ArtyFartyAnnie

 Loved the June ScrawlrBox - Derwent watercolour pencils in earthy colours and luscious Jackman's Pearlescent Watercolour Pots in shimmering magical colours which mixed together with surprising results. Here's my response to the challenge ... And I filmed the process if you're interested to see how it came together ... Been AWOL for some time, but hoping to start catching up on art classes now - watch this space! Annie xx

 Hello Fellow Deskers,  Remember me?! It's been almost two months since I linked up with What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday, or in fact posted anything at all on my blog, so I'm looking forward to a catch-up with what everyone's been up to. I hope everyone's ok in these peculiar times we're still going through. Join us over at Stamping Ground , where our Hostess Extraordinaire Julia always offers a friendly welcome. Here's my desk today, where I've been playing with the contents of my June ScrawlrBox - the challenge for this month was "Ethereal Entity", and you're supposed to use only the contents of the box, but I cheated and used different paper because I needed more space to play in.  Right, I'm off to Julia's to link up now - see you there!  Annie xx

 I'm very much enjoying Paint Your Heart & Soul again this year, though I've fallen a bit behind at the moment. Week 16 with Emma Petitt was such an inspiration - I love her use of colour and the techniques she showed us and I particularly enjoyed the way she encouraged us to paint the hands HUGE instead of shying away from them. Although I copied Emma's composition completely, which I don't normally like to do, I still learned a lot and was very happy with my finished painting. The whole process felt very relaxed and liberating from beginning to end. We started with a very bold and colourful underpainting, then went on to a charcoal sketch, then applied acrylic paints with large brushes in a very loose style, allowing parts of the underpainting to show through. I think I still need to work on the faces a bit, but I didn't want to get too fussy, so I may come back to that later. 

Whenever I have an hour or so to play in my room just lately, I've been working on another page in "This is Not a Book" by Keri Smith, who also wrote Wreck This Journal, which I really enjoyed - see a flick-through of my finished WTJ here .  This new book is a bit different, and I'm finding it more of a challenge, but it's a lot of fun and I'm making up my own rules as I go along. Each page has a prompt, such as "This is an Impermanent Object" or "This is a Thought Garden". Here's the page I completed yesterday, This is a Challenge ... It's very liberating to work in these books - because they're just a bit of fun, the paper is rubbish, it's not meant to be a work of art, there's no pressure, it's just playtime and it's quick. There's a playlist on my YouTube channel called This is Not a Book where I'll be putting all my process videos as I work through this book - check it out and maybe you'll want ...

 Hello Fellow Deskers and Bloggy Friends, It's been an age - other stuff getting in the way so I haven't had time to properly join in with WOYWW for weeks and I miss my weekly snout around other people's crafty spaces. Here's mine, where I have the contents of my latest Scrawlr Box hoping to get time to play later today. Number One Son has just left ten minutes ago, having stayed with us for a fortnight after coming back to the UK from Portugal. It had been over two years since I'd last seen him this time and don't know when I'll see him again, so I'm feeling a bit sorry for myself this morning. On the bright side, how lovely to see some sunshine, isn't it? I spent the day yesterday planting up my pots in the back garden, listening to the birds and bees being busy.  Number Two Son and I have been making a puppet and streaming the process on Twitch TV. Here he is, almost finished, he's actually a caricature of said son and does look very like him...

 For today's portrait for the 30-day challenge (currently more likely to be a 90-day challenge!), I was working from a photograph of Marlene Deitrich. It was one of those moody, dramatically-lit, black-and-white movie-star shots, and I wanted to try and reflect that brooding, femme fatale quality that she was famous for. I was frustrated that I couldn't get the likeness and didn't really have time to tinker with it any more, but it was fun trying out a different style and using just markers and one 7HB pencil. 

 Waaaaaaaaayyyy behind in my 30-day challenge now, but still enjoying working on the beautiful and interesting faces of these 30 inspiring women, from photo references originally pulled together by Olga Furman for her Ode to Women challenge.  This time I had a go at Diana Ross, just a quick charcoal sketch on cold-pressed paper ... I found this angle quite difficult to do - she's holding her head at a slight angle and tilted slightly back - but it's all really good practice and I enjoyed trying! I also enjoyed experimenting with three different types of charcoal - willow sticks, compressed charcoal and charcoal pencil - they were all useful for different stages of the work. Blending stumps, kneaded eraser and my fingers were also very handy for creating shadows and highlights.  In the reference photo, Diana's expression was really interesting - to me, she seemed thoughtful, a bit wary, almost challenging - I think my version has a very different expression, but I'm stil...