12/12/2015:

last day of painting class / term today. it wasn't my best day painting. when I tried to add shadows and to make the objects more 3D, I wrecked the tone so spent most of the day trying to get this back - lots of squinting and standing back to look at it from across the room. eventually I had to wipe the paint off and start again. I'm not happy with the shapes either (especially the teapot) - I lost them on the first day when painting the flat tones with the large brush, and couldn't get them back in time. oh well. my teacher said he was happy with the tones. so I need to practice drawing objects (and drawing in general). it's still drying in the shelves at art school so I need to go collect it this week once it's dried.

05/12/2015:

some paintings from Carla Sonheim's flower crazy 5 week class. I'm learning a few new techniques for watercolour, gesso, and mixing colours and textures to create "imaginary flowers".

layers of watercolour lines and pens/markers with some pencil shading

painted imaginary flowers in watercolour with gesso painted over the top

watercolour blobs in 3 colours, with gesso masking off interesting shapes to create flowers. scratched lines and textures in the gesso before it dried

plus one of the "2014 — year of the fairy tale" exercises — this is my "princess and the pea" mixed media painting. it's gouche, gesso and pens. the paints are applied using a credit card instead of a brush. it leads to a "free-er" line. I liked the gouche — they dried very quickly

I've started the "sketchbook now" class to practice more drawing techniques for my sketchbook, and in lesson one we need to do some tests of our materials. I've used some from previous class exercises, which I hadn't added to the blog, so adding them here as part of this class' notes. the watercolour washes tests were exercises from Fred Lisaius' class "Fall Watercolours". I'll add more tests here as I work on them

these are the watercolours I'm using most often — a mixture of Schmincke and Winsor & Newton pans:

testing different lines & pen textures:

watercolour bead washes:

watercolour wet in wet wash:

watercolour double wet / flood wash with salt added for texture. I used table salt and since the paper was thick, it didn't work too well

more watercolour washes, on thicker, handmade paper

watercolour pencils (texta zoom brand) and pens to see what they looked like with added water:

today I watched a video Senthil Kumar posted a video on WADI facebook group called "Arjuna the Archer : AD 2008" - it was based on the techniques of Patta Chitra Katha

I wanted to find out more about this artform and technique, so I googled (without much luck, due to googling the wrong things) and asked the Sarai reader list and received lots of helpful information from many people. after reading about it, it reminds me a bit of the multi-media of a few hundred years ago. multiple paintings / panels on scrolls are read and music played whilst they're read, so there's a mixture of images, music, text, written / spoken word. the artists travel to different villages - equivalent to the communication methods / networks of today transmitting the multimedia messages & works. originally the works were made on cloth using vegetable based paints but these days modern paints are used and most works are done on paper. I hope the traditional methods are not lost completely! the style of painting comes from Orissa and West Bengal. modern artists use both traditional, classical topics as well as current topics & stories - they are trying out new variations of the art too, to keep the method alive and to learn new techniques & skills.

I wrote a blog post (ongoing) about Patta Chitra Katha @ http://www.aliak.com/content/patta-chitra-katha-traditional-folk-art-sto...

VloMo08 - day16

http://vimeo.com/2260235

VloMo08 : day16 - Patta Chitra Katha - traditional folk art of storytelling using visual language from kath on Vimeo.

280920082113, originally uploaded by AliaK

this is Sydney / Newtown artist SYKE - her myspace is www.myspace.com/syke23

SYKE started an outdoor art area in newtown (sydney) where she and other artists paint and then people can donate what they can for the art works. I think they'd suit the as often the works are on sections of cardboard boxes. the article mentions sometimes kids save up their pocket money to buy some... nice way to start kids appreciating art & craft / creating things instead of buying mass produced wares

280920082112, originally uploaded by AliaK

this is a print from Peter Strong - one of the Ohms Not Bombs crew

"These canvas's are mixed media works by Peter Strong.