Art Time Travel

Back in 2008 I had an art project which did not work out – I had tried sticking sequins to a canvas with glue which dulled the sparkly sequins. Rather than lose the canvas, and because I had already drawn the stencil onto it, I used modelling paste to build up a texture of my Denkyem stencil.

I was not sure what I was going to do with this or whether it would work out in the end. I thought maybe I would paint it one colour and then dry brush in some gold or silver over the top.

The last thing I posted about it, that is how the canvas looked. And then I got distracted by other things and/or forgot to post any further updates. I wasn’t sure myself what had happened with it, until I was cleaning up my art room and found the completed work in a box.

Now, it looks like this –

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I think it turned out pretty well in the end. :) You certainly cannot tell there are sequins under there, and the texture is really nice. The silver metallic paint helps it to jump out of the canvas. If I were to do it again, I might do a matt black underneath the silver and allow some of the black to show through in the lower areas, just to make the texture pop a little more.

You can read the original posts here – Work In Progress – and here – Short Update plus you can see another work I did with the Denkyem stencil here – Opinions Needed

About Snoskred, family, looking back, Snoskred Art, yay

The Art Room

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A couple of weekends ago we spent some serious time tidying up my art room, which had become a bit of a mess and a dumping ground for stuff that did not have a proper home. We also hung up a lot of art on the walls – some of it in order to hide where the previous people had pulled the paint off the walls when they removed some of their art work, which is why this next photo might seem like a slightly odd way of hanging art –

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The little frame you spy next to the tiger is specifically hiding one of those paint ripped off spots. Probably some people might think it is a weird way to display art, but those ripped off paint spots irritate me enormously and I actually kind of like the non-symmetrical aspect of this group of art.

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Over on this side, it is more about where the studs were in the wall than trying to hide anything, because this side of the room has no ripped off paint areas.

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This piece of art is an interesting one – it is actually similar to foil art and any photos I take do not really do it justice.

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In that photo above you see some stuff I have left on the table to sort through and find new homes for. Also some sparkly contact paper which I found at Kmart. I’ve used it to make some stickers of my Denkyem stencil which I’ve put on my laptop –

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There is also a strip of holographic duct tape that Sephy sent me once. If I recall correctly, he took me on a video walk of Walmart and when I saw this holographic duct tape I declared it must be posted to me. And so it was. Please excuse my still drying from just being wiped with an anti bacterial cloth laptop. :)

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In part this little tidy up was inspired by adult colouring in books becoming a thing, which is inspiring me to get back into art again. But also, it was inspired by things like me not being able to find all my wrapping paper and gift bags. These have now all been placed into one box –

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I love holographic things, as I think you can tell by the awesome 35 metre roll of wrap I bought from Costco. Here is a closer view of that!

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There you have a little tour of my art room, and you can expect to see some new projects appear here on the blog.

About Snoskred, Home, Snoskred Art, Who Is Snoskred, yay

Adult Colouring In & Art

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This post was inspired by this post – Free Write Friday: Doodling is taking me places… – written by Trudie over at My Vintage Childhood – The photos are of art that I have done myself, and also of the current state of my art room.

I was surprised on a quick search of my blog that I have never told the full story of my getting kicked out of art class in year 9. To tell the story I have to go back a little bit further, to primary school.

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When I was little, my parents quickly learned not to give me colouring books with things on the pages, because I would get deeply upset when I could not keep my colouring within the lines on the page. As I got older, I discovered that while I could imagine amazing things in my head, they could not be transmitted via my brain, down my arm, through my hand and fingers onto the paper. I could not draw.

Oh sure, I could make a stick figure, and some rudimentary shapes, but to draw what was in my head was totally impossible for me. This was incredibly frustrating. And yet, we had to do art as a subject in school. There was no choice. I loved paint, I loved colour, I was really good at collage and things like making jewellery, glitter balls, sequin art, gluing things to canvas, things like that. I just could not draw, not at all. Much of the time I was allowed to do my own thing rather than trying to draw things, once the teachers learned how frustrated and angry I would get.

Until year 9 in high school, that is. I had a teacher who believed that everyone could draw to a very high standard, if they tried hard enough. She pushed me to draw. And she pushed me. And she just kept on pushing until I snapped.

I forget what actually ended up happening. I forget what the exact breaking point was, or what I did – I’m guessing I tore up my paper, and possibly any other paper I could get my hands on, out of sheer frustration. I’m guessing there was crying, screaming and yelling.. I think I’ve buried what happened so deep inside that it will never be unburied even if I wanted it to be.

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What I do remember is the teacher snapped. She told me I was hopeless at art. That was the one thing she said nobody could be! She’d stood there in front of the class at the start of the year and told us, we all have an artist inside, some people just have to work harder than others to let them out. This fact was not news to me – I knew I couldn’t draw, and I’d told her that from the get-go.

Over the years in my art classes, I had found that art did not have to = drawing. I could do some amazing things with paint. It just did not resemble anything else. I said I would prefer not to draw and I would like to be allowed to do my own thing as in past years with other teachers. She said drawing was an important part of the course and because I would not do it, she told me that she was sending me to T2.

Funny, how t2 is now a store most people would love to be sent to. Back in those days, it meant detention. Every time I was supposed to go to art class, I would have to go to t2 detention instead. You had to work on something from your class there, but not painting or gluing or any of the cool things. I was limited to drawing. Yeah, right, like I was going to do that!

What I would do, each lesson, I would get all my colour pencils out of my pencil case. I would sort them into order – they each had a name and a number. I would sharpen them all. Then I would draw small boxes, colour them in, write the name of the pencil and the number next to the box. I did this for nearly 6 months of year 9. Finally art was over, and another class took the place of art on my schedule. THANK GOD. I was so bored, and there wasn’t much left of those pencils.

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Of course if someone tells you that you are no good at something, you really don’t want to be involved with that thing anymore. Year 9 was the last year art was a “forced” subject, and in year 10 I did not choose to do art as a subject. I also put away my colour pencils for good. I completely stopped any form of art for over 10 years, until I was a bit older and wiser, and I tried a ceramics class, which led back to painting.

As the years have gone by, I have found ways to be an artist without needing to be able to draw. There are loads of stencils you can print out. You can use stamps. Dot art is another great way to make art without needing to be able to draw. Things like ceramics and pottery can be hugely therapeutic without having to be able to draw. And if you want to do your own thing on a canvas, you can just play with colour until you like what you see.

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With Adult Colouring In becoming a thing, I have finally got my coloured pencils back out again. Adult colouring in books can be pretty expensive but never fear here are some great free printables to get you started – Color pages for MomFree colouring pages for adults. I am now able to keep my colouring within the lines, which makes it a relaxing and fun activity for me.

One of the first things I needed to do was to make a colour chart. That is something I have had a lot of experience with, lol. :) Though it has been a while and I made a mistake, so I’ll probably end up making another one. Sadly though these colour pencils do not have names on them, so I improvised and made some sticky labels, and my own names.

Over to You –

Are you into the new Adult Colouring In trend? What kind of art do you like to do yourself?

looking back, Snoskred Art

Work In Progress

So, with art, there are times when you can make *huge* mistakes, and yet still fix them with a bit of creativity. And this project is one of those.. :)

A long while back – before we moved here over a year ago – I started a project by painting a canvas pale green. I was intending to stick sequins to it and maybe make a butterfly out of it. Then we were moving, so I packed the canvas away. It was the first thing that jumped out at me when I opened the art box.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it now, but I still had sequins and I also had the stencil from this art project which I gave to my nephew for Christmas a long time ago. And what an absolutely kick butt painting that turned out to be (no, we didn’t add more dots, I just sealed it as you see it there in that post).

So I thought I would try sticking sequins to the Denkyem stencil shape. Unfortunately, glue and sequins do not seem to mix and they turned out not shiny. Oh NOES! What to do?

Use modelling paste to build up the canvas, and then paint over it in black, I think. And then dry brush in some silver or gold over the top.

Denkyem Project One

As you can see I am in the middle of this project, I may layer it up a bit more yet. Because you can still the the sequins at the moment.

Denkyem Project One

It’s been a hellish couple of days for me and I need to seek refuge in the Art. ;) Peace Out!

Snoskred Art

The Art Table

When we lived back in Adelaide some years ago, we bought a couple of ex-office tables from Mr Bankrupt. The tables were $29 each but they would have been worth a lot more originally. They were old and the tops were not perfect but they were solid. The bottoms of the tables were even more solid than the tops..

I’ve been using them for art tables for some time now just with some old material on top of them but when I decided to get serious about art again I wanted to cover at least one of them properly. So when we went shopping the other day I chose some pink cotton which is almost as tough as canvas itself.

Yesterday, The Other Half got out the staplegun and stapled first a layer of table cover material, then the pink stuff. And here is how it looked once he was done.

The Art Table

Yep, it is really pink! ;) And here is how it looks 24 hours later, with quite a few art projects already taking up space. I’ll tell you more about each project in the coming days.
The Art Table

I put down some newspaper and then a clean layer of a4 paper because I never am too sure about newspaper and whether the ink will transfer to something else. However this is not just a4 paper out of a fresh packet, all this has been used, either written on or printed on the other side. This is recycling, and of course once I am done with it all the paper will end up in the recycling bin.

I’ll show you the other table, which resides on the other side of my desk, once I have made it more presentable. At the moment it has a lot of stuff on it.

I’m playing with texture on a few of these projects, using modelling paste to create some different things. That is the big jar you can see on the table there. This is actually the last thing I was doing in the art class I was going to a while back so it kinda feels like a complete circle. I am also doing some stencilling.

I keep my paints on the other table, they are still inside a big container to keep them all neat. I mix up over that side, then once I have it how I want it, I move back to the pink table and paint.

I currently have 7 different works in progress there. I like to do a few at a time because you never know what you’re going to feel like working on that day.

Snoskred Art

Sequin Time!

Yay! I have begun to add the sequins to the Christmas Balls. For the first one, I have chosen a color scheme of Gold and Blue. The gold sequins have a kind of holographic or opalescent effect on them, as you can see from the photos.

Sequins part 1

The blue is a fair bit lighter than it appears in the photos. The flash seems to darken the color a bit.  You can see how the gold has elements of greens, blues, reds and pinks due to the holographic effect. Here is another shot from a bit of a distance.

Sequins part 2

So now it is just a matter of adding more sequins until I’m done. :) These will not be perfect, but that is part of the point. I think I will give this to one of my nephews.. :)

Snoskred Art

Shh.. Art In Progress

So The Other Half took me to a few places today where I could get me some Art supplies, and I have spent the afternoon doing some pre-lim stuff like putting some texture on a canvas and a couple of backgrounds. I don’t have any images for you yet as the light is pretty average right now but there will be pictures in a day or few. ;) I also got a lot of jewellery making supplies. I enjoyed making jewellery and I think it will be a good creative outlet for me..

Those who were in the Aussie Bloggers chat room last Sunday will know what I’m talking about when I say they had some Swarovski Crystal beads and I almost had me a little meltdown in the store. There were some screams of delight and happiness.

I got a beautiful pink cloth to cover my art table with, now I need to use something to cover that with as the Kitties seem to enjoy furring up that table. I almost chose *sparkly* pink cloth but then I decided that was not practical as I would spend too much time looking at it instead of creating art. ;)

I got four round polystyrene balls which I intend to turn into sequin Christmas ball decorations. They turn out a bit like a mirror ball only all sparkly. Today I glued the ribbon to them and here is a picture of them at stage one. I’ll keep showing you photos as the various stages happen. ;) The hard part is choosing a color scheme.Christmas Balls

Snoskred Art

Controversy in the blogosphere = my wall art.

Today’s been one of those days where I kinda wish I’d stayed in bed. There’s controversy afoot in the blogosphere. First over at Blogrhet, where I’ve got involved in a discussion about race. Second over at Thailand Gal and The Ravin Picture Maven where two of my favourite people seem to have had a falling out. Third, at Big Fat Deal, where a link to an article in the Boston Globe – Do we really need a law to protect fat workers – was posted – an article which is inspiring me for next week’s Hump Day Hmmm, for which I’m currently considering the title Fat Is The New Black.

On top of all this, the people across the road are playing rugby in the street, shouting and screaming and making a lot of noise, the dog next door is endlessly barking, the builders across the road start work at 6:30am and finish at 6pm making a hell of a racket all day plus there’s a constant engine running drone coming from that direction, not one decent place to live in the peaceful place I want to move to has been listed in the last 2 weeks, in order to counteract the noise from outside I have music playing very loudly in here (currently coldplay), some f*cknut stole my blog content and refuses to remove it, (see Meg’s great post Copyright and Plagiarism on Blogs for info on what to do when this happens) I missed seeing the space shuttle launch this morning because I slept in and I have the theme song from Mad Max 3 Beyond the Thunderdome by Tina Turner (we don’t need another hero, we don’t need to know the way home, all we want is life beyond the thunderdome) as well as the Eagles Hotel California (And she said ’we are all just prisoners here, of our own device’) alternating in my skull at loud volumes which can only mean one thing. What does it mean, I hear you ask?

Snoskred is possessed by the Devil.

Well, the Eagles Hotel California means that, anyway. They told me so when I was on a Baptist church camp once – that song = Satan. You heard it here first. Unless you heard it on your own church camp.

It’s making me tired, all this not understanding where each other is coming from. I feel like taking a nap. Of course the rugby playing shouting screaming dog barking builder racket is not going to allow me to do that. So, I’ve decided to take a day out from it here on the blog and by popular request post photos of all my wall art. Yeah we’re used to long posts here by now right? Well this one will be long because it’ll have a lot of photos, many of them not as good quality as I would like. But here we go anyway. Apologies for the sometimes odd angles and not brilliant picture quality however it isn’t easy to take pics of this stuff inside on a very thunderstormy day. And one of them is crooked but I don’t have the energy to go back and take the photo again, so just deal with it, ok? ;)

Now let us stop talking, calm the mind and look at pretty pictures. Or alternatively, you do that while I attempt to think positive thoughts, long for some peace and quiet and look for earplugs.

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There’s only one solution for this mood I’m in. I need to go sit in my recliner, and watch William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet at high volume on the surround sound and have a good bawl.. Catch you tomorrow. ;)

Angry Snoskred, Snoskred Art, wall art

Blog Keeping & Art Update

Wow, it’s been a busy week here. Just a few bits of housekeeping and an art update.

As far as the commenting goes, I’ve decided to take my time with it because after going through just 25 blogs, I’ve added 5 excellent ones to my google reader. These will be linked in the weekly wrap up.

So you might be wondering what makes me add a blog to my google reader? 95% of the time it is because the blogger has “it” – it being a mysterious thing that makes me want to know more about them and read more about them.

What are some of the annoying trends in the blogging world that I have picked up after just 25 blogs? There seems to be a new plug in where you hover over a link and it pops up a preview box. This sounds nice in theory but it makes everything go very slow here on my system, and to be honest is just really annoying. If I want to click on a link, I’m going to click, I don’t need a preview. :) It also seemed to make those blogs very slow in loading, to the tune of anywhere between 2-5 minutes. I think it’s called snap or snapshots. Say no to it, bloggers. It seems to be evil.

In other blogging trends, you may have noticed a trend towards “monetize your blog”. I’ve been to some blogs with more ads than blog content. That’s not going to happen here, however.. That money has gone toward an important new project which I can’t announce yet. ;) Believe me I am hanging out to launch it, so as soon as I can say anything I’ll let you know.

WordPress blogs look fantastic. Sephy and I have been considering setting one up for some time now to try it out and play with it, so we did. On closer inspection it seems to be some kind of elaborate scam to get people to pay money for things blogger does for free. I could be wrong about that and WordPress people don’t line up to hit me over the head with things, but it seems like everything costs money, even down to how much space you get for your blog unless you want to host a wordpress on your own space – which you also have to pay for. Blogger does this for free :) we’ve got it good blogger people. If you’re using WordPress can you take a moment to comment on how it all works?

I’m seriously considering a blog template change. I’m not in love with what I have now however it is functional and it works. If I can get a larger picture up there that might be enough to make me happy. I don’t like that the images have to be so thin.

While in keeping you up to date mode, I currently have many art works in progress. You can click on any of the photos for a bigger view. In this picture you can count 9 paintings in progress.

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You can see 5 stacked on top of each other – the pink one completes the set of 5 which I am doing as cardboard dragging. I’m going to take some pics of how that’s done so that I can write a post about it. You guys out there might be inspired to do some works of your own. It is so simple. ;) Here’s a close up of the pink one, which I am seriously crazy about already and this is just the base coat.

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The painting below is the final completed version of the painting for my nephew, which had just been freshly sealed when I took the shot so the flash reflected a little. There’s nothing white on the painting. I asked you guys for opinions on this 69 days ago, wow, how time flies!

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So what am I up to for the rest of the day? I have to cook dinner, I am going to watch some West Wing, comment on a few blogs, and most important of all, look at some hotel packages in Sydney. This month is my Birthday month and Mum is going to pay for us to visit Sydney for a weekend (or midweek might be better value, because I am not my sister) and also IKEA. YAY! I’m seriously writing a huge list of things I want to get there. Laundry Baskets are number one on the list right now, followed closely by AA batteries. They had packs of 10 AA’s for $2 and they last for ages, and my cordless mouse chews up batteries and spits them out. Yes, I mouse too much.

I saw a hotel package which includes 30 minutes in a flotation tank. I’d love to try that. It’ll probably be somewhere in the CBD and I’ll take my camera and take heaps of pictures. We might get to the zoo but I’d like to hang out at Darling Harbor and go back to Sydney Aquarium myself – looking at fish without a snorkel. I don’t know if we’d have time for both. For those of you who have never been to Sydney, Darling Harbor is just incredible. There’s no describing it.

blogrolls, commenting on blogs, feed readers, IKEA, Snoskred Art