Showing posts with label Derwent Academy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Derwent Academy. Show all posts

Sunday, July 13, 2014

Journal 52, Creating Art at the Speed of Life, Derwent Academy

Journal 52, Week 28, Technology. As you must realize, a person with three blogs MUST love technology. Since I retired, I have jumped, with gusto, into the Internet's abundance of learning tools, groups, websites, challenges, dares, and so on. I love every one of them. Sometimes, just sometimes though, I get a bit overwhelmed by everything I have committed myself to. I was afraid that retirement meant boredom or even death from the lack of mental stimulation so I plowed into everything I could find to do. During my working years, I never had the time for my artistic interests. No more. If this sounds like a negative post, it really isn't. It's just an explanation for this journal page. My guess is that most of you can relate to this :)

Then, I finally finished the lessons from Creating Art at the Speed of Life by Pam Carriker. I loved doing each one of these. I learned so much and I would recommend it to anyone beginning art journaling. So many techniques were used and many times I just used her suggested materials and just went off on my own. The last lesson, however, was difficult for me so I kept putting it off. We had to do a self portrait with a lot of smearing of the black and then pulling back with an eraser to get subtractive works. Well, I finally did it and almost hesitate to post this because I hope I don't really look like this:
And, finally, I have shared this on Facebook, but if you don't follow me there, you should know about this. Derwent Academy is a site that, for free, offers art lessons. If you complete all six of the assignments and pass them, you get a diploma and a tin of your choice from Derwent. So, for me it was a win win win situation. I love taking classes and I love pencils and I love FREE. This is the set I got and they are beautiful pencils. They are a cross between colored pencils and a pastel. So soft but more precise than pastels. And, they also blend with liquid gamsol.