Mixed Media – Page 8 – The Consulting Artist

Bookcases

A few days ago I shared a sketch I made during a drawing workshop. The sketch was of a bookcase and was drawn ‘blind’, which is to say that I only looked at the subject while drawing, not at the paper. The drawing was completed using a single line, and as luck would have it – the finished work fits nicely into a postcard sized mount.

I enjoyed drawing this and wanted to play with the shape some more, so I traced the outline onto some card using ink this time instead of pencil. Next I added some watercolour and more ink to the picture before mounting it.

Here they are side by side.

Update : This artwork is now sold.

Art is Currency

My friend Laurie Ruettimann inspired me again recently, she has a habit of doing so. As a small thank you for this latest inspiration, I sent Laurie one of my poppy sketches, and she wrote a short post titled Art is Currency, which referenced the sketch among other things.

This year my art has shifted to a different place. I’ve continued to develop my art based learning, and I’ve been more intentional (thanks Laurie) about offering some of my art for sale. Art is currency.

I recently celebrated my 50th birthday and with Carole’s encouragement and support a party was thrown. It was great fun – people were kind and generous to me in so many ways. I want to highlight a particularly delightful and artistic aspect of this kindness and generosity, hand made cards. I’m grateful for everything I have received and these cards are another powerful reminder. Art is currency.

Easily Broken

I’m giving a short talk on meditation at the Workplace Trends conference in London next week. Increasingly I’m making time to develop and use my art as a way of preparing visual aids in my work. Most of the visuals in next week’s talk are hand drawn and painted and I’m sharing one element of that with you now. Part of the talk focuses on human fragility in an emotional context. I designed this cutout – which I’ve titled Easily Broken – to illustrate this. My friend George LaRoque told me he likes the design so I’m going to give it to him when I see him in Paris soon.

I decided to develop the idea a little further and the one piece of art has now become a triptych. I added red, possibly to symbolise lifeblood, into version two, and then in version three I went darker. I hardly ever use black paint and on this occasion I wanted to stay with the monochrome of the cutout pieces. As you can see – I put a couple of the cutout pieces out of sync in this third version.

While mixing the acrylic for V2, this paint flower briefly appeared on the palette. I photographed it before it disappeared into the mix and I’m including it here as it too was easily broken.