Tiny Teabag Sketches

As I had amassed a bagful of tea bags, I decided to do some tiny animal sketches. They are so quick and easy to do. All I used were Derwent charcoal pencils and a little gesso. 

Charcoal is very smudgey and as such very forgiving, you don't need to be very neat or accurate.. 

I mounted each onto a piece of neutral/beige card. 

and wrote the sentiment on a piece of old book page..( I use the centre text of pages for collage but I keep the plain margins from book pages to write sentiments or stamp text.. )

I used a fountain pen for this but you could stamp your text. 

Then I mounted each animal and sentiment onto a card blank, 

They really don't need anything else, I guess this is my way of doing CAS, something I find impossible in paint. 

I really like them, they are sweet, and with a simple 'hello' greeting they can be used for any occasion. 

Darcy 

Anyone for Tea?

Once you have made your tea, empty and rinse your tea bag and art on them...Sounds crazy doesn't it. I have been saving tea bags for ages.. ok so that does make me sound crazy, but I have wanted to make some mini art for a long time..just never had the time. then a gorgeous lady called Lyn Tivenan started showing her tea bag art on FB and it reminded me that I had a bagful waiting to be used. 

If you search pinterest there are lots of examples of tea bag art. 

First I selected some tea bags of various shades and tried to die cut them, to my surprise it worked. These dies are all by Seth Apter. 

I started with a circle, added some gesso and created this little portrait with Derwent charcoal pencils. 

I then painted some of the other cuts with Bora Bora and South Pacific. 

I took some more tea bags and added a little paint to them. Chocolate Pudding, Toffee, Caramel, Nougat. I added it with just a finger as the teabags are very fragile. 

The letters were painted with Coral 

I added some stamping to the background bags with the French text stamp and archival ink. the FLY text was glued on and then outlined. 

I added a tiny little colour to the face using Derwent XL charcoal. 

It was fiddly trying to glue it all down as the teabag die cuts were very flimsy. 

Everything was mounted to a white card blank. I am very happy with how it turned out. 

Darcy x

Ballerina

When I was a kid I danced.. not just randomly, I had lessons. In fact I was made to go 4 times a week and I hated it. I took lessons from being 3yrs old to about 12yrs old. I was so glad to stop. I did all my grades, in ballroom, latin, modern sequence and disco and took part in competitions, I wore stupid frilly dresses with net underskirts and I had ringlets in my hair and I hated all of it. it was never my choice, and after I stopped I never danced again until I was about 40. A friend talked me into trying tap dancing, something I had never done before and it was exhausting but good fun. for the first time in my life I was actually enjoying dancing. Maybe that was more to do with getting new shoes!

Now ballet is something I have never done, I have an idealistic view of it, that I would be graceful and beautiful ... that I would somehow lose 60lbs by putting on the shoes and would grow 6 inches taller. Of course the reality is I would look like a fairy elephant! 

But the shoes... I want the shoes... and not just because I love shoes. 

Ballet shoes have something magical about them..something nostalgic and ethereal. 

So i made a ballet page. 

I started with PaperArtsy Infusions, I painted the page first with Satin Glaze, sprinkled on the infusions and then lightly dragged more glaze to seal them. 

Next I sketched my shoes. 

I then painted them, sorry no progress shots. I used Prima watercolours and just built up the layers using pinks, grey, brown and white. 

On either side of the shoes I added more Infusions this time in blue. I allowed them to soak a little so that the walnut started to show through then I dried them. 

In parts they were  a little dark, so I flicked on some clean water and then dabbed this off to remove some colour. 

I added shading to the shoes using Derwent XL charcoal 

Added some flicks of white paint. 

and a border using black Crayola slickstix.

Finally I wanted to add some text. Initially I wanted to use the text from the Everything Art stamp {#3} but the stamps were too small for what I wanted. So I used a white pen to write the same text out, adding more words of my own. 

I am really pleased with this page, it is as close as I will ever get to ballet lol. 

what did you always want to do but never could? why don't you create a page about it. 

Darcy x

Studying under the Masters Week 1.part 4

yes I have skipped a part.. 

Part 3 is sculpting, and mine is started, but I am waiting for it to dry before I can carry on. So in the meantime I am doing...

Part 4. This was an exercise in drawing faces, getting proportions correct and using a specific blending technique. 

The first part involves drawing a face in charcoal (shudder, I really dislike charcoal)

{After a black crayon sketch by Van Gogh 1885}

Then we were to blend with gesso. Not a fan of this outcome at all, I have no idea why. 

I have done this blending technique many times before, but using neocolor II crayons and blending them with white acrylic. 

So I decided to draw the old peasant woman again, but this time give her some colour. 

Drawn out with 2b

Blending the skin tones of neocolorII crayons with white acrylic. 

I kept the colours simple and muted, after all his paintings of the time were all dark and murky, it wouldn't have been a good representation to to her in hot pink clothing lol 

So apart from the skin tones and white acrylic,  I only used Sepia. 

I could have added so much more, .. more layers , more washes, gone back in with graphite or finished it off with coloured pencils. 

I didn't want or need this to be a finished piece though, this is merely a blending exercise, so I am leaving it as is.. 

She looks much older in the colour version, this is I think down to the initial sketch. it was finer, and so I was able to make her face slimmer in the colour one. In the charcoal one, the charcoal spread a lot and made all her features more chubby, making her look younger. 

I do prefer the colour one. 

as a quick experiment, I also tried blending 6b with gesso, a pitt pastel with gesso, and a stabilo pencil with gesso.. 

The pitt pastel blended away into nothingness, the 6b and the stabilo, once blended were almost identical to the charcoal/gesso combo. 

*twiddles thumbs while clay dries*

Darcy x