My Colour Collection

Well here it is at last, all of my colour work as a collection.  There are still a few loose ends to tie up and I have to photograph everything and put it into a powerpoint presentation, which I am slowly doing (it takes hours) but I feel that the last 5 months have been worth it , and that I have actually managed to achieve something after all...

And here is my final design for this module, which I then made into a large collage...

Whole collage

Close up

In detail

In case you are wondering if they are beads that have been stuck on, then the answer is yes they are!  I think there are well over 250 of them, and it took me quite a long time with a pair of tweezers and some PVA glue.  I did it while watching Kirsties Homemade Britain (which I am enjoying so far, has anyone else seen it? Although I think it is a bit of a coincidence that she is famous and wins a lot of the time) so it was not such a chore after all. 

Right, must get on, still loads to be done but I hope you like my final pieces. 

Since Claire and Evie headed back to England (we miss you!) it has been a busy week on the coursework front, and now that the printer cartridge has arrived I have been able to print all the annotations for my portfolio. It is not yet complete but I will show you some pictures of my favourite pages of my portfolio so far.  But before that I wanted to share this one, a picture of the most beautiful, strong, vibrant rainbow that appeared on Friday morning...

 

Rainbows never look and feel as magical in photographs as they do in real life, but I still think it has been captured out quite well considering.  I wonder if it was a sign - a pot of (metaphorical) gold on the way perhaps?  Here's hoping!

Anyway, back to my coursework, here's a picture of all my annotations drying, having been stained with tea;

And here are some pictures of my portfolio...

Again, I feel the photos don't really do justice to the work, it is hard to tell for example that the portfolio is A3 in size.  I shall have to work out the best way to photograph it for submission to my tutor.  Perhaps one page at a time will work better.  Anyway, I couldn't resist including a picture of Freya below, who had lots of fun colouring in Peter Rabbit colouring pages while I was working overtime with the double sided tape.  And yes I kept her well out of reach of all my work!!

Freya gets creative with the crayons

I am also working on a larger collage for my final resolved design, it's a work in progress and as soon as it's done I shall show you a picture.

Tea in the Garden

This weekend has been a busy one as well as a record one - the hottest October on record, at a lovely 28 degrees! So in between drawing and painting, we have been making the most of it and going to the beach and also to a place called St Catherine's Breakwater, where we had a lovely walk along the pier, with spectacular views and clear blue sea. And of course the trip wasn't complete without an icecream.  But let me show you some work that I have been doing in between enjoying the sunshine. More painting and experimenting with colour to start with...

Aztec Rain Deity - painted in acrylics

Quick colour sketches

Using watercolour and pencil and pen

Using acrylics

Experimenting with colour

Today, Monday is supposedly the last day of our mini heatwave, so I thought I would make the most of the sunshine and use it to my advantage.  I have decided that I want to make my portfolio to look 'old' so I have stained each page with tea.  Working in direct sunlight certainly speeded up the drying process as each page needed two coats of tea to produce a decent effect.  It has been a whole day of painting paper in between entertaining Freya but it was very pleasant working in the garden, catching a few rays at the same time!

Tea in the garden

I have had a few more ideas for presentation of my portfolio and also my backup folder, so I will be working on this soon, as well as ploughing on with some more designs.  

A Busy Week and a Big Birthday

I haven't posted for a week or so, not because I have been slacking off, but because I have been so busy working on designs and drawings for my colour module related to the Aztecs. Here are a few pictures of my sketchbook and collages, which I will need to mount into a portolio. 

An Aztec Eagle painted in Acryllics

Painting rearranged and cut up into a collage 

Sketchings

A headdress

An attempt at watercolour (it's difficult!)

In detail

Collage based on the two headed serpent (see previous post)

Sketching of an Aztec God

Acryllic painting of same god

Close up detail - experimenting with colour

More colour experiments

The final design, and my favourite.  Will make into a collage and perhaps a quilt??!

I have also embarked on a few other little projects. The first was to re-organise all my craft things, and I now have two cupboards full of baskets, with (badly!) embroidered labels.  Here is one of the cupboards;

Also, last weekend was a big weekend for me, as I turned the big 3-0.  I was thoroughly spoilt by all my friends and family and I was lucky enough to get some birthday money, which I have put to good use and spend on, you guessed it, lots of craft things.  Here is a little selection of the delights that have been arriving through the post...

More Hungry Caterpillar fabric - I love it!!

And a Christmas one - I couldn't resist

The DVD I have wanted for ages - I watched it online, so inspirational

And finally, I have been making a curtain for the utility room, as it is a very boring, functional room and I thought it needed brightening up.  It is still a work in progress but I did quickly make a runner for the top of the tumble dryer in the same fabric...

Watch this space for the curtain!  Well I think that's enough for one post, but I will post again soon with details of a gorgeous crafty birthday gift that I recieved from a special friend of mine...

A Colourful Display

I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had actually done much more reasearch on colour back in the UK before we moved to Jersey than I remembered.  Which left me with a problem; the over-sized leaflets that I planned to use weren't going to be big enough.  So I went back to my primary school teacher roots and decided to produce a large display of all my colour theory, after all, colour is a visual thing and what better way to display it than on large boards.  I had a feeling one board wouldn't be enough so good job I bought two when I was in the shop, and I have managed to fill them both...

I also made a few sneaky purchases on ebay last week, and they have now finally arrived...I am loving them all in equal measure!  I plan to make a little 'story sack' for Freya of the Very Hungry Caterpillar as she has the book and the toy etc.  Although this project is going to have to go on the back burner I think while I am working flat out on my coursework.

My ebay purchases

Will post again soon with my latest work, I am doing some experimenting with colour, and I am also re-organising my craft cupboards (I have more cupboards now that we have moved, I am taking over the utility room!) so I will post photos when my re-organisation is complete.  So far it's looking good!

Aztec Artifacts

I am still waiting for my postcards of Aztec Artifacts to arrive but in the meantime I had a bit of a brainwave and found some of the same images on the internet, so I was able to do some preparatory art work from these instead.  In some ways this is even better because I have found some close up images, enabling me to see even more detail. 

Anyway, I thought I would start with an Aztec mosaic of a two headed serpent. I did some initial sketches, then decided to do a detailed picture of one of of the heads, using a black fine liner and coloured pens. I really loved the bright aqua marine colours and the intricacy of the mosaic work and so did my best to replicate it. Here are a few pictures of my progress: 

The photograph of the serpent that I used

I drew the serpent and added the mosaic detail section by section

I used a black fine liner for the outline

The finished picture

As you can imagine it took quite a long time to colour each mosaic tile individually, but it was quite theraputic!  And I nearly had a disaster when I coloured the background, because I had half an eye on the telly at the same time and nearly coloured over the serpent's top tooth!  Luckily I narrowly avoided disaster and told myself to concentrate on the job in hand.  Overall I am quite pleased with the result and I think that felt tips pens make it quite bold and striking.  (I tested out coloured pencils but they looked too washed out.) 

So next I am going to continue drawing and sketching the artifacts and then take them forward and come up with some designs and experiment with colour.  I also hope to finish my colour theory work very soon; just waiting for Pete to do some sneaky colour printing for me at work.  

Slow Progress

In the last few weeks progress has been very slow, as there has been a lot going on with one thing and another, so there has not been a lot of time to get my head down and focus.  However, I did manage to get all my research on colour complete, but it is still sitting on the computer because I am undecided how to present it.  At first I was thinking of putting it in my portfolio, but then I had the idea to make a larger, seperate concertina booklet (like the Bridget Riley one but bigger).  I think I am going to go with this idea, and have a yellow booklet, because the portfolio is red, and the BR book blue so then as a collection it will be the primary colours, relating to the theme of colour perfectly.  I have also had the idea to make all my work in the portfolio look old, (my theme is the Aztecs) by staining everything with a tea bag, but this would not really be appropriate for the colour theory work.  So many ideas, now I need to exectute them.   And yes, the weekly plan has gone completely out of the window!!  

All About Bridget Riley

For each module you have to study an artist that relates to the theme, and for me an obvious choice for the colour module was Bridget Riley, who has produced some wonderfully striking works with bold colours.  I attended an exhibition of her work at the National Gallery just a few months ago with this module in mind (Bridget Riley; Paintings and Related work) which was really inspirational and it has certainly made her works more 'real' and made researching her a lot more interesting.

I wanted to come up with a different and slighly more inventive way of presenting my work about an artist, rather than the usual couple of pages in a portfolio.  So I decided to create a consertina booklet.  (I like to make things difficult for myself!)  When I started out I had a plan of how I wanted it to look but I was a bit unsure if I was going to be able to put it into practice, and create it to a standard that I thought was good enough for C and G.    After a lot of fussing around with text size, alignment, etc. and wasting far more paper than I care to admit, I am pleased with the final result.  So here it is...

The Front - with a 'band' to hold it all together made from a copy of one of  BR's Paintings

The whole 9 yards (well almost!)

Close up of the first half 

And Close up of the second

So all in all it's not bad for a couple of days work (including looking after Freya, of course) and I am pleased that the presentation is a bit different. 

In relation to my timetable, I am already slipping a little behind but it is certainly useful to have a plan of work so that I know what to focus on next.  Which this time is finalising my research on colour, which sounds fun but it is such a HUGE topic!  Hard to narrow it down but I think I am getting there!