This is the finished page from my free UStream classes this week and last week, on ‘Shadows & Fabrics’.

We concentrated mostly on the fabrics, doing step-by-step shading in Neocolor IIs and Prismacolour pencils, and learned a lot about light and shadow in the process.

If you missed them, here’s yesterday’s class:-

and last week’s can be found here and here. (I don’t know why it’s in two parts – UStream just did that without asking me…)

With Marian I concentrated on making a white cotton cloth for her headdress, using blue and grey to give that ‘just washed with blue-whitening washing powder’ look. For her dress I chose to give it a ‘heavy cloth’ look, sort of like a heavy skirt fabric, using a cross hatching effect in 3 Prismacolours.

Robin is wearing a pale yellow-green linen shirt, using the same principles as Marian’s head dress for a light fabric, but this time in colour. His green tunic has a velvety quality created by a sort of stippling paint effect, crossed with the Prismacolour pencils to create lots of dappled light and texture.

 Next week’s show will be at 5pm again and I’ve had a request for drawing animals, so grab a reference picture of your pet and we’ll have a go at some puppies and kitties (since that’s what I have) but if you feel adventurous by all means go with a picture of your pet parrot or gerbil!

• Where: Rhomany’s Realm on UStream (or click on ‘watch live’ in the page above)
• When: Show starts at 5pm GMT, technology permitting. I sometimes have trouble with set up, so please be patient. You can convert that to your time zone here.
• What: We’ll be looking at shadows, particularly in relation to heavy fabrics.
• Who: Anyone! Log in with Facebook or a UStream/yahoo account if you want to chat, or just watch as a guest if you prefer.

If you can’t make the show live it will be recorded, so don’t worry, you can watch later if you wish.

Anyone wanting to play along will need the following:

• Your journal or some paper. I’ll be using my altered book journal, but you may want to use watercolour paper initially.
• Watercolour media. Anything will do.
• White gouache, acrylic paint/ink or gel pen
• Waterproof black pen
• Coloured pencils (Prismacolour if you have them) in various colours PLUS black, white and grey (doesn’t matter which grey)

Tools – You won’t need much, just your usual watercolour brush, pencil & eraser if you feel you’ll need them.

Part 1 from last week was recorded if you missed it! Click here.
PLEASE NOTE THE TIME CHANGE BACK TO 5PM GMT

Here’s the partially complete piece from this week’s UStream, inspired by the story of Robin Hood and Maid Marian. I quickly put in the facial tones and a base hair colour, just to decide where the light was coming from and differentiate the hair from the fabric. Then I rendered the head dress as white cotton, keeping a light, airy feel to it.

I used Neocolour IIs in Sky Blue and Light Grey, alongside white and a pale cream acrylic, with a waterbrush to give a ‘white with shadows’ feel to the cotton. I’ll finish off her face off, then next week I’ll work on her dress and the garments of her Robin Hood. He’ll be dressed in much darker, heavier cloth and there will be velvet because Christy asked nicely!

For some reason this week’s show recorded in two pieces, so bear in mind that the last 10-15 minutes is in a second recording. No idea why…

You can watch the first one here and here.

PLEASE NOTE THE EARLIER TIME OF NEXT WEEK’S SHOW! A LOT OF PEOPLE HAD TO LEAVE AT 8PM GMT, SO I’M MOVING BACK TO THE ORIGINAL TIME OF 5PM-8PM GMT FROM FEBRUARY 1ST.

• Where: Rhomany’s Realm on UStream (or click on ‘watch live’ in the page above)
• When: Show starts at 6pm GMT, technology permitting. I sometimes have trouble with set up, so please be patient. You can convert that to your time zone here.
• What: We’ll be looking at shadows, particularly in relation to fabrics.
• Who: Anyone! Log in with Facebook or a UStream/yahoo account if you want to chat, or just watch as a guest if you prefer.

If you can’t make the show live it will be recorded, so don’t worry, you can watch later if you wish.

Anyone wanting to play along will need the following:

• Your journal or some paper. I’ll be using my altered book journal, but you may want to use watercolour paper initially.
• Watercolour media. Anything will do.
• White gouache, acrylic paint/ink or gel pen
• Waterproof black pen
• Coloured pencils (Prismacolour if you have them) in various colours PLUS black, white and grey (doesn’t matter which one)
• A magazine or catalogue, preferably with a fashion slant.

Tools – You won’t need much, just your usual watercolour brush, pencil & eraser if you feel you’ll need them.

For some extra touchy-feely stuff I added jigsaw pieces and foam (which I hated!) then covered it with crumpled tissue paper. Over that I added a layer of gold Cosmic Shimmer paint (like Twinkling H2Os) and marked out an area for journaling with an oil pastel.

Next week’s class will be on shadowing effects on fabric. Wednesday, 6pm GMT.

• Where: Rhomany’s Realm on UStream (or click on ‘watch live’ in the page above)
• When: Show starts at 6pm GMT, technology permitting. I sometimes have trouble with set up, so please be patient. You can convert that to your time zone here.
• What: We’ll be using various found objects and other stuff to create simple texture in our art journal.
• Who: Anyone! Log in with Facebook or a UStream/yahoo account if you want to chat, or just watch as a guest if you prefer.

If you can’t make the show live it will be recorded, so don’t worry, you can watch later if you wish.

Anyone wanting to play along will need the following:

• Your journal or some paper. Thickish weight preferably, but anything will do if you’re using gesso.
• Gesso if your paper needs it
• Texture paste/spackle (optional, you can use gesso if you want to)
• Lengths of ribbon & paper
• Funky foam if you have it, if not, some nice thick squishy cardboard will work
• Bubble wrap, lace, netting, stencils – anything you can create texture with by pressing it into a soft surface
• PVA/White/Elmers glue
• Gel medium (any will do, but fairly running like Goldens matte gel medium) OR a fluid acrylic paint OR a watered down heavy body acrylic
• Whatever paints, pastels, crayons, inks or whatever you usually use

Tools - The usual stuff, but you will also need to hand something with a bluntish pokey end, like an embossing tool, small crochet hook or ballpoint pen. a scalpel or craft knife and a cutting surface.

Tomorrow begins a FULL YEAR of art journaling classes with the awesome Tam aka Willowing, and a whole host of other teachers who will teach you something in their particular style throughout the year! If you’re looking for a project to sink your teeth into, this is the one. Who needs a challenge you just do every week, when you can learn new and amazing techniques from all the teachers on this course for just $2 a week?! Actually, not even that because if you sign up for the basic course you also get one free course with Tam as well!

What are you waiting for? Jump on in and come play!

Click here to view more details

The rest of the page is an Art Geeks tutorial and I’ll go into more detail about that when I get a decent scan of it.

Live video by Ustream
Future shows

Weekends are a pain in the butt for me to schedule in advance, so I’m  going to try Wednesdays around 7pm GMT/2EST. I’ll still record them for those who can’t watch live. That means I can do the odd impromptu show on weekends when I feel like it, which can be more of a group journaling/play along type thing.

Now the big question…

What do you guys want to see?

I’m pretty diverse, you can see that from my work, so if you have suggestions about techniques, products, styles or whatever you’d like to see, or just a prompt you want to submit for a journal page, leave a comment below, @me on Twitter or leave a comment on my Facebook page and I’ll try and work out some sort of schedule. I’d much rather show you stuff you want to see than try to come up with things every week that I then don’t have much to say about. I will have a go at or try just about anything. If I don’t have it, I’ll usually find a cheap way to replicate it, or something else that works.

Since I’m pretty good at finding alternatives to US options, if you are in the UK or Europe and want a suggested option for something you’ve seen in the US but can’t get easily here, let me know and I’ll see what works.

Leave your suggestions for me and I’ll pick something for Wednesday.

Don’t forget…

Registration for Life Book, the incredible 1 year art and journaling workshop run by Willowing and including 15 other teachers, including myself, (Starts Jan 1st) is now open for registration!

Here’s what some of the girls have done this week, they’re doing great!

Karen over at http://kmichelecreations.blogspot.com has been working hard to make her bland, cramped and untidy space a really gorgeous place to work. Her treasures have involved her surrounding herself with gorgeous glassware. You can see more of her progress here.

© Karen Garrett. Please do not use without permission of the owner.

Janelle from http://janellescolorjourney.blogspot.com/ has a lovely big space but it really needed sorting out so there was space for herself and others to work. I love her use of colourful fabrics to jazz up the wall space and windows. A great idea if you’re living in rented accommodation and can’t paint the walls.

© Janelle Marks. Please do not reuse without permission of the owner.

I’m having a busy week and am actually behind with my own space, but seeing all these ladies putting up pictures of their awesome workspaces is making me really want to get finished. Hopefully I’ll be able to get on that tomorrow Then Friday I’m going thrifting for treasures, because I want some more colourful bits and pieces around me.

If you haven’t joined us yet, because you didn’t need to sort or clean, you can still come and do the whimsy thing in your own space or just join us next week 4 when we’ll be creating something beautiful to put in our workspace that we’ve made, just for ourselves.

Week 4 starts Sunday 23rd and the workshop is totally FREE!

Don’t forget…

Registration for Life Book, the incredible 1 year art and journaling workshop run by Willowing and including 15 other teachers, including myself, (Starts Jan 1st) is now open for registration!

 

It’s now day 7, we’re up to 460 members, the forums are buzzing with activity and people congratulating themselves on a job well done and we’re just about to enter week 2 where we do more of a ‘spruce up’ than a complete overhaul. So if you’ve been holding off joining because your room is pretty tidy and organised, now might be a good time to come on over.

So many people are posting pictures of their progress and the achievements are incredible. We’ve been working on our rooms in sections, moving things around to where we want them.

Here’s a before and after of Andrea’s space (photo used with permission) as an example of what we’re doing. Andrea had the issue that she had things in her cabinets already, so when she brought things out of storage she had nowhere to put them but the floor – right in front of the cabinets she needed to use!

© belongs to private user. Please do not reuse without permission

As you can see, Andrea has been able to deal with one section at a time and is now using those amazing storage cabinets. Andrea says there’s still plenty to sort out inside the cabinets but she’s pleased to have a floor again.

In the main picture, you can see a pretty organised space. Stephanie from Luthien.org put up photos and we all ooh’d and aah’d over her space. Believe it or not, her before photos were what most people were aspiring to have by the time they were finished!

© Stephanie, www.lutien.org. Please do not reuse without permission.

Since then Stephanie has been able to clear some space on that shelf, rearrange her notebooks above to keep only the things she’s using right now and has since moved on to sorting out a stacking tray of 12×12 papers that she’s been putting off for a long time. You can see more of her progress (and her gorgeous photography) on her blog and her flickr page.

Meanwhile I’ve gone from this…

and this…

to this!

Long way to go yet, but I have discovered space I haven’t had in a long time.

Want to come and join us for week 2-4 and give your already-organised space a bit of a spruce up? Come on over to Willowing.ning.com and sign up to Whimsical Workspaces by clicking ‘join group’.

Week 2 starts Sunday October 9th!

Don’t forget…

Registration for Life Book, the incredible 1 year art and journaling workshop run by Willowing and including 15 other teachers, including myself, (Starts Jan 1st) is now open for registration!