New paintings and regular art updates.
You can make a collage with almost anything. If it can be glued you can use it. You can also colour match things like felt pens with coloured paper to extend the image. I also add black pen to mimic the patches of black monoprint and shade the picture more. Experiment, learn, enjoy art.
sketching using ArtRage, an app I have on my phone. This was quite hard to do because I’m not quite used to the app yet for straight drawing. It’s getting the colours to blend without them being too pale. I want to use digital art like pencil and paint.
I decided to use bits of post-it notes and monoprint and combine them in a tangle of colours. Do they link up with each other? It is a representation of my MA land. When you work on a college course there is so much to absorb and take in. Lots of information that needs to cross the book/ brain barrier via your eyes. The ever expanding reading list tries to force you to take in knowledge, but it’s not always easy to sift the relevant from the irrelevant. The clarity of words is not always there. I try to write clearly when I’m blogging, but if you have to take a dictionary with you when you try and read a piece of information, then you have to ask whether the author is being elitist.
Other problems with online courses are the lack of face to face contact. You can try and have zoom meetings or their equivalent. But it does feel sometimes like you are working in a vacuum. My desk is tiny, my pc and keyboard and screen take up about 75% of the space. It’s hard to find enough space to work in. My sketchbooks are getting smaller in proportion to the increasing number of them. So much drawing over the last year!
What are they all for WordPress? I know you are holding some training sessions. But I don’t have time for them. I don’t need an immersive experience, I want to point and press!
I’m still coming to terms with the loss of the classic editor and all I do now is press enter and start another block. The one thing I do like is more control over image sizes, but how do I set whether an image is right, left or centre of the page…?
I never learnt type setting, I don’t know what to do when I can type columns? I’m interested in getting my thoughts out, not how to place them on a page. Yes it might look scrappy, but I’m not fussed….
Today was hard. One of our college presentations has to have our illustrations in a PowerPoint. But my computer was playing up and instead of being able to use the tabs at the top of the page they were greyed out. So I started a new presentation, copied and pasted the work over… Then I had a break for lunch, and the new powerpoint would not work, but the old one would! So I shifted all the new work over and continued. I just finished it. I don’t think it’s well presented. PowerPoint gives you design options so each page looks good, but together it’s a bit of a mush mash.
I have got to finish off another piece of work and hand both in this week so I might be missing for a few days.
I’m not sure I’m keen on curved edges to my photos. It does look interesting but with the new WordPress block editor I’m not sure if you can move the shape around and change where the image is centered. I’ll keep on playing with it to learn how it works…
I started with all good intentions this morning and wrote about 500 words of a 4000 word project I’ve got to do for my illustration course. But then things got in the way. We had an avalanche of carrier bags (my hubby buys them all the time). I put them by the washing machine but today they all slid down onto the floor. Cue a lot of folding and an offer to take them to the local food bank.
Then the cat decided she wanted a cuddle, she jumped up on the keyboard and knocked me out of the page I was on.
Hubby wanted to chat… Shuddup! Then Microsoft decided it wanted me to verify who I was before it would let me back into Word? What, how do you do that. I was halfway through a paragraph, had gone to have something to eat and came back to that!
Ugh!
Not a good photo, but this was me drawing different marks as part of a mark making workshop.
It was supposed to be in pencil but all I had was a blue pencil crayon. I also tried rubbing over the top of an embossed tin. You had to come up with as many different marks as you coukd in a five minute period. It gets your mind working… Good for creativity.
Press the button? Or not!
Hubby was being keen about helping with the house as I’m not feeling very well. This discussion happened when I asked him to put the washing machine on spin….
Set the dial to Spin and drain, number 15.
He did it fine.
Now press the on button.
I was watching from the living room and saw and heard the musical notes it plays when it’s switched on. Now press the start button….. Musical notes indicating he’d switched the washing machine off..
No, press the on switch again, then press the start button, it’s on this side of the dial…
He switched it on again, then pressed the little screen that shows you what program the machine is on… So I shouted, not that one, the button..
He switched the machine off again! No don’t do that! By then I was getting frustrated, but after forty years together he should be able to switch a Washing machine on.
Leave it switched on then press the button on this side of the dial!
Exasperated, I watched as he switched it on and went to move the dial…. This side I called… He went to press another button that allows you to change spin speeds or the temperature. NO! NOT THAT ONE! I really shouted this time. The one on this side of the dial BELOW the one you are pressing….
Clunk, whirrr…. SPIN!
HOORAY!
This is a sketcher free drawing that I did a couple of years ago. I mirrored it in my layout app. I wish I could remember how I did it. But when you don’t practice using things for a while you forget. The ap is on my tablet, but I don’t use it very often at the moment. I need to get my act together…
Mallaband-Brown