about teaching is spending time with students and I even hesitate using the word students - these are our friends! I love sharing with them, not only techniques, but all the stuff that we bring with us to the workshops. The icing on the cake is seeing what everyone creates - in their own style and manner; it's just such a reward! That's three right? :)
Our next workshop is called "Bodacious Bottoms" which is going to be held on Sunday, May 15th. It will consist of Kerri and I sharing four background techniques that will bode well with journaling, mixed-media, altered art, etc. More details will follow.
Hope everyone is having a good week. Our temperatures are climbing, now, we are losing the snow with each passing day and yesterday, here, was the first day that I felt a little tad feel of Spring in the air!
Love much! -Marilyn xxoo
I'd like to begin this post with prayers for all who are effected by the earthquake and Tsunami that hit Japan. I was heart sick hearing that on the news first thing this morning.
I continued with my "She Art", this week, and this photo is my most recent work. I created this on an 8x10 canvas. Christy shared a marvelous and brilliant layering technique, with us, for the dresses.
Can you tell I'm hooked on this? It's so hard to stop once I get going; I want to keep adding stuff - even the smallest of detail makes a difference with these. I'm in love!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Have a safe and happy weekend ahead everyone!
Love and peace to all! -Marilyn xxoo
This is an 8x10 canvas with more "She Art". I really am having a ball with this and feel like......where has this been all my life? :)
The exercise for this week was to create a "landscape" background using scrapbook papers, script papers, acrylics, etc. then adding our gal. Every part of this process is incredibly fun and it's hard to know when to stop.
We did get through our last winter storm and it was a doozie! We got a little bit of everything and the icing is always an issue. There are still people, in our area, without power and warming shelters have been set up in those effected areas. My thoughts are with all. We were very fortunate we did not lose power here.
We are expecting a little more snow, tonight into tomorrow, then all rain and rising temperatures which will definitely help with the melting process. We're starting to here high 40's and 50's! Yes! Little by little....inch by inch!
Hope you and yours are all doing well and I wish you a safe and happy weekend ahead.
Love much...................Marilyn xxoo
This is my second 6x12 canvas that I created in line with Christy Tomlinson's online workshop (see previous post).
I decided to add a hat to "my girl" and black boots to symbolize yet another winter storm we received yesterday into today! I'm beginning to think the only thing spring, here, is the spring in my mattress!
Artful thoughts for all of you!
Love and peace to all ....................... Marilyn xxoo
What a blast! I am having such fun with Christy Tomlinson's
"She Art" online workshop!
I found this workshop from visiting Diane's blog - thank you Diane!
This is my piece from our first week! First off; I love the canvas size (6x12) and this incorporates just about everything that I have in my art stash......bring it all out and have a blast! Christy did introduce us to some new fun accessories and she has a cool online shop, too,
I love Christy's process for creating the girl; reminiscent of my paper doll days and, in fact, have even thought of making one of these with a "pop-up" girl and creating interchangeable dresses for them! Hmmmmmmmmmm.
This also enabled me to get out some of my foils that I haven't used and decided to add some to this piece.
I'm going to take some time, this weekend, to create another :)
I wish you all a safe and happy weekend!
Love much - Marilyn xxoo
The background, for this 8x8 page, was one I created quite awhile ago and it was either going to be a nautical piece or also reminded me of gears which led me to the thought of gears going around in our heads. You know right? When we've got so much spinning around in our minds, our heads and hearts start to feel full and we end up on "overload".
I expressed this with a masculine touch which I very rarely do.
I found the image of this man in an old magazine and transferred it onto this background. It was just of his arm and head resting there. I created the rest of his body with vintage ledger paper and some sketching.
This man's expression and body language appeared, to me anyway, that he was lost in thoughts; the gears were going around and around in his head - perhaps worry of a failing company or over his head in debt. He spends his days and nights thinking of letters and numbers - trying to juggle so many things.
Isn't it funny how our art leads us to tell stories and all it takes is an image, words, or whatever we see that triggers this within and then we can express it on canvas or in a journal.
I know I feel over loaded, at times, it can be overwhelming. We all have stuff to deal with and if it wasn't for my ability to express some of these feelings with my art, I don't know what would happen. My head would probably explode! My art does help to clear things out - distract me from the gears working overtime.
How about you?
I also want to thank all who commented and responded to the art samples from the spackle workshop that Kerri and I are offering on the 13th. We have 13 students, so far, and the deadline hasn't passed! We are very excited!
Hope everyone is having a good week. Our temps, here, have improved and there has been some gradual melting of the snow. We still have so much more to go and there will be flooding concerns soon.
Oh no!!!! More gears to turn!
Love and peace to all of you! Marilyn xxoo
A few more pics from the "Let's Get Plastered" workshop that Kerri and I offered last Sunday. There are works of some friends who participated as well as some class shots.
