An artist buddy of mine was involved in #funadaydundee last year and her posts were coming up on my new feed on instagram. This sparked an interest and I thought I would look into how you get involved. I wasn't sure if I would be allowed as I don't live in Dundee, however I soon discovered that anyone can take part and you don't have to live in Dundee.
This projects aim is to encourage creativity throughout the month of January. You can bake, cook, create poetry, take photographs, up-cycle, tell stories or do art work anything creative really and you record what you've been up to by taking photos and uploading it using the #funadaydundee2021 to facebook or instagram.
I decided to join as I thought it would be a great way to start the year on a creative note and also get myself back into the swing of my art practice as I had taken time off for the festive period. I also want to connect what I am doing for #funaday to my Practical Skills Unit to keep a good flow of work. So the focus of this will be on the landscape.
At first I was unsure about what I wanted to do but I began to think about my visit to Skye last March and how i feel in love with the place, I had already completed two paintings of Skye for Graded Unit last year but there were other images I though would be lovely to portray.
I had bought watercolour postcards with some Christmas money I had been given so I thought about the theme 'Postcards from Skye'. This got me excited and I began looking through my photographs that I had taken on my visit to Skye and decided which ones I would paint. The image below are my postcards, one a day for seven days.
The second week came round and I was wondering what to do. I had bought the book 'Making Books' so I began thinking about making little Artists' Books and the theme I was thinking of was the mountains.
This concertina book is of colourful mountain formations painted using acrylic paint without a brush. It turned out quite abstract in style. Below is another one using the same colours.
This next one is a drawing of mountains using fineliner.
Overall the first few weeks were fun. It was good to be creative but also good to connect with other creatives that I didn't know from a variety of fields and see what they are getting up to during January. I found this connection quite inspiring and I looked forward to seeing what was on my news feed on instagram.
For the third week I was still thinking about mountains and wanted to do some print making. I got a lino kit for my Christmas which I hadn't used yet. I was excited and nervous to use this as for the first time I would be using Japanese cutters. Up to now I have had the basic Esdee introductory kit and cutters. They are fine but I want to improve my skills in lino printing. So I have been following lots of pages on instagram of printers and also I watch Printmaker Laura Boswell on Youtube. She recommended these cutters.
So I created a lino of abstract mountains using the cutters and they were really good. I need a bit more practice with the flat ones but I'm sure with practice I will get there. I printed onto different coloured and patterned papers. Here are some examples
I quite like how they turned out and some of the backgrounds highlight the print well but I think the images of the prints shows I still need practice with the tools. Also this image could also represent waves!! I turned one of my prints into a book.
This print is printed onto watercolour stained paper. It is also folded and is a star fold style book.
To be continued...