23 February 2012

IF - Fluid





Watercolour paints and inks on gessoed mountboard ©Caroline Soer 2010


This one gets another outing today for Illustration Friday's 'Fluid".  Sadly, the fluid is oil :(.   Originally titled 'Ripple',   I painted this as one of a trio of small paintings for IF's collaboration with Ripplesketches Blog to raise money to help the animal victims of the Deep Water Horizon Gulf Oil Spill.






Ripple II©Caroline Soer 2010


Ripple III©Caroline Soer 2010

22 February 2012

Underwear art





Take one pair of laddered tights, a piece of paper and some inks and paints.........and look at the exciting effects you can produce!















These rainbow pictures were created with a pair of old tights (yes, seriously!).  I ripped the tights to create long ladders and holes of varying sizes (very satisfying process in itself!) and then fastened the fabric with sticky tape across a previously stretched, dampened sheet of heavy-weight watercolour paper.  Next, I  poured acrylic and watercolour inks and added brushloads of watercolours randomly across the paper as the fancy took me!  I then used a spray bottle to disperse the colours. The photos above were taken whilst  the pigments were still very wet.





When completely dry, I removed the tights and cut some of the paper strips and the remainder into smaller squares and rectangles.  Subtle patterns remained on the paper.












An interesting process!  One point to note: over-saturated areas created big pools of pigment that during the drying process contributed to the contracting of some the webs, so that they escaped their 'moorings' and as such were of no use at all in the experiment!   Of course, when dry, the colours were less intense, but nevertheless, the effects were intriguing -  I see nets, trees and beaches in there!   As with the oil pastels in my previous post I stuck the pieces into a sketch book.  Who knows, these squares and rectangles may find their way into my work one day.


So ,what better way to put those laddered tights and stockings to use?  I hope you might try it too - recyle and gain some colourful artwork!















20 February 2012

threaded comments






It seems I am not alone in thinking it would be nice to be able to reply directly to comments on my blog and I was grateful to Silke  for pointing out that this is indeed possible!  So, I have today enabled the feature and will try engaging with my readers through threaded commenting !  If you leave a comment I will try to reply there directly at the post,  and if you like, you can subscribe to a thread to keep track of a conversation - let's see how it goes!


19 February 2012

Oil pastels with collage






Not a lot of new work has come out of my studio this week  - I missed Illustration Friday :( - but rather than not show anything at all,  I've decided to share a few colourful experimental pieces I've played about with over the last few weeks.  The above little pieces are clips created from a larger work created from small shapes torn from magazine pages with added oil pastel work.  No particular design in mind - just going with the flow....very liberating!  Thanks to Carolyn Saxby for a reminder of this process - I worked from this tutorial by Sue Dove.


Here you can see I have pasted shapes torn from magazines onto a sheet a plain paper.  I did start with  colours in mind... but then I just worked the oil pastels fairly randomly around the shapes.



this is the colourful finished page which I then flipped over and divided up by cutting into the page from the back - that way you don't know exactly where you'll be snipping!



I hope these little rectangles and squares might be inspiration for something in the future..!





I enjoyed the process so much that I had to make more!





 Sliced up sections from the original page make for interesting mini abstracts.




I pasted them into a sketchbook as reference - perhaps for future paintings or textiles.  I've used a few for little additions to handmade cards and collages.  And if they don't get used I think they make a lovely display!




If you've got a set of oil pastels I recommend you have a go!  By the way, the same exercise can be done with paint too - just layer watercolours or acrylics for similar effects!   Have a go!!



Stay tuned for more experiments with inks, watercolour and underwear next!!!!

10 February 2012

Port Dickson


We drove down to Port Dickson last weekend - it's only an hour's drive.  We stayed at a hotel by this lovely long beach!




Hotel balconies made an interesting shot!


Enjoyed beachcombing.




 

Love this purple seaweed!





Poolside for over 18's - nice and quiet!  Playing with my camera - focusing on the oranges and reds.


Lovely gardens


 Palm trees laden with coconuts.

Focusing on the yellow of the coconuts,  fading the other colours.
 



Tropical pretties.




We walked up a really steep hill to reach Cape Rachado Lighthouse.


 The view from the top.









 Some of the lovely Trochus shells I found.








A gorgeous sunset at the end of the day - perfect view with a glass of wine in hand!  Have a good weekend!





7 February 2012

IF - Suspense


 'Suspense' ©Caroline Soer 2012

Suspense is the theme this week for Illustration Friday.  Will the little fishing boat make it safely though the storm?
Thinking about it,  I could probably have taken almost any watercolour painting for this theme as there's usually an element of suspense or tension with this medium - especially on paper that's been prepared with gesso !  The paint has a mind of its own and does all kinds of unexpected things as it runs over the slippery surface!  Certainly not a technique if you like total control over your artwork!

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