Surprises...

don't you love them?

I got a fabulous and totally unexpected Christmas gift in the mail this week from an on-line friend over at Creating and Sharing Mixed Media Art on Google+.  It included these vintage lace and rick-rack pieces,

three wonderful bright red lace paper doilies (you know they'll get incorporated into Valentine cards or tags),

and a lovely little note.

Huge thanks, Jackie - you rock!

Some surprises come more under the heading of bloopers, and if you want to see a good one, you can check out this recent video I did when I was testing some new high flow acrylics (thanks Meg!).  I can tell you that fluorescent pink has incredible POW! factor when, in a Video Demo Brain Freeze, you take the top off the bottle by accident, and pour!

A more reasonable surprise this week was finishing another wine bottle and glass.  You can find out how I started with this obsession here.  These ones are in peacock colours, just for you Alice, although they're still not safe for dining room table use.

'My Fine Feathered Friend' mixed media goblet © Win Dinn

'My Fine Feathered Friend' reverse

'My Fine Feathered Friend' base

'Peacock Flash' mixed media bottle © Win Dinn

'Peacock Flash' reverse

'Peacock Flash' closeup

The other surprise in these is that each of the flowers are hand-crafted from bottle caps, wine bottle metal caps, paper, and buttons.  I love taking something mundane and upcycling it, don't you?

Just a reminder - I'm teaching next weekend in Kimberley - if you'd like to join us for a playful Gelli mono-print weekend, please contact Christine at Centre 64 to register.  Registrations close TODAY!

Connecting...

with people is one of my favourite things to do, and the Saturday playshop in Cranbrook was no exception. At Creative Display and Design at the College of the Rockies there were 9 newbies to meet and a student with whom to reconnect.

Prior to the start of the three-hour period, I re-designed my 'booth' so it more closely resembled a dog's breakfast.

 Would you like closer look?  It doesn't get any better!

We spent some time working on right brain/left brain exercises including a Mind Mapping exercise centred around their chosen product.  The colouring was obviously a favourite - see how intent they are?

After a intense discussion about what constitutes good design and eye catching displays, the participants took some time to list all the things that were wrong with the display - well over twenty items without even thinking hard.  What worries me is that they enjoyed it so much!

I could tell from the exercise and the stupendous list that they thoroughly 'got' the principles, and you can bet that those retailers and marketeers will have fabulous displays when they put their own together.  Can't beat that for focus!  And the best part?  I've some new friends in Cranbrook and environs.  

In the Playbox...

The Kimberley Mixed Media II playshop at Centre 64 should have engendered a visit by the fun police, 'cause we had WAY too much of it.

With 10 rowdy participants, all of them total nutcases (yes, you were!), we painted, stretched, threw, splashed and mucked with nearly twenty techniques.

Here's what it looked like near the start,

The centre space is where I got to do my happy dance.

and here's what it looked like near the finish.

  

The centre space is where the participants were too pooped to happy dance!
Back Row:  Carol, Donna, Marjorie, Rob, Louise
Front Row:  Virginia, Juanita, Ilene, Jeanie, Sue

The interim was sheer chaos, with 'sharing' of supplies,

Sue (left) and Jeanie fight over some holey ribbon

mucking with drywall compound (really!),

Juanita gets a groove on

 slicing and dicing,

No idea what Ilene is taking those scissors to, but it looks lethal!

 and wrestling cobwebs to the ground.

Virginia ties one on

 We sprayed paint,

Rob sprays his cobweb start while Donna attacks her piece in the background

 tested colours and acrylic properties,

Louise, a consummate watercolourist, tests acrylics for the way they work with salt

 and painted crushed, wet paper, among other things.

Jeanie on the attack with a loaded paintbrush

With so much talent in the room, it was inevitable that someone else get into instructor mode.

Here Louise Olinger demos a salt technique for the group

And because everybody loved it so much (HA!), we spent a lot of time on skins and transfers!

Ilene scrubs and scrubs, and rubs and rubs to clean the back of a 'skin'

Everyone got into the act, and rebellion was constant (did I say they were like a bunch of kids?).

Marjorie even tested pipe cleaner wrapped around a brayer!

The floors behind the participants were covered with masses of drying pieces, from painted paper

Wet and luscious painted paper

 to skins and mat board starts,

 to resist techniques and painted dryer sheets,

 in all sorts of permutations.

 It was endlessly fascinating, and ever-changing!

Check back in the next day or so (it'll take me that long to download, edit and choose) for more photos of this fabulous weekend, including some close-ups!

In the meantime, check out the Playshops, and consider joining me in Fernie on February 8 & 9 for the Mixed Media I weekend - you, too, can have this much fun in the playbox!

One, two, three, four...

...add another to the score.

I find myself shaking my head many days in the studio.  For someone who spent many years being a meticulous accountant, highly organized and precise to a fault, I'm amazed at the way I work when I'm in the right (wrong?) side of my brain.

I bounce from project to project,  all the while glorying in the rich colour I see.

I'll move from a painting started with a book cover (a brilliant idea from one of my students, Dena Kubota)

to add a layer to a 'skin' in progress,

 smear a book page with a painty wet brayer to clean off it off,

 and then move to another book cover start.

I find a stack of works in progress, and wonder how many of them I'll get to today (eight in this pile alone),

and cast my eye on another pile of Gelli plate prints that await additional layers.  My mouth waters with anticipation.

This all takes place under the watchful eye of Opal, the studio cat.  She is very particular about anyone making too much commotion in 'her' studio.

I intersperse my studio time with workshops, shows and connecting with other artists.  Is it any wonder that I sometimes feel myself going wild with colour madness?  It's truly a wonderful life!

Chaos everywhere

These days, the studio looks as though it's not been shovelled out for months, and the overflow of my wildly experimental phase is everywhere.

From stacks of altered books and alcohol play (the ink kind, not the drinking kind),

to pseudo grass, more altered books, and 'grass in the making', 

to piles (literally) of monoprint mania, I am frightened I'll never get clear of the debris.

While I love, love, LOVE experimenting with techniques, mediums and different media, I have decided it's time to call a halt.  Today marks the day of studio clean-up, finishing the notes that outline the second and all-new mixed media workshop (debuting in Claresholm in May, and then presented at the College of the Rockies, Creston in June), and a long overdue blog post.  And I promise to prep for the mixed media class that starts next Wednesday at the Wynndel Arts Centre (registration at the college).  Have you signed up yet?

And then?  Back to the chaos, glorious chaos!

What's new, pussycat?

It's been a wild time in the studio lately, learning new techniques and mixing up the old ones, and playing with all the 'what ifs' when it comes to mediums.  I go through periods when I'm not painting, I'm merely the mad scientist in my laboratory (thanks for the metaphor Alice ).

I've been playing with a cobweb technique (see Alice's blog post in the link just above), messing with alcohol inks and smooshing drywall compound to the point where I'm awash with colour, agog with amazement and alert with possibility.

The cobweb technique, via Alice, from an  Ursula Reynolds workshop, is truly amazing, and I'm totally hooked, to the point where it will be one of the first techniques I teach in my level two mixed media workshop.

The results create such a mouth-watering background I've not needed to eat for days!

And while I've known about drywall compound for some time (it's akin to working with modelling paste), I'm enjoying the thickly textured pieces that arise.

When you can take a widely varied piece like this textured one,  throw some colour at it, layer upon layer,

then life doesn't get much better!  (Check out the cobweb technique in burnt umber over top of it all!).

And while I'm not showing you the results of my alcohol play (that's ink, not wine), rest assured they are just as much fun, and something that will undoubtedly turn up in level two as well - watch for the COTR late spring catalogue for further details.

Boot Camp at COTR

Colour Boot Camp has started at the College of the Rockies here in Creston, and I suspect there will be some changes made in the participants' palettes in the next month or so.

 The initial exercise consists of creating swatches of colour to construct a colour wheel for their binder.

Painting fast and furiously they work hard to get a start on the exercises before the end of class.

They learn to create a 'dark dark' by mixing complements together - the results are far richer than any black on the market.

And they learn about tints and shades and take that study home to create examples for their binder and Colour Bank.

I'm always delighted at the end of  the course to see how varied and many-layered their colours become, and how knowledgeable participants are about creating lush, powerful and vivid colour combinations.  Since I'm such a colour pig, it feeds my addiction in a VERY satisfying manner!

Into the Mandala

We had a great day yesterday at the mandala workshop here in my studio.  We drew, coloured,

scissored,

 and chopped,

and in the process, came to a greater understanding of the fascination that is the pull of the mandala.

One of the comments from the satisfaction survey at the end of the workshop read as follows:

'...I feel like I have a much more meaningful approach to creating mandalas now - as well as technique.  Thank you!'

I hope you'll continue to watch the sidebar on the right side of this blog to see where and when your next mandala journey might take you.