Bali Journal

 

Barking Gecko Bali Journal, Gouache and inks

I have been working hard this weekend to finish up a lot of the pictures that I started in my Bali Journal.  I know that once I move onto other things I will never go back and complete them.  So here you are, be ready for lots in this post.

Just to get you back into the mood here are a few pictures of where I was working.

My villa at Hurry Slowly Bingin

My studio at Bingin

View from my villa Bingin

Working with the girls

The Barking Gecko and the Frog, where both visitors to my little villa, the gecko I only heard and he was extremely loud.  I thought geckos were small but these were a medium sized lizards and did in fact bark a bit like a dog.  The frog was a visitor to my open bathroom, but he didn’t like sharing and would quickly move on, which suited both of us.

Frog Bali Journal Gouache and Ink

The Manatee picture is a favourite, it combined a number of memorable images.  Manatees would swim out with the surfers and Angus, the husband of Jane who ran the course, would go out surfing and tell us of the manatees he would meet.  Also every evening the local fishing boats would stream out of the port and go past our cliff top perch, then at dusk they would light their lights and fish just off shore.  It was like another city of twinkling lights out in the ocean.

Manatee sleeping, Gouache, water soluble crayons and inks,

The dragon flys would zoom past as we were working in the garden, or would come and visit me in the villa.  This one is resting just by the hut by the pool looking over the cliff to the sea.

Dragon fly Bali Journal Acrylic and ink

The next two are a double page spread and they are the offerings that would appear each day in my villa.  The Dupa is the Balinese offerings to the gods which are seen everywhere in Bali and help to bring good luck to the occupant and ward against evil.  The other was the little flower arrangements that the staff would do each day for me.  Such a lovely tradition.

Bali Offering, Water soluble crayons, ink etc

Offering 2 Bali Journal

I still have a few more pages to finish and I will be adding some of the photos to the spare pages and I hope to have another lovely keepsake of my trip.

Karen

 

Hanging out with the mixed media girls

It has been a busy couple of days as I started the course with Jane Davenport who is a mixed media, journal artist.  There are fourteen of us here all drawing away in this little piece of paradise.

Umbrella Bali Journal Page

The mixed media journalling is a whole different world for me and their process is completely different to mine.  They do not plan their work, just go where the page tells them, they work from their imaginations not from real life and they just lay done colour, papers, stencils on a page to start the journal without worrying what the picture will be.  Also this group do faces, as anyone who follows this blog will know, I rarely do faces.  I am used to planning a drawing, doing sketches and working from real life or photo references.  Wasn’t I out of my comfort zone on the first day as we merrily slapped down colours and papers. I would be alright for a moment until I started to think about what I wanted to draw and then I would worry that I didn’t have a background that would work.  Let go Karen, let go!

Bali Journal Page Background

Bali Journal Page Background

Anyway I got there and have managed to get most of my pages filled with a background.  The great thing about these girls is they will use every different media under the sun in one picture, background using a scrape booking paper, on it will go a printmaking technique, then acrylic, then some water colour, ink paint pens and pencils.  They know so much about all the different mediums it is inspiring to watch them work.

Unfinished Morning Offering Bali Journal Page  Every morning a offering (canang) is placed at my door with a stick on incense (dupa).

I have only finished on page (Umbrella at the top), but I will show you where I am up to in a couple of other pages.  I am also learning to work on a number of different pages at a time and not to worry if one doesn’t get finished.

Unfinished Manatee Page Bali Journal   At the top I have drawn the fishing boats that go past every morning and evening and use their lights to attract their catch.  The manatee swim with the surfers.

Working on these different backgrounds has been so much fun, and it is what I most wanted to get out of this courses, apart from the pleasure of working with so many other lovely like minded people.

Bali Girl Bali Journal Page

 

A Question of Style

Hydrangea 2

I have been pondering on what my style is and what is style and how important is it.

It has been a very busy few weeks, but so interesting.  I have been joining in the fun of my class with the Journalling Girls at Mermaid Circus which has been a lot of fun.  There have been loads of inspirational videos to download for this on-line course and a Facebook group where the members of the group have been posting examples of their work.  The Melbourne members of the group even got together to have a catch up in person and some art supply shopping.

While journalling is not something that I  usually do, (though I did have my journal for my trip to France last year.  Big sigh, to think I was in Sancerre this time last year) I have found this course really fascinating and insightful in other ways.

Sancerre

One of the best things from the course is when Jane Davenport and Teesha Moore, both spoke about style, and how you create your own style.  When I was doing art in high school and uni in the early eighties my lecturers where always on us to create meaningful art and develop a style.  While many of my fellow students had robust political ideas which influenced their art, I did not and began to feel that my art was not serious or worthy because of it and it really stifled me in what I did.  I also wanted to try lots of different kinds of art work and medium and felt because I varied it so much that I could not develop a style of work.  Although I worked my way through these issues they were still in the back of mind.

Both Jane and Teesha tell their students don’t worry about style, you naturally have a style and it will always come out, especially when you let go and just create.  How you make marks, the colour that you choose and the mediums that you use are all part of your style and you cannot but have a style when making these decisions.  Such a simple insight was so liberating for me, I knew that I had developed a style, but still the old ghosts hang around from the past to haunt you, but this one I have now let go and I feel freer in my art practice which can only be good.

So you never know what you are going to learn about when you do a course, but you always learn something and it just may not be what you thought.  Of course when I go back through my different art work that I have posted to this blog, maybe it is more than one style, and that is also ok.

Karen

My Relief Printing course has started and I will share some of the work I am doing in that next week.

Mermaid Circus Week 1

Mermaid Circus Cover

I have started on my on-line course with Jane Davenport and Teesha Moore and am erecting my big top.  So much fun and a really interesting group of people chatting away on its  Facebook group.  Really interesting to see what people are doing.  There are many different skill levels and just as many different styles and interpretations.

Our first assignment is to make a shaped art book and do collage mermaids or other creatures in it.  Although I loved the mermaid shaped pages, I did not want to do that many mermaids or that many drawings, I would never get the time or energy to fill it.  So I decided to do a circus tent cover for my Art Book and do fairly regular shaped pages so that i could do a variety of things in it.  I wanted to use the tent more literally and make the front cover where you walk in and then show the inside of the big top inside with the pages turning to show different acts.  I have set up a pinterest site with all these vintage circus photos which provided such great inspiration.

Detail of Top of Circus tent

I also wanted to do some layering of paper cutouts to give it a more 3D effect, something I have been toying with in the back of my mind for my other work.  This course gives me a great chance to try out new techniques and some different themes,

So these are the steps I took to do the front cover.

Sketches

I sketched a number of tents on scrap paper and did a mock up of the tent and sketched it out onto my good paper.

Underpainting

I then used acrylic paints to fill in the main colours and paint the bits I wanted to stick on.

Colour Pencil and Outline

Then I went over with my colour pencils to give it depth, I only used three colours for this as I did not want to take too long.  A light (a couple of shades lighter than the paint), medium (some shade as the paint) and a dark ( a couple of shades darker than the paint).  After I had roughly coloured them in I went over them with the white pencil to blend them in, and knock them back so they were not too bright.

Sign

Next came the black pen to do the outline, this highlights the shapes and brings it all together and I just like outlines, it gives my work a more graphic look.

The sign came next not sure if I am happy with this or not, but up it went, you just can’t agonise over things too much.

Detail of Seaweed and sea creatures

Looking at it I decided it need some more lift and put in the gold dots.  Then having another look I decided the tent was too plain and added the seaweed and the fish etc.

So that is how it was created, it will change before the end as I continue to work on the rest of it, but I will keep you updated.

Karen

Putting some more fun back into my art – Mermaid Circus

Jane Davenports Mermaids

 

Mermaid Circus with Jane Davenport and Teesha Moore

On Monday I start an on-line art course, I am not really sure what I will be doing, but it will involve circus, mermaids and loads of colour, but most of all fun.  I have been a fan of Jane Davenport for a while, she is so much fun and she really has a lovely way of getting people excited by art.  (See earlier post when I bought art supplies from her) I have never done a course with her before but I have watched many of her YouTube clips and they have such energy and joy about them I find them inspirational.

As you can probably tell by my lack of posts my energy has been down this last couple of weeks and I have been bogged down with thoughts of framing and exhibiting my work, I decided to do this course, just have some fun and see where the journey takes me.

Teesha Moore’s Mermaids

I am also interested in these on-line courses and how well they work.  Jane has done many of these courses and this one is with Teesha Moore a very talented American artist.  So although journaling as such is not my normal style, what the heck lets just have fun!!!!!

Karen