Monday, June 24, 2013

Wanderings Under the Sea

Still immersed under the surface and filling my little handmade journal entitled "Cirque de Sirene" with merfolk and their companions. All thanks to Teesha Moore's and Jane Davenport's incredible guidance with Mermaid Circus. It is still a work in progress with more illustrations, collage, lettering and writing that need to be added, but here's a sneak peek....

The cover..


..and inside...






Just had to include a miscievous merman ...did you know that mermen actually chase tubes for fun? That is where surfing originated from! But nobody would've believed it if the first human who saw it and then tried it, said that he'd seen mermen do it now, would they? Just a thought...


Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Adventures with the Mermaid Circus

For the past eight weeks I've been running away to the Mermaid Circus. I've been immersing myself mainly at night. I've been spending hours and hours watching and learning from the most wondrous mermaid acts on the planet. Rediscovering how mesmerising dolphins, manta rays and sea turtles can be. Discovering mysterious sea creatures that no human eye has seen before. Oh my....what a thoroughly enchanting artventure this has been!

Sadly, tomorrow is the closing parade. It will be a tearful departure! I will miss my fellow students' support and feedback and the inspiration of all the wonderful artwork that was created daily and posted on our Facebook Group. Around 500 individuals worldwide - supporting each other consistently for the entire period.

Our instructors were the incredible Jane Davenport (Australia) and Teesha Moore (US). Both are prolific artists with very distinctive mixed media styles. If you ever consider doing an online mixed media short course that provides nuclear potency instruction on the use of different art materials, visual journaling, making a journal, lettering, collage, learning to draw the figure (torso) and the face with the aim of creating illustration type art work - this is The One! And you will get so, so much more from it!

Just to show how freeing this class really is....here's a mermaid that I did by using my fingers to apply the paint first and then I drew the figure with a colour pencil over it. I was actually playing around just to test some new flesh coloured paints that I bought today and this just happened. It feels like another breakthrough in my art .... never done anything like this before ..... love the freedom of it!