Witches and Wicked Bodies class

The witches art class I was taking at the Scottish National Gallery is now over, but it was such a great class.  The two teachers we had showed us some different and really fun techniques for art making.  Some of my favorites from the class I'm listing here.

My first and favorite is the watercolor painting I did of my cat, Shinobi.  He is a gorgeous black cat, perfect model for a witch's familiar.  

Watercolor on paper (stained with tea to give it an aged look) roughly 6 3/4"x9". 

Some fun with owls! This was some simple printmaking and I just drew the owl into a piece of foam, inked it up and stamped on paper.  The owl was based on an owl in one of the prints in the Witches exhibition.

I really love this owl, and I think he would make a nice Halloween card.  I stained this paper with tea for an aged look and used a swirly stencil and some brown tinged paint on the background. I then took a circle stencil to wipe out some color to make the moon behind the owl and used a little white pastel pencil around the edges to make it stand out. The owl and tree branch are black watercolor paint. I cut the owl out in the shape of an oval and adhered it to black paper.

Found an interesting photo of a crow and drew it on the orange paper and just doodled designs into him.

This bird guy I just love. I pretty much copied him directly from one of the prints from the exhibition.  He was a small part of a larger print full of strange and wicked creatures.  I drew him larger and colored him in. Love! He was also painted on tea-stained watercolor paper. 7 3/4"x9"

Then we did some paper cuts! I used the bird again because I just love him and he made a great paper cut. I cut him out with scissiors and an exacto knife and glued him to the red paper so he stands out. Then glued the red paper to the black. 7 3/4 x 4 3/4"

Speaking of papercuts, here is another one.  I cut the tree and it's black border out of a piece of black paper and glued it to the red for contrast. 5.5"x5.5"

The little rabbit was the first exercise we did in paper cutting. We had one minute to cut the rabbit out with scissors without drawing him first. It was like drawing with the scissors. 


  

Batty printmaking. We used a technique for monoprinting I hadn't done before. Instead of drawing on the plexi and then printing the image from the plexi onto the paper, we put a coat of ink on the plexi and placed paper on top, without smoothing down. We drew the image onto the paper using a pencil and when you're done, you lift up the paper and you have the image printed in ink on the opposite side.  That's how I got the top picture of the bat.  The bottom image is the "ghost print" and after you get your first image, you lay down another sheet of paper on top of where you drew and rub it. When you lift the paper, you're left with the "ghost". 

Fun with skeletons. I carved a stamp out of foam for the large skeleton and printed him on some collaged bits of paper. The small skeleton parts were prints done the same as the bats.

More skeleton prints.  The two fainter prints on the bottom picture came from when I was transporting the prints home. They hadn't dried completely and I wrapped them in newsprint paper for safety. When I took the prints out so they could finish drying, they had printed onto the newsprint. I thought it was pretty cool. 

Some more monoprinting. I did the print of the woman and colored her necklace and earrings with watercolor. I had done the print of the skeletal thing behind her and didn't know what to do with him so I stuck it behind her. I like it!

Another monoprint and it's ghost.  I copied this witchy person and the cat from an original print in the show, but in the original there were two other figures, and the cat was sitting on one of their shoulders.  I just liked this guy so I put him there alone with the cat.

Lastly, this is a little block print I did a long time ago for part of a school project. It actually had to do with Henry VIII and his love of chopping people's heads off, including some of his wives. I just found it and thought it fit the witchy theme.  3"x4"






We made an artists book in the class to put all our artwork in, but I haven't finished that part yet. I used a lot of delicate dried plants on mine and they're falling off. I need to fix the book and put it all back together. I'll add that at another time. For now, I hope you enjoyed this!