First of all thank you so much for the class. I thought instead of posting my project at the end of the class, I post while doing the exercises.

I'm not really afraid of white paper BUT unless told so, I usually never just play around. I might play around with new techniques but usually with a theme in mind. So just to paint something abstract (or start out this way) is not easy for me. But to keep in mind that this doesn't have to look good and it is just to see how things react with each other or what they can do really helps.

I do a lot of watercolor but for the first exercise I also got some materials out, I hardly ever use:

Creativity exercises (all done) - image 1 - student project

I keep on buying these artist pens but then don't do that much with them...The watercolor pencils are super old (20+ years) and I don't really know what to do with them. At the beginning I used them for details but now I find it much easier just to use a small brush so I haven't done anything with them in years...The water-soluble wax pastels (Jaxon aquarell) is something I discovered in Germany a few years back and bought them out of curiosity but couldn't find much how to use them so besides trying them out when I bought them, I haven't done anything anymore.

Here are my exercises for the first one, I had a blast. I also find it easier to paint/let go on loose paper instead of a sketchbook. I used cheap watercolor paper for these: Creativity exercises (all done) - image 2 - student project

What I discovered: I liked the soft feel of the pens and watercolors down left. These are dark grays and not black. My favorite part was to paint with the watercolor pencils/pastel in wet paint so for the last one (down right I just started with a puddle of clean water) and I got to admit with this one, I had mountain tops in mind (the other ones just kind of happened like they were supposed too.) which then turned into water. I like the two colors together and the texture the watercolor pastels/pencils are creating:

Close up: Creativity exercises (all done) - image 3 - student project

This class certainly got me out of my "burn out" phase, looking forward to the next exercises :)

After looking through the other student projects I decided to use a sketch book after all, I had a new one laying around for years. So this is my cover page. "Der Weg ist das Ziel" is German and translates into "The journey is the goal":

Creativity exercises (all done) - image 4 - student project

I hate doing self portraits but here they are, drawing with my left hand was more difficult as I thought but it got better with a little bit of practice:

Creativity exercises (all done) - image 5 - student project

Painting after a song. The one on the left is one of my favorites "On we Go" by Nancy McCallion. It is a Celtic upbeat song with some dark lyrics (about a crime). Which I haven't thought about until I listened to it for the second time. Upper right is "Sorry" by Solas also a Celtic Music Group. Another favorite but very sad somehow I ended up painting the whole lyrics in the picture. I want to do just abstract but somehow something else is happening..

Creativity exercises (all done) - image 6 - student project

Creativity exercises (all done) - image 7 - student project

And one more by Solas "Ghost of Tom Joad" and I also did an interpretation of the lyrics. I'm not a big fan of acoustic music so I couldn't think about a song to play with no lyrics:

Creativity exercises (all done) - image 8 - student project

Changing an object. For this one I chose a flower. Top right is the original. Down right I painted with watercolor pastels into wet water. And on the left something more abstract. Besides the couple spost with the strong pink I used watercolor pencils which gave it a very soft feel but were hard to blend (might be the paper too...). This whole exercise was more difficult as I thought :

Creativity exercises (all done) - image 9 - student project

And my last exercise: The mistake exercise. I decided to do a turtle and somehow really had trouble painting it (kind of looks odd). I did my mistake and then I was a little bit shocked how close the scribbles were together. So for a moment I was like oh no! I saw an octopus head right away and started coloring it in but then decided to take a picture first so you can see the before and after better. The first one was taken at night time.

Creativity exercises (all done) - image 10 - student project

And here is the finished piece. I tried to tie the two together so I added more watercolor pastel into the turtle and turned the rest of the scribbles into a branch with purple flowers. During the class I actually got quite fond of my watercolor pastels :). The funny thing is I like the octopus better as my turtle and it went so much faster, I didn't expect that. Actually this is my favorite piece I created during this class:

Creativity exercises (all done) - image 11 - student project

Thanks again for the class! I will certainly do more from your classes :).

Sandra

Watercolor Artist and Illustrator

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