Summer vacation has officially started here. There will soon be mad rush with summer camps some of which are already under way but today I’m playing and watching FIFA.
If you too are looking to boost your summer creativity, check out the self-paced 21 Secrets workshops. You’ll have fun with the short doable video workshops! As soon as you register, you’ll get a welcome email with access to the first class.
Here’s my take on the first class by Connie Solera out now.
It’s me and my kids, two of whom are taller than me now, but I still feel like I’m arching over to protect them 🙂
If you follow me on Instagram @mou.saha.studio, you might have seen my countdown to the month-long Mixed Media Daily Challenge coming to Creativebug tomorrow, June 1st 2018.
It’s a self-paced class to walk you through a chockfull of mixed media techniques for adding textures, colors, layers, etc. that you can use in your own mixed media projects, art journals, collage art and more. I’ll be showing you how you can start with just three basic mediums and stuff found around the home, in nature and even your recycle bins. And it’s not going to be just a bunch of techniques, you’ll also see me create several projects from start-to-finish using those techniques. So, join me for a month of inspiration and learning! http://bit.ly/MouSaha_Creativebug
Hi everyone! My post today is dedicated to moms everywhere. Here’s a mixed media project I created recently for a Facebook Live when I went to San Francisco to film classes with Creativebug. You can watch the episode here.
As I am going through with my daily sketch exercise this year, I am starting to explore a variety of surfaces and tools to see which combo I enjoy the most and also to see if anything distinct emerges for me stylewise. I felt that the differences will stand out the most to me if I studied the same subject. So, I started with a small glass bowl of strawberries with the intention to graze between somewhat realistic to more deliberate distortions. Along the way, I had a few unexpected realizations that were pretty intense and did not stay within the simple bounds of paper and tools as I set out to explore originally!
I started with a HB 2 pencil (the yellow ones kids use in school) and sketched the simple lines of my object on copy paper. What may seem obvious and something I tend to forget often is that staying with super basic supplies takes away any fear or guilt of making mistakes and actually frees me up to experiment. It is also an excellent warm up.
I usually like to draw things out with pencil but decided to go straight in with my Faber-Castell Ecco Pigment Black 0.1 pen on 75 lb smooth white cardstock this time. The pen glided beautifully on the paper as long as I didn’t hesitate. Whenever I felt nervous, my lines quivered. The lines mocked me and I had to add some quick touches of watercolor – LOT of water, very little paint.
Not having pencil lines to guide me made me feel almost blind and anxious. Sounds silly, doesn’t it? But that’s how I really felt.
Then I took the strawberries out and placed them at various angles before me and did a more gestural take using Winsor & Newton Artist quality Watercolors and soft round # 4 brush by Loew- Cornell on 140 lb Canson Watercolor paper. This 5-minute exercise helped loosen things up a bit for me and dissipate the discomfort I felt while using the pen directly on paper.
While my watercolors were out, I decided to do a full study, shadows and all. I stayed with what I saw before me in terms of lines, colors, details, light and shadow using the same watercolors, brush and paper as the gestural strawberries. If I wanted this to be perfectly realistic, I would have to spend a lot more time on it. So, I settled for more or less accurate and not overwork it to death.
Next, I pulled out my Faber-Castell ArtGRIP Aquarelle watercolor pencils and decided to deliberately push away from realism. I distorted the perspective of the bowl and the shapes of the strawberries as much as I felt comfortable doing. I had a lot more fun with coloring it in with the watercolor pencils and then blending with water. From the bowl to the seeds, I saturated the colors and made bolder marks and liked that it looked weird and still looked like a bowl of strawberries.
By now, I really wanted to eat the strawberries but resisted the temptation for just one more study using Faber-Castell ArtGRIP coloring pencils on Canson 50 lb smooth sketch paper. After a quick sketch with the HB 2 pencil, I started coloring. I wanted to find something in between the two watercolor studies I did, in terms of colors and shapes and this is where I ended up.
When I placed the studies next to each other, I saw the differences in the looks. I found that I like the colors soft, the lines steady and the reality slightly redefined.
Did you know that Creativebug is having a Black Friday sale? And that means if you sign up between 11/22 and 11/29, you get the first three months of subscription for just $1. This sale only happens once a year and it ends on 11/29!
At Creativebug you’ll find over a thousand classes, with new ones added every week, covering various types of crafts from Art and Design to Holiday and Party and almost everything in between
There are mixed media and art journaling classes as well. I have taught the following classes at Creativebug and currently preparing to shoot more classes early next year.
Here’s a tutorial to show you how to use a coloring book page in an art journal.
The coloring page I used is from “At the Beach”, a printable coloring book of fond beach memories It is a fun collection of 30 hand-drawn images that bring back memories of that carefree sun-soothed, surf-soaked beach vacation. It includes a bonus section of inspiration to help you bring the black-and-white pen drawings to life in full color!
When we lived in Florida, I didn’t think I could miss summer… ever! But when we moved north, I found cold weather for most of the year. Even though we have pretty beaches here too, the drive is longer and the water much colder. All of a sudden summer days and our trips to the beaches became a lot more precious to me.
As I washed sand off the beach toys, I felt that soon this summer too will be a thing of the past and we can only hold on to its memories. And I wanted to re-live these moments and cherish the fond memories we made. To do so, I compiled my drawings inspired by our beach vacations – things we saw, things we shopped for, things we did, and created a coloring book named At the Beach. At the Beach is a printable coloring book of fond beach memories. It includes a fun collection of 30 hand-drawn images that bring back memories of carefree sun-soothed, surf-soaked beach vacations. Plus, there’s a bonus section of inspiration to help you bring the black-and-white pen drawings to life in full color!
In this coloring book, you’ll findcute flip flops, stylish swimsuits, the dyed woven straw beach bag with raffia fringes which we ended up not buying as it wasn’t big enough, the rose colored sun glasses I bought at St. Maarten and many more. At the Beach will surely help you re-live YOUR beach vacations and enjoy the special summer memories a while longer.
I’ll email you the printable PDF within 24 hours of purchase. No shipping fee, no waiting for the mail to step into coloring bliss!
