Blogging Along With Effy!

I’ve been thinking for a while that it was time I started blogging again – its hard to believe that its over a year since I last wrote a post – so when I saw Effy’s invitation to blog along with her during September, I thought it would be the perfect time to re-start my blogging practice!

So I’m kicking off today with some of my digital playing. I began with the cute insect I spotted on the path while walking in our local park. I thought he’d look happier if I added him to a flower, so I removed the path and added him to the pink flower. Then I thought I’d like to play with him as a shape, and created the mandala at the bottom of the picture. I really like how that turned out – what do you think?

Mandala Response

I’d been thinking about the void, and the cycle of the year and the new life germinating in the darkness…

…I picked up some bottles of ready mix paint and a paint scraper, and created this mandala response.

Last Mandala

I’ve just finished the last mandala from Julie Gibbon’s Mandala Magic course

I’d seen these ‘Hamsa’ symbols before, but never knew what they meant. Apparently if the hand is upright it represents protection against the ‘evil eye’; if it is inverted, it represents God’s goodness and blessings. I enjoyed creating it, and I love the bright inktense colours!

Then I put all the mandalas together – as you can see, my favourite is the collage mandala. What’s yours?

I’ve just signed up for Julie’s year long course called Mandala Magic starting in January. I’m really looking forward to it! – check it out.

Creativity Rocks!

Creativity rocks! I’ve been so busy writing my dissertation that I haven’t had time to do anything else. But I took a couple of days off last week and did a bit of catching up!

A couple of weeks ago we had our dissertation tutorials and as part of the tutorial, our group were asked to create an image to represent our finished dissertation. I knew I had to create a doll, but as we didn’t have much time for the art work I knew she had to be simple. So I made a wrapped pipe cleaner doll and called her “All wrapped up with a feather in her cap!” Do you like her?

This image started out as a photograph of the kitchen sink with splashes of water all over it. Then I blended a painting into it – et voilá!

This one is a blend of two paintings created during a recent painting workshop.

I’ve been fascinated by mandalas for a long time as any of you who have followed my blog or flickr stream will know. So when I saw Julie Gibbons was running a five day free course, I just had to sign up and play along. I must say, the course is one of the most comprehensive mandala courses I have ever seen and I am learning so much. Thank you Julie. This is my first mandala created on day two using a pencil drawn grid, neocolour crayons and watercolour pencils.

And I just couldn’t resist playing digital with the mandala after I scanned it!

Kaleidoscope Mandala!

I have been busy painting and working on Rae Missigman’s 21 Secrets 2013 Class, but I have nothing to show yet, so I thought I’d share some digital playing instead. I was catching up with my reading list yesterday and came across this post from iHannah about creating digital kaleidoscope mandalas. Well – I just had to give it a try, didn’t I!

I decided to use my Face Emotions image as the source and had great fun playing. iHannah’s instructions are very helpful. I created four mandalas, but that wasn’t enough for me. After downloading the results I had to play digital blending to take it that little bit further! This is the result.

Thank you iHannah for the inspiration, and thank you SumoPaint for a nifty piece of software.

More Paper Cutting!

I just couldn’t resist doing some more paper cutting today. I drew the design, a kind of flower mandala, cut it out then thought it might look good with some colour. I scanned the cut out to print it, but couldn’t resist playing digital blending with it first…

… I rather like how this one turned out. After that little detour I got down to trying out some colours and decided to go ahead with them.

I created the mandala design on some scrap white printing paper then painted it with Twinkling H2O’s. It looked a bit anaemic on the white so I painted the background with black gesso before sticking the whole thing to black card with lo-tack double sided tape. I love the way the Twinkling H2O’s contrast with the matt black of the gesso.

Playing with Blending!

I’ve been so busy drawing and painting lately that I haven’t had time for playing with digital blending. So today I thought I’d rectify that omission!

I started out with an artwork scan and two photographs. This was the first result. I really like this one, but decided to have a go at making a kaleidoscope style mandala.

This was the result! Which one do you prefer?

Doodling and H2O’s!

Still inspired by Jodi Ohl’s Just do it – Free Art Friday post, I decided to create another stained glass image, but to cover it in doodles in the style of my zentangle drawings. I used a 5″x7″ canvas board to draw it on.

I doodled using a Unipin fine line pen which claims to be ‘water and fade proof’. “Hmmm, we’ll see about that!” … I thought. My record with so called waterproof pens is not very good!

Wow – I’m impressed! Not a smudge or a smear anywhere! These pens are good! I used Twinkling H2O’s to add the colour, so the ink got verrry wet! Now that it’s finished, I think it looks kind of mandala-ish – the way it pulls your eyes in to focus on the heart. It wasn’t intentional, but I rather like it. What do you think?

Blended Mandalas

I just had to play with Wednesday’s Mandala! Do you like my animation?

If you missed it, click your browser refresh button to see the animation repeat. Not brilliant – but not bad for a first attempt!

I started off by inverting the original, then added colour changes and blends to the mixture.

Monochrome Mandala!

After playing with Dion Dior’s technique yesterday I had to have a go at drawing a mandala using it.

This is what I came up with. I drew and coloured the mandala using a white watercolour pencil together with a Sakura pen-touch pen for the highlights/outlines. I’m quite pleased with how it turned out. What do you think?