Powered By Blogger

Sunday, September 20, 2020

Wonderful Watercolor...

 



I'm trying to make friends with watercolors. They are so darn uncontrollable that I get frustrated when using them. But we've become better friends now that I found artist Joanne Sharpe's series of Art Sparks classes. She offers nicely-priced, project classes based on using watercolors and gouache (which was new to me). The fabric covered book above is a concertina style book with a loose and flowy look.



I made it in her Art Sparks 2: Color. Collage. Concertina. Joanne offers instruction for making the basic book and painting in it, and then leads students through adding all sorts of embellishments, including the use of paint pens and addition of pockets. It's a lot of fun.



Small art bits like the flowers and words shown here get glued into the book to add to the colorful fun.



Doodles and freeform color splashes add interest, too.



While it's not fully embellished yet, this butterfly may land on the back cover of my flowery concertina book. Actually, the fun of the book is that it can be added to and embellished at any time... it's never fully "done" as long as there's a new idea to try. "More is more" is the byword here!



This small faith-themed book is one I made in Art Sparks 1: Words and Watercolor. Never a fan of my own handwriting, I appreciate Joanne's encouraging teaching style that keeps me plugging away at writing whimsical style words. I added sari silk ribbon and a handmade boho bead to the spine of this little gem.



"Swimming" color and loose blooms are two exercises we tried out in making our background pages. I've also taken Art Sparks 3: Pockets Full of Posies and am preparing for Art Sparks 4: The Doodle Book. What is it about making books, splashing paint around, and adding fun touches that makes me unable to stop? It's just so enjoyable and satisfying. Another thing I like about Joanne's classes is the number of samples she shows of her own work. So inspiring! I'll be back with a Doodle book soon.