As a part of the Tanuary activities last month, I also tried some tea and coffee dying of watercolor paper to see how that works. I learned that either one works, you just need to leave it in the mix for a long time. I can not wait to find some time to watercolor on these papers.
Work was extra challenging in January, but I caught a few moments on the weekends to do several drawings on tan paper.
Another order for a Christmas gift.
In April-May I began a massive clean out of my art studio. After over 40 years of collecting projects and resources, I have decided I have “been there, done that” and I know what I want to concentrate on from this point forward.
So nieces and nephews were the benefactors of all sort of fun things, but also, there were a few projects I really wanted family to have. While I donated a large amount of raw children’s furniture to a new church nursery, I held out a few pieces for my nieces and nephew. This was the result.
This table top was their Grandma’s farm with the chairs celebrating a childhood cat (a nod to their daddy – and Grandma still has cats on the farm) and the hummingbirds ever present in the summer.
I did work on the nature journal a bit this past Winter/Spring. I love our birds and critters but this year we did not feed them. There was a scary disease going through this part of the country. Thankfully, I did not see it with our birds, but the DNR asked us to not feed them in case it was spreading.
The kids continued to ask for more classes, so in February I sent them all watercolor paints, brushes and paper. We had loads of fun as I taught them how to use their new tools. In the meantime, I continued on with my own project of painting family memories. I am trying to get looser with my sketching, making it less of a detailed and frustrating project.
One of my favorite things is using old black and white photos from my Dad’s family farm. I want to amass a large group of these. Maybe a picture book with stories in the future.
I like to work on a tan sketchbook in January – although I was too busy with nieces and our weekly zoom coaching sessions to do the full Tanuary challenge on social media. We had a lot of fun, even so.
I challenged the kids to use different surfaces, including cardboard pieces and talked about charcoal, pencil, crayon, pen etc. It was good drawing practice for all involved.
At the end of 2020 one of my final projects of the year was to create the 2021 family calendar. This one absolutely annihilated me. It is a tribute to the first sibling we have lost in my family.
I printed off the normal 8 for siblings and Mom, but I also printed off 5 for my brother Aaron’s children. Then every month I write each of them about the stories that are held in the photos of their Daddy and his childhood. It has been a hard year, but I will not regret that I did this.
I continued to do some art after the first of the year because my nieces were begging me to continue teaching and coaching them, but I lost my spark for a number of months and am just beginning to get it back. So expect some fun posts as I catch up on what I have been doing.
Flexing My Wings 