Hopes and Fears

My biggest motivation for taking the Fabulous Flowers class is another chance to learn from an artist I admire, Elizabeth St. Hilaire.

And...the thought of painting with bits of recycled painted papers makes me kind of giddy. I've been saving interesting papers, book pages, and ephemera for years and I can't wait to start painting them....and painting with them.

Another motivating factor for taking the class is that I'm terrible at painting. But the idea of doing a loose underpainting then collaging over it seems rather hopeful...and at the very least a fun way to face my fear. I'm kind of chuckling....because I'm actually not very good at doing anything loose....so we'll see how this goes.

I've used my gel plate only once....and it was a hot mess. I've seen so many artists use their painted papers in such creative and interesting ways and I'm looking forward to learning and practicing the techniques. A gel plate is a squishy slab that you can roll paint on with a brayer, create textures, then make mono prints layering colors as you go. There will be much more on gel prints in the next few weeks when I really get rolling.....pun intended.  

This image of "painted papers" is from Elizabeth's online gel plate course...I just adore all the rich colors and textures.  In the class we will create a "palette" of colors that we'll tear up into bits to paint our Fabulous Florals.  How fun it that!

These sweet paper painted birds by Elizabeth just make me melt.

I'm thinking a fabulous bird is in my future too!