Hello everyone,

It was weeks that I wanted to attend this class but I lacked time to experiment and let it go.

How I came here (seen the light) :

After an artblock of many years I started again to darw and paint about a year ago (or maybe less).

But I noticed that I was obsessed by recovering my drawing skills from 20 years ago (before I stopped drawing) and my approach was too academical, classic and too far away from what I did back then.
I felt I lost all my univers, my inner world, imagination and so on.
It was hard to face it but the muscle of imagination had shrink after years of full-time-"regular"-job-to-make-ends-meet. Sight.

The other day I pulled out my old acrylic and watercolor ink to test them for the firts time in 20 years and I had just fun with it, listening to psychedelik music and followinf droping and pouring of the medium to draw on it with a pigma micron 0.005.

Then I remembered this class I saved in y profile and... here I am! :)

First exercice

For the first exercice I decided to use a watercolor paper in order to fully explore all my mediums.
Watercolor is maybe one of my favorite technique and this time I mixed it with (almost) all I had in my studio :

Firts I began with acrylic and watercolor ink from Pebeo (the one I've juste tried once, 20 years ago...). I made wet on dry and wet on wet, light touches, heavy ones...
Then I switch to chinese ink. Alone or with water, on wet, on dry, on wet watercolor-ink...
Before carrying on with watercolor and wet medium, I decided to doodle with a white waterproof luminocolor from Staedler to see how watercolor will react on top of it.
And I loved it!!
It left a white trace underneath the ink and watercolor!
Finally I added a few Windors & Newton classic watercolor to light it up with yellow just before it went dry, observing how it'll turn out.
Because everything was still a bit wet I poured salt on it and let it dry before playing further with other tools.

Once everything was dry, I played with watercolor pencil, chinese ink with nib, pignma micron 0.005, Faber Castel and Windsor and Newton inkpencil, white Molotov pen, made some warious lines with my pentel, blended it with a pencil blender, used pastel (where it was still wet it was very interesting!), metalic gouache, Tombow felt pen and at the end, I played with the texture of a gray graphite pencil.

I must say that I had a lot of fun, mixing it, playing with all my tools, re-using some I left month or years ago.

Looking forward for the following exercice!

Lucy Dreams unleashed - image 1 - student project

2nd one - Title page "Lucy Dreams Unleashed"

Once again I had a lot of fun.
I recovered the imagination I lost years ago and part of my psychedelic univers/inspiration came out naturally.

Everything I made seamed kind of obvious to me : no judgement, no hunt for perfect technique.
Just the expression of what the title meant to me.

Lucy Dreams unleashed - image 2 - student project

Third-ish Exercices : Self-portraits and music

I've never drawn eyes closed before and it was fun to see how this exercices really creates interesting style of drawing.
I love it!

Lucy Dreams unleashed - image 3 - student project

Drawing with my lef hand was a challenge I wanted to do for a long time but procrastination got me...
And doing it was very stressing, amusing, surprising, amazing I dare say.
At first I was completely lost with my sensation, squales, eyemarks but taking my time, slowing down a little proved me that I could handle it.
Not perfectly, but quite correctly (the last test I made is the one on the bottom left).

Lucy Dreams unleashed - image 4 - student project

When it came to the music exercice I didn't know what to choose because I listen to so much different kind of music, from classical, medieval, world music, jazz, Metal, Pop...
And I didn't want to direct the exercice and my tests with a (too) personnal choice.
I wanted it to be random.
So I put on all my Mp3 music files randomly and did the exercice for 3 songs/pieces of music, not knowing what will come first, second and third.

As a result : it was fun to grab quickly sommething that expressed the colors of the music, rythm variations, voices, atmospheres and so on.

And moreover this exercice made me discover that I could see the colors of the music.
I kind of suspected that I had synesthesia, but wasn't too sure because I didn't take time to really, seriously test it.
I remembered that as a teenager I recorded music by color in order to have audiotapes for each atmosphere of the day. Gray day? Gray audiotape in my walkman. Dynamic day? Red adiotape and playlist.
But it was more than thirty years ago and I left all this part of me by growing up.

Thanks to this exercice-s (plurial because they all do the trick) I can bring back things I thought were lost for years!!
What a joy!

Lucy Dreams unleashed - image 5 - student project

So I'm very excited to see what's next!

4th exercice - Create a chaotic sketchbook page

For this exercice I decided to pick an image of a swan because I have the project to illustrate "the wild Swans " (the Andersen fairy tale).

Lucy Dreams unleashed - image 8 - student project

I strated with a simple sketch to study the form and volume of this magestic bird (and quite agressive as you may know if you had the infortunate event to go by a mother with her children, or even by a single male swan... hum).
Because the shape of it is very curvy I tried to appoach it with a more angular perspective (1). That I enjoyed very much!

The all white animal is also very interesting to work with stripes and hatchings (2), even if I failed on some areas on which I applied white Molotov pen.
Besides this error and its correction gave me an idea for a later sktech on this page.

As I love sketching with ink (with a nib or a brush) I made a few test with my pentel (3, 4 and 5), trying to do it with as little lines as possible.
And I really enjoy the result of the number 3 et 5.

It gave me the idea of drawing it with pencil but with a single line but it didn't turn out exactly as I wanted. It could be a good idea but with a slower gesture.
I'll try again later.

Thanks to my error on hatchings in the number 2 and the use of white Molotov pen, I tried to draw a swan with just the brush side of a light blue Tombow marker and added white fluid all over (6).
I'm desapointed that it can't be seen very well on my scan... but I quite enjoy the aesthetic finish.

For the 7th one, I drew the swan with a white waterproof Lumocolor permamnent from Staedler and applied watercolor on it. First a pale blue on dry paper, then a darker one and on this wet color I did just little dots of magenta.
The texture and result is one of my favorite on this sketchbook page! I simply love it, and it gave me inspiration and idea for the illustration of this fairy tale!
I find it so dreamy!

The last one (8) is the use of what whas left on my pentel water brush pen. Just a draw with a rapid gesture. I quite enjoy the final result (not as much as the 7th one) and the dreay effect it does.

5th exercice - Make a mistake on purpose and have fun with it

Because of a tendinitis I haven't really drawn for days. But I tried my best with this sketching, trying to bridge some gaps in face drawing and shadind technique.
Once I was fairly satisfied with (not completely, but I got to work more on some techniques), I grab a red pencil, closed my eyes and draw a line.

It happends that I loved it. My all "grey and white" sketching took more live and contrast with the long red line from top to bottom on the right of the page.

So I decided to make king of poneytail with it.
I added red on his face as in a war-painting and dark background to make the whole "pop" from the page.

This exercice was very interesting and intense in a way, because it's really hard to spoil something you made at your best.

Its makes you face your fear. Very liberating in a way.
It's like somehow I understood that whatever mistake I may do, it's still the expression of something I have to say, it's still art.
No the "prefect idealized" art I wanted to, but more "real" more personnal and sometimes aestheticly more intesrting.
If I hadn't done this mistake, what would have I done?
Put some more shades? And then what? I had no real idea of what to do next, what could be great to push forward.

This mistake made me really finish this skecthing, thta's not a finisehd piec of fine art, but it's a good piece a research for a skecthbook.

Lucy Dreams unleashed - image 9 - student project

Conclusion

This lesson is more than great, I could never be thankful enough to Marie-Noëlle Wurm.
Her approach and exercices made me go out the grid, find back my imagination, inspiration, confidence...
A great lesson in art as in life.
Thank you so very much!!!

Lucy Dreams

Sophie Galinier Dreamer and illustrator

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