Wednesday, August 19, 2009

The joy of learning!

Hello! I have been away much too long, but here I am writing about a class I took at Castle In The Air on 4th Street in Berkeley, California. www.castleintheair.biz The class was taught by Ulla Norup Milbrath ullam.typepad.com/ullabenulla. This class was help us develop a portfolio of mix media back grounds. Now, I have probably every book out there that talks about mix media back grounds, etc. I have also played with many materials and created samples playing around and seeing what happens. Yet, there are those little nuiances that other artist know about the techniques, that one can't learn from the books. So, off to the class I went and had a blast! Here are some of the results:



This is an example of foaming shaving cream, a spritz and dribble of Alcohol inks.




This back ground is using a rubber stamp and ink and spritzing with water to get an echo effect.


Text cut and glued, then smudged with a sage green chalk, walnut ink spritzing and Japanese lace paper. This really has an antique look.

Okay, this was so easy! A very wet wash of color on watercolour paper then pat down a scrunched plastic wrap - let it dry and then peel the wrap off. A great background of an abstraction of leaves.

Rubber stamping an overall print!

The class was really fun as always at Castle In The Air. I recommend taking classes there to get your artist block - unblocked! I have signed up for Ulla's ABC's of Altered Books - I looking forward to learning more techniques.