Collage Chicken - Trying Something Different

We've been learning about Henri Matisse lately, which led to experiments with collage and it was but a short hop to try collage illustration.

I'd never really tried to use collage for anything more than a few simple kids projects with my daughter until now, so we both turned to Skillshare for inspiration. After watching the course through, my 11yo and I both got to work.

Collage chicken - work in progress

This is my first attempt as a work in progress. Until now I'd always assumed collage was a simple art form, but designing, making our own papers, preparing a background surface, cutting, piecing things together and finally assembling this small greeting's card, was an incredibly involved process.

I opted for a small, square format card which I prepared using gesso coloured with a little acrylic paint. I added some glitter marker over the top to give more definition.

The papers are prepared with either watercolour or water soluble pastels, just playing really. Rather than copy paper, I used really cheap and thin watercolour paper from Hobbycraft.

Collage chicken greeting card - several days work!

Overall, I'm pleased with the way this turned out. It took much longer than I thought it would, with cutting and sticking alone taking three nights! Not a technique for when I'm in a hurry, but the results are very impressive. Fun, but like stippling, something for when you have plenty of time to do the technique justice!

Long Time No See

 It's been a while since I posted here, but I thought I'd say hello as I was passing through and considering what to do with this blog. Looking back at the archive and my last post was 2017, so as you might imagine things have moved on somewhat.

I'm still very much creating, but much of my focus is on art these days. What started as something I was doing mostly to amuse my daughter, blossomed until it became my primary creative pursuit. I still like to knit, sew and do general crafts, but with only a little time available to do these things, I've had to choose and art has won... For the moment anyway. I'm a serial crafter of longstanding, so undoubtedly once I have more time on my hands these things will creep back into my life.

In January 2018 I created a new Instagram for my art (JulieSpriddleArt) and in combination with my personal Insta, it pretty much replaced this blog. I've been posting regularly, just not here.

However, Instagram has changed a lot since 2018 and not really for the better. It used to be a good place to see art from emerging artists, shown in the order they were posted and ads were few and far between. These days, the algorithm favours stories and reels, ads are every 4th post and it's SPAM galore. Nothing is posted in chronological order and I'm not at all sure people see most of what I post. Meca (or Facebook) the parent company is now threatening to shut the site down in Europe unless they are allowed to steal our data and target ads even more than they already do, all of which is leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

I've spent the past four years building up the account, so I'm not intending to shut down my Instagram, but it may be time to think about establishing my own site... Except I don't really have any budget for that right now, hence why I'm casting a speculative eye over Blogger again.

We shall see...

In the meantime, here is an African Wild Donkey.

African Wild Donkey - Created by Julie Spriddle.

This is prompt 3 in the #WildlifeWednesdayChallenge over on Instagram, which is an art challenge intended to highlight the plight of endangered animals from around the world. In the case of the wild donkey, this is a cousin of the domestic donkey and is considered critically endangered in the wild with numbers estimated between 400 and 800.

Here, I've attempted a colourful African inspired pattern for the background, using my Artistro paint markers. I drew out the pattern first, then sketched the donkey before colouring around it, leaving a donkey shaped hole. This colouring process took a very, very long time and was an exercise in patience. Once the paint was dry, I filled in the donkey using Faber Castell PITT brush pens, with the reference courtesy of Holly Cannon via her Facebook group.

Talisman

Over the past year, M has reached a new milestone. At the tender age of seven she is now capable of winning complicated boardgames on her own merit. She can read instructions on game cards, understand rules and no longer needs a helper to ensure she remembers her plan from turn to turn. We tend to favour non-competitive games over the more cut-throat variety and the gaming style in this house is friendly. Dave enjoys games, M enjoys them and even I like to play occasionally when I have that elusive spare hour.

Last weekend, while in a burst of tidying I unearthed an 1980's version of the Games Workshop classic game 'Talisman'. Neither Dave nor I remember acquiring it, there were no rules, prompting an internet search, then Dave and M had a go at the game while I was at work. M won.

Later, I enjoyed a blow by blow account of how the game played through and so I thought I'd draw M's character leading her mule through the game world that is the Talisman board.

Talisman.

I was trying to capture the curly tree thing with tangled roots that the illustrator (Gary Chalk) had with his board artwork. Not a patch on his work of course but I like the way this sketch turned out.

Inktober ends with Halloween

Hallowe'en has passed, marking the first day of Allhallowtide and the end of Inktober 2017. My last two drawings for the challenge were:

Inktober day 30 - Found.

Inktober Day 31 - Mask

In terms of lesson's learned...

While the challenge has been fun, it has also been exhausting having to come up with a concept, then turn it into a composition for each day.

Including research and preliminary sketches, each drawing took at least two hours out of my day, which is a huge commitment for me. I have been making a point of drawing on each day this year but the length of time has tended to be an hour or so for each session, which is a lot more manageable.

The other big issue I had with the challenge was thinking of an idea of what I could draw in the first place. I need to practice tuning into my creative process so I can come up with several concepts for a drawing very quickly, then decide on which one I want to develop. Back in the day, I used to be able to do this easily but not any more, I appear to have lost the knack. I'd say it was this rather than anything else which made the Inktober challenge so difficult.

I'll leave it there, other than to hope everyone had a good Hallowe'en and here are M's Jack o'Lanterns.

M's carved pumpkin.

M's carved swede (or turnip).

M carved a face into both a pumpkin and the more traditional swede (or as we used to call them, a turnip or neep), which is what would have been used before pumpkins were widely available.

We don't do trick or treating as a family, but explored the more traditional aspects of Allhallowtide, including a feast on All Hallows Eve with added spooky poetry. This was very enjoyable and the first year M has been able to fully take part, selecting and reading book extracts as well as poems of her choice, rather than just listen to us grown ups.

Inktober Day 29 - United with extra pumpkins

The first real cold of the season has been working its way through the family, hitting me first then M and now Dave who has struggled into work today, saying he has things he needs to get finished. One of those things, is needing to submit his pumpkin for his employer's pumpkin carving competition.

M and Dave spent yesterday morning hollowing out and carving pumpkins. Dave went for a novel design, transforming his pumpkin into skull. M meanwhile was working on her allotment pumpkin, a fine specimen that she felt should be a tiger. M did all the scooping and drew her design, but Dave went in with the knife to make it come to life.

Pumpkins

Meanwhile I spent the day dividing my creative thinking between Hallowe'en and Inktober. The former required research, putting together some fun things for M to do over the next couple of days. There'd normally be a fair bit of seasonal baking at this point, but the oven chose to die on Friday night so no baking for us. Someone is organised to fix it at some point on Tuesday (i.e. Hallowe'en) but that isn't much help in terms of having an oven for some serious baking sessions.

The Inktober prompt for yesterday was a difficult one - 'United'.

I'll admit I was stumped and lacking in inspiration. My immediate association was 'football' (or 'soccer' if you're across the other side of the Atlantic) but that is so not me, it held no appeal whatsoever. Then there was 'tea and biscuits', but I couldn't be bothered to set up a suitable still life to use as a base. I could be terribly cliched and draw two hands holding each other, but I'm not into cliches. So I asked M, who said "Charlie and Missy", who are our cats.

Once I had the suggestion, I was off and after a bit of thought, looking at pictures of fires in fireplaces to see what happens with the shadows, this is what I came up with.

Inktober Day 29 - United

Note this is not a picture of my cats, just two similar animals. I do have a fireplace, but it is not as impressive, has not been lit in years and is buried in toys. So this is not my living room, but maybe one day...

Inktober Day 28 - Fall

A very quick update from me for #inktober. We had a full day yesterday, Christmas shopping and we picked up a pair of winter boots for M. The evening saw us helping some family friends celebrate their wedding, so it made for another late night drawing session. The prompt was 'fall' which I decided should mean both falling and autumn, hence I drew the following which is loosely based on a photo of M when she was a toddler.

#inktober day 28 - Fall

It didn't turn out too badly, but I'm not sure about the shading, something I find very difficult to do with an ink pen.

A trip to the allotment and Inktober day 26

We've been suffering the first real cold of the season, with it being my turn last week and M's this week, which means we've not really been able to take advantage of 'half-term' activities. M was well enough to attend a friend's Hallowe'en party earlier this week, but otherwise poor M hasn't felt up to much, so was keen to go to the community allotment yesterday.

Disaster struck a few minutes after we arrived when M moved some stacked garden chairs which had been rained on. Unfortunately the rain had pooled in the bottom chair on the stack, so when M picked up the last two chairs she tipped a sizeable puddle onto her legs and into her wellies. Fortunately, M took it in good humour as I sat her down and poured the water out of her wellies while she inspected her soaked trousers and sodden socks. After a brief check to see if there were any spare clothes/wellies on site, we went home so M could change but were back half an hour later.

M immediately got stuck in with planting beans, decorating a pumpkin with pins (we'll carve it over the weekend), saw onion seeds for the first time and helped set up a new mud kitchen. We ended up staying an hour past the end of the session so M could help test the mud kitchen thoroughly, before we headed home with a happy girl.

An afternoon at the allotment.

Inktober continues here and yesterday's prompt was 'Squeak'.

M elected to draw a very big mouse.

M's drawing for #Inktober2017 Day 26 - Squeak

While I decided on hamsters.

My drawing for #inktober2017 Day 26 - Squeak!

Dave drew our cat Missy because she came up to him as he was staring at his sketchpad and squeaked to get his attention. No photo though, as it isn't mine to share.

A slight change of direction

It's been a while since I've posted here, as while we've been as busy as ever I just never seem to get time to sit still at a computer, other than when I'm working. I've been doing very brief posts over on Tumblr from time to time, but not here. I guess it might be time to think about using a mobile app to update this blog.

Amongst the things I haven't been talking about (due to lack of posts) is this year's main crafty activity for me has been to practice my drawing. Like most children (or at least M) I drew all the time, as often as I could get hold of paper and pencils. Drawing as a thing petered out in my teens, although it saw a brief resurgence in my early 20s as I dabbled with watercolours. After that, being an adult took over and drawing mostly stopped.

M of course loves drawing, so I'd occasionally draw for her and at some point last year I started drawing for me. Last Christmas rolled around and I decided that this year, I would try to improve my drawing skills by practising a lot. Which I have done, mostly to the detriment of knitting time.

Rolling forward to now, 10 months after that decision and despite my preferred medium being pencil, Dave persuaded me to try #Inktober, which is an internet challenge to draw a picture a day in ink for every day in October. I don't use ink, I have a long standing fear of it as I hate the permanence, the fact I can't erase and have to go with the first mark I lay down, so I was hesitant but M thought it was a fantastic idea and in the end the whole family had a go.

We've been using the official prompt list from Jake Parker (http://mrjakeparker.com/inktober/) and I've been posting daily on Instagram, Facebook and Tumblr, with the latter being public, so if you want to see ALL of my drawings go take a look.

In the meantime, here are some of my favourites so far:

Inktober Day 4 - Underwater

Inktober Day 8 - Crooked

Inktober Day 9 - Screech

Inktober Day 11 - Run

Inktober Day 13 - Teeming

Inktober Day 17 - Graceful

Inktober Day 18 - Filthy

Inktober Day 20 - Deep

With only a few days to go, I'm feeling pretty accomplished in that I haven't missed a single day of the challenge, although producing a complete drawing each day is proving exhausting. Sometimes I have an idea straight away, other days I have to brainstorm a bit on the prompt to come up with a drawing. Strangely, those drawings I've had to work on and struggled to come up with something suitable to match the prompt, or had to do preliminary sketches or thumbnails, are the ones I think have been the best ones. A lesson in the learning perhaps?

Useful Links:

• Jake Parker's Official Inktober page - http://mrjakeparker.com/inktober/
• My Tumblr blog - https://jules101uk.tumblr.com/

A full day at the Arts Centre

Yesterday was a very full day at our local Arts Centre, starting with this energetic and full audience participation version of Peter And The Wolf. Absolutely packed studio performance. Great fun.

M moved to the very front to dance and act out the story.

The packed studio meant I was sat towards the middle of the room and persuaded M to go sit at the front with the other children. M wasn't too keen to start with, but once the concert started she engaged with the performance, answering questions, joining in and making suggestions.

After the concert was over we enjoyed an indoor picnic hiding from Storm Doris which was raging outside, then went to take in the current exhibition in the Mead Gallery.

There were only three installations and the first was a bit lack-lustre, but we walked around the corner and M stopped, stunned.

M stopped and said 'Wow!'

M showed great restraint here. She desperately wanted to touch and to get underneath the thing. It isn't every day you see hundreds of pots and pans suspended from the ceiling. Instead she walked around it, viewing the installation from every angle she could while standing a good couple of metres away.

She turned around and had another 'Wow!' moment, but refrained from touching as I stood by.

Time for dinner.

I love introducing M to art and talking about what we see, which is why we drop into art galleries and museums on a fairly regular basis. I know a lot of six year olds might not be so appreciative, but M thoroughly enjoys anything art related.

As usual, The Mead had set up a creative space following the current themes in the gallery. M enjoyed playing with cutlery on an OHP, telling stories, singing and moving things around.

M has fun with cutlery and an OHP

Then she got creative.

Making a thing.

Another girl was talked to and consulted on how to use the resources available. Staff and gallery visitors were talked to. Singing happened. I helped where requested. which meant wielding sticky tape (there was no glue) under close direction. Fun was had, until at last a very tired little girl declared she was finished and we could go home.

Even I got involved, drawing the following with graphite sticks when not facilitating M's creative needs.

Mummy's effort.

A long day, which left M very inspired and me very worn out!

An autumnal umbrella

Following on from the Daddy Umbrella, I found myself with extra umbrellas just waiting for someone to decorate them. In the meantime, M and I are doing a project on trees so I thought we should attempt a craft involving leaves.

Painting by taking prints from leaves or bits of plants is something we've done before and it can be very effective. I found myself wondering if I could print onto an umbrella using leaves.

Lessons learned from the Daddy Umbrella told me that acrylic paint mixed with fabric medium becomes transparent. Multiple layers help, but the umbrella fabric colour is still visible through the paint. This is fine with pale fabric, but a strong colour like black (as on the umbrella I had available to take paint) would mean most colours are likely to be muted and difficult to see. Personally, if I'm going to put in the effort to hand paint an umbrella, I want it to have a bit of visual punch and to stand out from a distance.

One way to overcome this is to lay down a base colour, a foundation onto which you then paint the rest of your masterpiece.

I had my plan. I decided we'd try taking prints in white paint, then fill in the resulting shape to give a white silhouette. Once this was dry, we could paint over the top in autumnal colours to hopefully give the effect of an umbrella covered in fallen leaves.

I explained the plan to M who may have been doubtful, but loves me and so went along with the idea. Last weekend, we collected a few leaves while out on our cycle around the park, then got to work.

M loved painting the leaves white, even if she didn't like having white fingers and kept running off to wash her hands. Together we applied leaf prints, taking a few prints before stopping to paint over the top. I went around the edges, neatening the leaves up and making them more 'leaf shaped' where either the print or M's painting ability had failed a little.

After a couple of hours work, we had this:

Leaf prints, painted over to give white silhouettes.

It was actually very striking and M was so excited, she ran around the garden a few times whooping. When you're a six year old artist, you get to do that sort of thing. I just oohed and ahhed, and was quietly impressed.

The umbrella went into the shed to dry for two days, then we started on the next stage. We added colour.

We worked with a limited palette of green, orange, yellow and red. The brief was to think autumn leaves as they fall from trees, but to only paint over the white. M finds paint difficult to work with, or rather she finds it harder to achieve the results she wants with paint, so this was a bit of a challenge. We talked about holding the brush as she would a pencil, not overloading with paint and steadying the umbrella with your spare hand. I was also ready with a clean finger to remove any excess paint before it had a chance to set into the fabric.

As it was, M painted a whole panel herself plus a few leaves scattered around the umbrella. I painted the rest. It took probably another two hours.

M signed the umbrella using a bronze Sharpie and I dated it, then it went back into the shed to dry.

Three days later, I ironed it using a hot iron and pressing cloth, before revealing the final result to M.

An autumnal umbrella.

We were both impressed. I think the brushwork could do with a bit of practice in terms of technique, but the colours are beautiful.

A water proof test followed, with both of us using a watering can to simulate rain. The umbrella was of course very good at repelling water, but what we were interested in was is the paint going to run. Fortunately, the paint stayed where it was so all our hard work was not in vain.

Dave got in on the act, holding the umbrella while I tried to get a better angle as well as showing off the view from underneath.

The view from the underside.

Looking closely, the original print of each leaf is still visible on the underside, giving a new dimension to the piece.

The veins of the original leaf prints are still visible from under the umbrella.

Suffice it to say, I think this was a successful experiment. The resulting umbrella is eye catching, autumnal and colourful. Considering one of the artists was six, I think we did a good job.

Flowers and paint

The park called on Saturday morning, where we stopped by the market at Allseley Park Walled Garden. I almost bought yarn, but was distracted by cake at the last moment. Whether this was a good or a bad thing is still up for debate!

We stopped by the potato beds, to visit M's potato which we'd planted earlier in the year but couldn't see the marker under the overgrown bed. We'll hopefully go along to dig up any resulting potatoes later this week, so fingers crossed we get a crop.

Yarn stroked, cake eaten and potato visited, we continued our walk around the park with the highlight for all of us being the wild flower meadow. Coventry has taken to seeding unused parts of parks, grass verges and roundabouts with wild flowers, something I heartily approve of. Allseley Park was in full bloom, presenting us with an impressive field of colour.

Wild flowers in full bloom.

Wild flowers in full bloom.

M was particularly impressed with the vivid pinks and oranges, insisting that I take several pictures.

M was particularly drawn to the colours in this clump of flowers.

Can you blame a girl for loving these colours?

Just beautiful.

We also stopped by the pond, startling a family of moorhens who sped for the cover of the reeds, only coming out again when they were certain we weren't going to do anything dangerous. Looking at the rubbish other visitors had thrown into the pond, I fear they were right to be wary. We were on the lookout for newts, newtlets and froglets, but alas saw none. We did spot a fish in the water, but my phone's camera was unable to pick it out.

After a play in the playground, we headed home for some lunch. Later, inspired by all the colours
we had seen, I suggested M could do some painting. I'd been keen to show M how wax resist worked with watercolours, but our crayons needed a firmer pressure to transfer enough wax to the paper than M was able to manage on her own. Hence this turned into a collaborative project, with me drawing the wax designs sometimes by my own initiative and sometimes under M's careful direction. I painted a couple of sheets myself, but these are mostly M's creations.

Wax resist and watercolours.

Wax resist and watercolour.

The idea was to draw geometric designs in wax crayon, then paint over the top using watercolours, followed by a wash of water. M's use of colour is vivid and she found the effect of adding a water wash interesting.