Less Quilting and More Whatnot

Quilting has been put on hold for awhile, as I'm pursuing other artistic avenues.  I'm still doing Skillshare classes and having so much fun with them.  I'm learning so many fun new things.  Since I only signed up for three months (for 99 cents), I kinda feel like I need to view as many classes as I can in that time.  But I've also been doing some watercolor, especially baby roses.  I've found inspiration from antique Guilloche items.  There are many that are hand decorated with tiny roses, so I've been copying them in watercolor and practicing and practicing painting them.  Here are some practice sheets.

Then I tried drawing some shapes to paint inside of and this is what I made.  I really liked the way they turned out.  I did some china painting 20 some odd years ago, and these remind me of that.  I never got very good at doing the baby roses when china painting, but always wished I could have.  I had to quit the china paining soon after my 2nd child came along.

Lastly, I die cut some shapes out of watercolor paper, to paint roses on.  I love the way they turned out.  I'm not sure what I will do with them, but they're so pretty anyway.  The smaller one is only about an inch by an inch and a half or so.

One of my Skillshare classes was on ink drawing.  We started with making little wildflowers and leaves, then ended up doing wreaths using the flowers and leaves.  I loved making the wreaths and drew one on watercolor paper to paint.  Here it is.

I'm working on learning some hand lettering using brush pens and it would be perfect for writing some words inside of the wreath.  Of course, there's a learning curve to any kind of hand lettering, so it may be awhile before I feel ready for that.

So there you have it.  I'm keeping busy and having fun learning new things.  My quilting projects will wait for me to get back to them eventually.  And what does it matter if my granddaughter has to wait another year or so to get her quilt.  She's still young....

Where Have I Been Anyway?

Again, I allowed so much time to elapse between posts.  I'm not sure where the time goes.  It just seems to slip away so quickly.  But I have been working on quilts and have finished a couple of tops. Haven't finished the quilting on any though, although I have been working on it.

Here's one that's in the process of being machine quilted.  It's for my 5 year old grand daughter.  I'm making my quilt sandwich here.

Lately, I've been side tracked from quilting and into coloring.  I bought myself a set of Faber Castell Polychrome pencils.  It's a wonderful set of 120 pencils, but I'm not sure I like them that well.  I think I would have been better off getting some cheaper ones.  Since I received them, I'm finding that I like using the plain old Crayola or Prang pencils better.  I wish I'd figured that out before spending the money on the new ones.  I'll use them though.....for something.  I'd like to play around with colored pencil drawing at some point.

Here's some pictures from a Dover book called Mystic Mandalas that I tried the new pencils out on.

Here's a couple of pictures that I colored with the Crayola and Prang pencils.  I like them much better for very find detail.

I also signed up with Skillshare.  If you don't know what that is, it's a website that has classes in all sorts of creative avenues.  I've done a couple with ink drawing and some using watercolor.  They are not long classes but are quite fun.  Here's some of the things I've created from the classes.

The first two were from an ink drawing class.  We had several projects like the first picture to simply practice our line drawing, for better eye hand coordination and smoother lines.  Then there were some projects that led to the final one in the second picture.  I like having assignments to follow.  It helps me get busy and do some art!

Another class was on drawing cute animals.  We first sketched the animal with pencil and then, using the guidelines the teacher gave us, we made the animal look cute.  I didn't realize I could do anything like this, but it was really pretty simple and a lot of fun.  I found the picture of a turtle in a calendar and here's my cute depiction of it.

The last pictures were from a watercolor class.  It was easy to follow along as the teacher took us through the steps to complete the drawings.  What fun these classes are!

As you can see, I have been busy, even though I'm not quilting.  I love so many different art forms, sometimes it's hard to choose where to spend my time.  

That's all for today.

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