Doodles and dots are everywhere around here! I've taken the evenings to doodle most nights but the dots are once again something I really want to do. During the mid-afternoon, usually after lunch, I pick up the tools and paint. I now have quite a few art canvases in different sizes, which means I can doodle, dot and do ripped paper art on them. Yay!
I glanced at my art table when I took the above photo. Wow, what a mess. But I love it!
It shows that I've been busy with many different kinds of things. Yes, you DO see tea bags on there. I take the used tea out and save the paper. Tea bag art is a thing, trust me. Google it if you'd like to get inspired yourself. I like gathering up a lot of them and haven't had much pull toward doing water color on them yet. When I do, I will definitely share the result here.
I tried Papier-mâché recently using glue paste and ripped up newsprint. The bowl came out really cool looking and although it's far from perfect, I kinda love it. It's very delicate which makes me love it even more. The bottle, however, did not make it and broke into pieces as I was trying to remove it. I will revisit this art form again soon. I think I just like getting messy.
Below are the dot painted canvases so far. The white background was first and I was disappointed in how it looked. Painting the canvas black before dotting was a game-changer. Definitely the way to go when using canvases for dots.
While doing the very last doodle for 2023, close to midnight, I created something unexpected. Normally I just doodle stuff and whatever comes out is cool but almost always very abstract. This piece came to life when I tried to get a dot off of a tool I was using and it wouldn't go, even with a paper towel. So I smeared it kind of, on paper (the spot of orange in the center). After it dried I studied it for a few minutes and thought it would be fun to doodle it. I really can't just put anything aside without some thought.
Fox in a Sled" was born. I might frame this one.
And of course there were doodle disasters that I was going to rip up but I really do have more ripped piece failures than one piece successes at the moment. I decided to do something different and drew some shapes on the back of the not so great looking doodles and will use them in future projects just like the ripped pieces.
One of the things I like to do when I doodle and have been doing this for years, is to separate the page and make little doodles of different things within the circle, square, triangle. They normally take a few evenings to complete depending on the size of the paper. This is 5.5 x 8 inches and took about 8 hours in total to complete.
It gives me a chance to practice things, like circles and spacing with lines. It's also just really fun to figure out what to put within the spaces. If you look closely, in the center (with "peace" attached to the side), you can see a house with a slanted triangle roof and a big balloon floating by. This was not planned. It just evolved. I LOVE when that happens!
I'm sure I'll have more to share next week but just in case I don't, enjoy the journey as it unfolds this year.
Enjoy the journey.
In gratitude and blessings,
Cindy aka EarthMotherMosaics
