design exercises – Mixy's Art Blog

Just For You!

EDIT 25 Sep: the lucky winners will receive notification from Dirty Footprints Studio by email before the launch on Monday 26 September. But it’s not too late – you can still sign up right here

Hey dear friends — I have a gift for you!

To celebrate my online class teaching on 21 Secrets I have TWO FREE COPIES of COLOR, COLOR, COLOR! the 2016 Fall Edition of the 21 Secrets program to share.

But be quick – it’s only a week until launch day!

Sign up here to enter the Prize Draw – two lucky winners will be drawn on
Friday 23 September.

Squeeee! It’s exciting! If you aren’t lucky enough to win one of these free spots you can still sign up for the super bargain price of just $98.

For Lessons from 24 great artists this is fabulous value, and yours to download and keep forever.

Get a sneak preview at my class: “Take Nine” over here

By entering this prize draw, you’ll be added to my newsletter list too. The newsletter is still young, and fairly infrequent – you can expect it dropping into your mailbox no more than once a month – or maybe if there’s something super spectacularly exciting I think you’d like to know. You can unsubscribe any time you like, no hard feelings.

Your email is absolutely safe with me, inside my computer where even I won’t be able to find it most of the time. I’ll just pop by and check up on it time to time, feed it biscuits, plump up its cushions, that sort of thing.

the sum of its parts

french, italian, and paper feathers

12 in 12 to August (ish)

The 12 colors in 12 months project is ticking along in the background… I add little bits and things when I have oddments of the month’s color to hand. So it builds up.

To re-cap here’s where we left off in June, through to the first layers of August

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Splosh

Day 14
of Book Three
of a Page a Day.

Post #100.

Biggest thanks to all who stop by, you’re gving me so much inspiration, Big love to you all! 🙂

A page of plenty

Looking back and photographing yesterday’s page I can see quite how involved it was!

A crucial ingredient in the making of this page is insomnia. Extra long evenings are the best time for fiddly cutting, hole punching and sticking!

Being made up of so many papery layers the surface was pretty cushiony in places. This lends itself perfectly for biro doodling on. Some of this doodling was done with a biro that ran out ages ago, but didn’t get thrown out. The little circular indentations are made by the end of the lid.

Everything has a use in art!

continuing the journey

Day 33. Water colors and inks, I like the dreamily muted colors, and again the upside/downside number thing.

Day 34 Doodles run free. This is the kinda page that I could keep on adding to but think I’ll leave it here for now.

Day 35. This is the kinda page that I did keep on adding to! Starting with that stencil again then with layers and layers of cut out scraps in a similar wavy spiral way.

Day 36 is a turning point, toward the original idea that each page would contain something of the feel of that day. This day I spent up in London with my friend, and bits and bobs from the day nestle amongst the usual doodles and collage.

Symbolic of so much, this getting back on track falls just 5 pages from the end of this book! But, as one book closes…

and up to date!

Continuing the catch up

Day 11 is an either way up day. I like these days the best! I did this with white oil pastel as a resist to the splatters and splashes of watercolor and acrylics.

Day 12. Watercolor again. Not in the delicately conventional manner with subtlety and fragile grace. No. Slopped on with an inch wide brush. And some more theraputic splattering.

Day 13 watercolors on a background of collaged torn up paper. Sprinkled with water for added dappliness.

Day 14 fell right in the midst of my obsessive dyed paper thing making episode. One side of the page is encrusted in left overs!

Day 15 has a paper mosaic running right across, then watercolor and ink sploshes.

Day 16. Zing! How these colors make me grin like a wide-eyed fool! Alternating between yellows and turquoises (watercolor and ink), splashes and drips, water swish, and speed drying with hot air dryer to chase the puddlings about the paper.

recent days

Back to the page a day project, unaccountably I seem to have ten days backed up and un-shown-off to you! How did that happen??!
Sitting comfortably? Here they come…………………………
Day 7 was the day I first played with black gesso. Delighted! I was expecting a kinda chalky grey-ish-ness that absolutely isn’t there. My new love in life is gesso. Words can’t express my joy at its cover-up-ability, it’s smooth creamy texture and lush slide-about-the-page-ness it has. YUM. This was the base for the swirls in guache and acrylic.

Day 8 is a showcase of the bits of scraps and fragments and dead leaves I save ‘in the name of art’. I know I’m in safe company here, you understand!

Day 9 is built up in layers of dyed paper and stencilled experimental gessoed tissue paper.

Day 10 is upside down. When I was getting towards the end of the previous book I showed it to some friends, as one leafed through the pages and said “Some pages make me feel like I’m upside down in this book”. “Yes, just like some days feel upside down”. This was one of those days!
This was also my first EasterEgg day (tissue paper swished with water, like I did here)