All posts tagged: Clare Etheridge

Sketchbooks

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I have been working and practicing in my sketchbooks a lot more this year. While I am still in love with mixed media and art journal type pages, I am really trying to improve my sketching, in an actual drawing type way! I have signed up for some classes, a couple I have completed and some (ok many) are in process and some (ok too many) are waiting to be started. Are you a class taker? Do you feel they benefit your skill building? I find that some do and some don’t. I particularly enjoy classes which are vague enough to let you run with your style and preferences and provide ideas and inspiration. Classes I try to avoid (no always successfully) are the ones where you end up with a very similar body or piece of work to everyone else in the class including the teacher. One of my favourite ways of working and learning in my sketchbook is the weekly (Friday at various times) art club held on Instagram live by The Good …

Get Messy Season of Seasons week 7

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This week I have embraced more collage in my Get Messy Season of Seasons journal and I have been messing about with spray paint, lace and doilies as I have been creating along with Caylee and Lauren in the Creative Bug daily practice classroom. I bought a pile of lacy doilies and vintage trimmings at an estate sale this weekend so I could wait to get printing and stenciling with them. Happy Thursday x  

Get Messy Art Journal. Season of Connections week six.

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The last week of another fab season of Get Messy Art Journal rolls around and I have nearly filled my handmade journal, just a few pages to complete or finish. This week I used lots of collage elements which I don’t usually use so that was good to try, I also got inspired by a page of splatters and I changed the cover of my journal from a giant sunflower to plain brown paper.  Much as I love the sunflower (and it will house a new sketchbook), it just was not sitting with the sketchbook I am creating inside it. The beauty of making your own journal! This is some of the pile of collage materials I gathered together. As the page developed I organically began to incorporate the fold outs and the pages either side into the spread. In the end I had covered four pages with various flaps! Now I want to start this process at the beginning of a sketchbook with a variety of paper and page sizes and incorporate each page …

Get Messy Season of Connections. Week 2.

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I have been exploring connections of all kinds in my art journal this past two weeks since the Season of Connections started over at Get Messy. Once I started thinking about it, connections are everywhere, physical and abstract. I have a strong connection to nature, so there is usually a botanical theme to my journal somewhere.  It may be flower shapes or organic leaves or a landscape or two. So far in this journal I have printed leaves with my gelli plate onto dry wax paper and stuck them in, I have stitched leaves and painted them with watered down sumi ink. A completely random connection appeared when I printed a leave on a page from an old dictionary and when I tore it up to stick down, I noticed that I had printed on a page which had ‘folk dance’ at the top. This is an immediate connection to my maternal grandparents who used to take me folk dancing when I was a kid.  I loved it and have very fond memories of folk …

Weekly Photos 2017. 39/52

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1. One of the first pages in my new art journal. Just the beginning, or is it done?  We shall see if I add any more to it.  I think I will. 2. I found a fabulous black acorn in the woods, there are hundreds of acorns on the woodland floor but only this black one. 3. Teeny tiny white mushrooms growing precariously on a thin twig. 4. A dead tree against a white wall, I like the shapes! 5. We went digging in the woods this weekend and found a couple of marbles (hurrah!) and half a bowl. Happy Monday x SaveSave

Gelli Plate Leaf Prints.

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While out walking the dog today I saw and snatched some fern leaves which I brought home to use with my gelli plate and the ever faithful Paynes Grey acrylic paint. While I was at it, I popped across the road from my house and snipped some frothy grass which I thought would print well too. I used my large rectangle gelli plate and my small circle to pull prints of the outlines of the leaves as well as prints of the details of the leaves. I always start with a layer of paint then I put down the leaf.  To get the reverse silhouette print I press down the paper and smooth it out as carefully but as firmly as possible to get as much outline as I can. Once the paper is pulled off, I remove the leaf and press down a fresh piece of paper to get the detail print of the leaf left on the plate. If there is enough paint left on the leaf itself I press it onto the …

Art Marks 30 Day Summer Challenge.

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I finished this challenge a week ago and I really liked filling up my little paperback sketchbook which I made from a vintage paper back book cover and added different papers to the inside. This is the full mini sketchbook I used solely for this project.  The 30 Days of mark making challenge was hosted by Rae Missigman. Here is the second half of my 30 day journey, find the first half here. Day 12. Blotted. I don’t even know what prompt this was for, but I like it!! Day 13 Stippled. Day 14 Fluid. Day 15 Varied. Day 16 and 17 Mirrored and Dripped. Day 18 and 19 Many and Scattered. Day 20-21 Scratched and collaged. Day 22 Torn. Day 23 Lettered. Day 24 Remnants. Day 25 Found. Day 26, 27, 28 Tattered, collected and metallic (can you tell the end of the book was near!) Day 29 and 30 Stitched and closed, I stitched a ribbon around the whole book to close it. Are you participating in any challenges? Monthly? Yearly? Weekly? Do …

Get Messy Season of Colour/Color Week 5

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This season is flying by and has been one of my favorites which I think may be because I made my own sketchbook from paper bags and an old giant atlas and I have tried to not put any pressure on myself with any of the pages. This has sometimes worked and not always worked if I am honest. I don’t want a half full book, so I am working to fill it and I don’t want to turn over a page I don’t like without finishing it (I would totally do this in a bought sketchbook).  This has meant that on more than one occasion I have had to slog through a page which didn’t start at all well and keep working on it until it transforms. I am happy to say that I have ended up with successful pages in my eyes. I have been enjoying the prompts and the tutorials provided by the Get Messy team this season, to the extent that I haven’t done nearly as much as I have been …