Incredible Weekend - Intuitive Arts Course

What an incredible weekend I've had! I booked myself onto an intuitive arts course I heard about on the Facebook grapevine hoping to push the boundaries of what I've been doing and break into a more artful rather than crafty direction but I did not expect to take the incredible or intense journey that I have! I will try and explain the rollercoaster of emotions I have been on and show you my work in progress but I cant possibly do it justice so bear with me.

 So this is how I started out. Lots of freehand mark making and lots cool colours. I used pastel, markers, acrylic paint and tissue paper to make these random marks with things including my hands, a spatula, and a natural sponge. I sprayed the whole thing heavily with water to create drinks and runs in the paint.

This is how I left the piece at the end of the first day. I decided to add in some more warm colours and used plenty of paint and water to create lots of drips, rotating the canvas each time.

I was so psyched at the end of the first day. I felt like I had had so much fun and was excited to experiment and progress to see what was hiding in my picture.

 After guidance from Jane (the artist who was teaching the course) I added some paint from tester pots of house paint to create quiet spaces on the canvas. I used white as well as cream and blended the edges out with a cloth. At this point I still had no idea what the canvas was going to become or which way up it was going to end.

I rotated the canvas into a landscape position and added pinky purple circles with using a cue tip and peachy coloured dots also with a cue tip as well as light pink dots and smears with a natural sponge.

The canvas looked quite disjointed so taking advice again and homogenised everything with a while glaze which brought the piece together.

As I went out to lunch I noticed the larger of the figures looking out at me and then spotted the tiny figure reaching out too. This is the point at which I was reduced to tears. I had a miscarriage in March this year (2017) and what I saw was my lost baby reaching out to me across a body of water. However, Jane pointed out to me that there was clearly a road or pathway that my little person was pointing to.

This is how my work finished up. I could have carried on and on but I ran out of time. I added the dark border and dry brushed white paint on top to soften the edges. I added white house paint to the figures to pick them out of the background and when around the smaller one with white paint dry brushing the outer edges to create a glow. I also added a charcoal outline to both to make them pop. I also tried to make the divide between the figures more water like with oranges and yellows.

From the sound of my write up it sounds like I very easily made all of these decisions myself and easily but once I found my figure I felt very lost about how to continue with my work and got a huge amount of support and guidance from Jane to help me bring out the focal points.