Pink Bird Studio

Colour Lovers’ Challenge - Part 2

Today I’m sharing the remaining half of the Colour Lovers’ Challenge from Jodi Ohl

The prompt for Day 16 was Sad

Day 17 was Candy, which I turned into a colour mixing exercise.  I think a certain round candy’s slogan is “Taste the Rainbow” but I have to say I prefer the other one where you eat the red ones last.  :)

Day 18 we were supposed to express Energy & Movement

And Day 19 was all about Ice Cream

Day 20 was Water / Ocean - I think there’s a storm brewing on my water!

Day 21 was Earth

Day 22 was Winter, and even though we rarely get snow here, I always associate snow with winter.

Day 23 was Analogous Colours - I chose Cadmium Red and Cadmium Orange, mixing Red/Orange with the two colours. And of course I threw in some black ink for contrast.

The next day (24) had me thinking of the holidays with the theme of Red and Green

Day 25 we were challenged to depict Excitement  and I ask the rhetorical question - what’s more exciting than Red and Teal (answer nothing).

For Day 26 the prompt was Favourite Colour - It has to be teal (with red).

Day 27 was about contrast.  I chose the high-contrast colours of cadmium chartreuse and fluorescent magenta (plus black and white).  Jody mentioned in her post that she also thinks of other types of contrast (thick lines versus thin, big shapes vs small, etc.) which I thought was a very interesting take on the theme.

Day 28’s prompt was apple / orange / pear / lemon.  Some people chose one or two of the colours - I chose all four and was surprised how much I liked the combination as these are not necessarily colours I would think of using together all at once.

Day 20 was Clouds / Sunset or Sunrise (I’ll take sunset any day thank you).

And last but certainly not least, day 30 was Artist’s Choice.  I’m sure you can guess my combination features teal, turquoise and red.  :)

Thanks so much for joining me today!  I hope you enjoyed these colour explorations.  I certainly enjoyed the challenge.  

Colour Lovers Challenge

Since September 15 I’ve been participating in the Colour Lovers’ Challenge from Jodi Ohl   Each day is another colour or colour combination, and the challenge runs until October 14.  I’ll post the first half of the challenge today, and the rest next week.

I’m working each day in my square art journal.

First up was Summer Vibes.  I chose a bright summer palette and thought this looked like a summer fair - do you see it too?  

Next up was teal and orange - right in my colour zone!

Day 3 was Cool - I chose Payne’s Grey as the basis for this one.

Day 4 was Black and White, and I made two pages.  I wasn’t very happy with my ikebana-themed page.

So I also did an abstract.

Day 5 we were asked to express Anger or Hurt.

Day 6 was Soft and Cuddly - ok… we are officially out of my comfort zone!  I thought I’d use soft colours, and I used a dry brush to try to represent ‘cuddly’?  

Day 7 was our favourite colour palette - phew!  Back in the zone.  Teal, turquoise and red.

Next on day 8 was Warm.

Day 9 was Autumn - timely.

Day 10 was Happiness, and instead of trying to think of “happy” colours, I painted the colours and shapes that make me happy.

Day 11 was Neutral - something I struggle with, but always admire when done well.

Day 12 was Vibrant

Day 13 was Spring

Day 14 was Forest / Mountains / Grass - I went a lot more literal than I usually do.

And day 15, where we’ll leave off for today was Flowers.

Thank you so much for joining me today.  I hope you’ve enjoyed my response to this fun challenge.  I will be back next Sunday with the rest of the challenge.

 

 

Februllage Update

This year I went all in on the Februllage challenge on Instagram - wow what fun!  even though I am not one to follow prompts, I did each one.

I started out in a small journal - the first prompt was Butterflies:

Day two was Text - I didn’t feel like I’d hit my stride yet, and I wasn’t really feeling the small journal.

Day 3’s prompt was Triangle.  I expanded into a 10” square kraft journal - phew!  Room to play.  Now we’re getting somewhere.

The next day was Joy.  I made this page based on that platitude “choose joy”.  This woman is choosing which smile to paste on since that seems to be important to people - (although with a mask on, no one can tell if I’m smiling or not - just saying).

Next up was Windows (as in the eyes are...)

Then we had Jungle.  

At this point I’ve lost track of which day was which so - in no particular order...

Street.

Bug

Leaves

Aeroplane 

 

Thread - yes I stitched!

Sea - (anyone else reminded of The Lion King?).

Spooky

Zebra - by far my most popular piece for this challenge!

Feather

Canary (did you know the Goldfinch is also known as a wild canary? - I didn’t, but now we both do).

Prison

Chair

Paint

Ideal - I really struggled with this one so I just made something pretty.

This one was Shout - I’ve always found seagulls to be a bit shouty.  I still like them though.

Then things got a little crazy... Meet Disco.  I can’t even tell you how long I spent gluing all these silver dots.  Sure I have silver paint and silver paint pens, but this is a collage challenge!

The next prompt was Book.  So instead of making a collage featuring books, I made a book of collages.  Actually it’s an 8-page zine format.  For the collages I did a mash-up on each page of more than one prompt from the challenge. Here it is before it gets folded up.

Left page - spooky / window

Right page - Ocean, aeroplane, triangle

Left page - shout, thread

Right page - Bug, Rose (Wait you say - I didn’t see any roses!  Some of these prompts are later)

Left page (which is really back cover when folded) - Zebra, Jungle

Right page (which is really front cover when folded) - Spooky, Butterfly

Left page - Leaves, Text

Right page - Feather, House

This one was Teacup (once you’ve put a creepy doll in a window you want to keep doing it).

This was Close - can you believe people used to pack in like sardines just over a year ago at sporting events and concerts etc.?! these two are floating above the crowd in their bubble.

More craziness ensued for the prompt Hair.  Gluing paper hair is very time-consuming, but also quite rewarding. 

Next was Rose.

And the last prompt was House.  I thought about doing something 3D but went with an Alice theme.

Last but not least - quite a lot of the artists who participated in the challenge made a special thank you collage to post on March 1 to thank the hosts.  Here’s mine:

So thank you for joining me today on this look back to the Februllage challenge - it was a blast and I saw so many amazing art pieces.  

Stay safe out there!  

Happy New Year

Well, it’s been a long time since I made a “regular” post here.  I am posting daily on Instagram though, so feel free to find me over there any time!

Here are some mixed media squares.  

And some small 10” square paintings.

And a few art journal pages...

That’s enough for one day - I’ll post more catch up shots in the next few weeks.  Happy New Year, and thanks for your visit!  

Week in Review

As I mentioned last week, Monday was a holiday and I managed to finish a couple of paintings.

This first one is called Jardin Moderne.  It’s 24” square

 

The next one is called Rearview Mirror.  It’s 30” square

I carried on with my daily square collages:

I worked on a small journal.

And I did some doodling on chipboard.  I have some grey tone mixed media paper and I may do some more of these “on purpose” because I really like the black on grey.  I did some more gelli prints on black and the doodles are sitting on one of my latest papers.

Thanks so much for joining me today.  I hope you have a great week, and stay safe.  

Week in Review

Well, it’s been an exciting week.  ICAD wrapped up, I had four paintings accepted for a show at the Federation Gallery in Vancouver (3 will be in the gallery and online, and 1 will be online only), and I found out that one of my collages was accepted for an upcoming book on collage.  Wow!

let’s start with the end of 2020 ICAD.

 

That was a wrap for this year.  I made my “heading” card at the end this year:

This is what they look like all in one place (61 + 9 bonus cards).

I decided to keep the momentum going - I’m going to make a square collage each day of August.  Here are the first two.

Speaking of collage - I finished up the challenge of tiny collages with five final entries - each around 2” square:

I also said goodbye to my latest submission to The Sketchbook Project.  My favourite contribution so far (this is number 11 for me).

Front cover:

Inside front cover:

Final spreads:

And inside back cover:

That’s a wrap.  I have a couple more things that I’ve done today but I will keep them for next week.  I’m a day late posting this.  It’s a civic holiday here so my days are all mixed up.  Thanks so much for joining me today - stay safe!

Final Catch-up post - 2 more weeks in review

Phew!  I am going to try to keep up better in the future.  This catching up has been a lot of work!

Let’s start off with the last two weeks of the Index Card A Day Challenge (aka ICAD):

18 is probably one of my favourites.  I love the background, but mostly I like the woman looking out over the building - kind of like we are all doing at the moment as we start to venture out a bit more, which is why I thought the capture “inching forward” went well with the card.

And here’s another COVID-type card.  Don’t you think a fashionable space helmet would be a great idea right about now?

This one has a subtitle: sometimes Mr. Peanut forgets how recognizable he is.  I crack myself up.  

Yes, I did cut out images from stamps...

The birds in the next two cards almost hit the recycling bin.  You see they were originally from pairs of birds, and so their tales were obscured by their mates.  As I went to toss them in the paper recycling I stopped and thought - what if I just replaced their tails!?

And finally, we reach today’s card, 28.  We’re almost 1/2 way through ICAD already!

Now it’s time to catch up on the 100 day project, which will wrap up in a couple of weeks.

Other things I’ve been doing:

A bunch of tiny (2” or under) collages for an online challenge:

Some random postcards:

And last but not least, a journal page.

Thank you so much for joining me today while I got caught up.  Hopefully as of next week we’ll go back to weekly posts that will be a bit less daunting!

Stay safe.  

Catching up - x Weeks in Review

Well, I didn’t realize I was this far behind!  The last “week in review post I made was on May 3, and here it is June 7.  I don’t want to make one giant post, so I think I’ll try to do a couple of weeks at a time until I’m caught up.  I’m participating in the 100 day project, and now the Index Card a Day Challenge has started, so I’m making at least two pieces a day.  Add painting and journalling and you can imagine that catching up is going to be a big job.  So let’s get started:

Here are a couple of weeks of the 100-day project, starting where we left off:

Now I’ll fill in some of the other activities from the same period.

Lots of mixed media / collage happening here.  Some are postcards, one was  birthday card and some are just for fun.

A little abstract of Venice for a local art contest.

And some art journalling.  I’m working on a new journal that includes a lot of interactive pages.  This is the opening page, that invites you to “come in”...

And when you open the “doors”, you find this lovely.

Last, but not least, an altered index card as an ICAD warm-up.

Thanks so much for joining me today.  I hope you are staying safe as the world adjusts to our “new normal”.  Take care! 

Week in Review

This week I continued on with the 100 day project - hard to believe we’ve reached day 27 already.

I finished the watercolour paper journal:

I think this next one is my favourite page in the whole book.

The last page includes a pocket.  Why I don’t know.  To carry reference photos, brushes, pencils?  In my case no surprise I’ve added a big bingo card!

Here is the page with the empty pocket:

The bingo card:

All tucked in:

I also made a zine!  I haven’t seen or heard of zines in ages - remember when they were big?  One of my online friends made one and I thought it would be fun to make one too.  I used the one-page format, and I started with a gelli printed sheet.  The only problem was when I went to copy it, I realized the piece of paper I used was too big, so some of it got cut off.  However, because it is quite abstract and has a pretty unified colour scheme it still worked.

Here it is folded up before being decorated:

Here it is when decorated unfolded:

The back and front covers, respectively:

 

And the inside pages:

If you are interested in making one of these they’re really easy, quick and fun.  Look up “one page zine” and you’ll find the instructions.

Thanks so much for joining me today.  Please stay safe.  See you next week.

Week in Review

This week was busy.

First off, I completed (and sold) a new painting.  The fourth in my Moderna series.  24” x 30” on canvas (and framed). 

I also found out one of my paintings was accepted into a show in Vancouver - this one’s on paper and only 5” x 7”.  The show will go live online soon, and then it will be the first in-person show whenever the gallery re-opens.

Next, here are the latest in the 100 day project.

I’m having a lot of fun with these - this week we’ve got to #20, or 20% finished the project which wraps up about half way through June.  I have confirmed with Tammy Garcia of Daisy Yellow that ICAD is happening again in 2020 so we’ll see how this overlap works out!

I did some more work in the sketchbook for The Sketchbook Project:

 

And my longish watercolour paper journal (which of course I am using acrylics on).

Last but not least I’ve started a one-page zine (made from a single sheet of paper).  I haven’t made one of these for ages but I saw someone making them on Instagram and thought I should get in on the fun.  

 

I’m starting out with a gelli printed page.

 

Thanks so much for joining me today.  Stay safe and well, and if you can, stay home.

See you next week.