Let me tell you what 365 Days of Art is...
It's all about inspiration and a love of creating. I create five pieces of art a week, one of which I'll show you how to do, this week Autumn leaves.
Whoa there where the hell have you been young lady? Weeks without any art at all, explain yourself.
I had some life shit take over, nothing horrible, in fact rather the opposite. I've just had my debut book, Sour Fruit published and since I'm only one lady I had to try and focus on that. I hope you can forgive me. Let me try and make up to by knocking it out the park, art-wise?
Well ok... best be good.
Day 86
Task; Draw a geometric shape.
Sometimes you scrape and scratch and generally hurt yourself trying to make a piece of art work and then sometimes it's as easy drifting off on a Sunday afternoon, fat from the metric ton of roasties you inhaled at dinner. After a couple of false starts with my choice of animal, (a peacock that looked like a mauled turkey) my owl came together in an accidental masterstroke of pattern and shape. I'm not usually a fan of geometric stuff, too much precision for my er... more excitable style but mixing the sharp form of the animal with the more organic patterns just seemed to work.
Day 87
Task; Using coloured paper, cut out letters to form a word, name or phrase.
I might have teeny-tiny hardly at all deviated from the task, slightly. Ok you got me, I went way off the reservation with this one, although the artwork does have words in it, I went big. Drawing in:
pen (the features),
oil pastels (the hair),
watercolours (the tear)
and colour pencils for the eyes.
Her name is Rhea, and she's one of the characters from my book, (Sour Fruit) she has an 'upgrade' that allows her to change the colour of her hair on a whim and in seconds. Because sometimes I dream of a world where when I write it, it will come. Just the fun stuff though not the parts were Britain wades through shit and hate and then more shit. (That was the blurb I wanted.)
Day 88
Task; Calligraphy.
You might have noticed I'm partiality to a creative insults or two, so for my calligraphy practice I thought I'd go with something a bit British, a bit cheeky, but nothing you couldn't fling around a family reunion. The wonderfully brassy; numpty.
Day 89
Task: Colour in the rain.
A Gabrielle song title if ever I heard of one.
I went rainbows because rainbows yeah?
Day 90
Task: Paint Leaves.
The changing of the leaves is my favourite season (because of cool crisp days and cultivating my leg jungle, is acceptable) and so as it gets hotter and hotter, it feels apt to remissness and get the watercolours and blend. Come forth, burnt yellow, rusty reds, and ambers, we must multiply. Let me show you.
Pencil Case Supplies
Watercolour paper A pencil
Browns, deep reds and yellow watercolours
A paintbrush
A brown colouring pencil
Stage 1
This craft needs a side of hot chocolate and a fuck-ton of marshmallows, once you've got those essentials, get yourself a nice little space and lay your paper out on a flat surface. Very lightly draw your leaf shape in pencil*, think fairy finger light, not windmilling in. You don't want the pencil showing through the paint. *I've drawn the shape in ink, so you can see clearly the outline... don't do this unless you want a black outline.
Stage 2
Adding colour. Get yourself a glass of water, a wad of tissue paper (for mistakes), your brush and pull out those rich sepia colours. If you look closely at the leaf below can you see how the paints almost feather into each other? We create that effect by getting damp under the collar. Dampen the whole leaf and then lightly blob different paint colours into various areas, while everything is still fluid pull the paint around with your brush.
Stage 3
Add detail, I went abstract in my detailing, because A I like it and B it's easier. I used rounded lines, but you could go for dots, stripes, stars, lettering. Think outside the box or in this case leaf.
Ideas for your beautiful creation.
A Book Mark. Write poetry on the leaf and frame it. Make a whole bunch and create a wreath. Or take your bunch and make a Autumn leaf crown for the woodland fairy in your life. Gift tag. Turn it into a leaf person. (Googly eyes required.)
That's it folks
... Join me next week when I play around with clouds, grids and birds.
If you can't wait until next week for more art, here is where it all began. Week 1.
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