my creative space: daring to be messy

I am currently doing a six week online painting course "Daring adventures in paint & life" with Mati Rose McDough, which has been amazing so far! I really needed to get out of my comfort zone and embrace a bit of painting chaos!

I have to say, it has been a real challenge for me to let go of my total need to be precise, neat and tidy which screen printing demands!

The first few weeks we have been working on making lush backgrounds. The first week I wasn't really getting it at all... I was "over thinking" where I was putting the brush and paint and getting quite frustrated! Luckily you can just paint over what you are not happy with! Phew!

:: practice panel - mustard and pink

But once I started using the other techniques such as a scraper and brayer... it was so much better, as I had no real control on how the paint was going to turn out! I like that the control was out of my hands! I've started really enjoying getting messy and not thinking to much about where the paint was going.. just going with the flow!

:: Background one - Turquoise, white and emerald acrylic paint

:: :: Background two - magenta, white and yellow acrylic paint

After quite a few more layers of paint... I accidently dripped paint water on the wet paint and dabbed it off with a paper towel which revealed previous layers of paint... I did a bit of scratching too! I love it!

:: background one - more layers of yellow, blue, white and fuchsia

I then had to get a bigger canvas (20" x 20")! I NEEDED to make a mess on a bigger scale... of course! This one has still a long way to go but I'm really loving it so far! :)

:: a large canvas of lovely painting messiness (20" x 20")

I am really happy with my efforts so far... after quite a lot of layers of paint! It has been a really interesting process for me and I am so happy that I have finally let go of my perfectionism and embraced messiness! Hooray!

Hope you have had a wonderful creative week... check out what other creative people have been up to at my creative space!

my creative space: painting and decorating

There are a lot of birthdays around here this month, which means lots of creating... I love it!

It was my partners birthday on Tuesday, and I like to make something with my little M for his daddy, so I decided we would paint a mug for him (I accidentally broke his favourite mug a few weeks ago... whoops). It is also M's Pops birthday next week too, so I thought we would make him a mug as well!  I bought some Pebeo Porcelaine 150 paint in green and blue and two plain porcelain mugs.

Firstly, I cleaned the mugs with methylated spirits, then let my little man loose with the paint! I am actually amazed we didn't get that messy! I wasn't happy with our first attempt as the paint went on too thick and started running down the mug all over the place! The great thing about this little project is you can wash it off and start again!

:: looking very sweet in the middle of
a painting frenzy

The second attempt went much better we used smaller brushes so there were less paint blobs everywhere on the mugs! We let them dry for 24 hours, then baked them in the oven for 35min at 150°C and then left them to cool down in the oven... so easy! The hard thing was keeping it a secret from my partner! I really love how they turned out and M's daddy loves his new favourite mug :)

:: M's art on mugs

We also baked a cake for daddy's birthday, which M loved helping with (forgot to take a photo of the complete mayhem in the kitchen... bummer!) We had so much fun and M especially loved decorating the cake.. which most of it ended up in his mouth :)

:: yummy cake decorations

:: M can't wait for daddy to get home!!

It was a great little birthday celebration, M even sang at bit of happy birthday to his daddy too... so cute! I love the fact that M is old enough now so we can create some special things together! It's just too much fun :)

Hope you have all had a wonderful creative week!
There are loads more creative people over at our creative spaces...

watercolour: Water Paper Paint

I really love Heather Smith Jones' work and just had to get her book "Water, Paper, Paint"! I was so excited when I got the it in the post last week! I have been drooling over the pages for days! Such a beautiful little book with lots of information about watercolour painting, brushes, paint etc. The book is full of interesting projects to do which allows you to explore your creativity! I love the fact that it's totally hands on learning!

Since my watercolour course has now finished, I'm going to complete a project from the book each week. I have started with Project 2 - working wet onto dry!

It's a very interesting little exercise... you may think painting coloured squares is easy but it really makes you think about placement, size, colours/hues, techniques and it's also really good practice in painting straight lines with watercolour too - a tricky, uncontrolable little beast at times!

time: around 8pm... just getting into it!

I got a little carried away on Saturday night... yes I was at home painting (and loving it) and I was up until 1am painting...ouch!! I had no idea what the time was as I was so engrossed in the project... I had to finish the first layer, which I think turned really well! The next step will be layer number two with stronger hues! I can't wait to do some more this week... it's just too much fun :)

time: around 1am... finished the first layer!
my eyes were a bit blurry and so is the photo :)

Heather Smith Jones has a little blog and a website of her wonderful work... very inspiring!!