Hi Friends!
Hope you are all doing well. Happy Tea day! I am celebrating tea day by drinking decaf coffee in my Cat Mum mug – my mug appears in three of the photos below. I have had some dalliances with caffeine lately and discovered that it made my BP soar, so absolutely no caffeine for me any more! I have enough problems without giving myself any more.
Last weekend, I managed to watch several of the videos from the beginning of the Mixed Media Expo run by Tamara Laporte. I made pages from all three lessons from day 1 which is what I am sharing today, plus a cameo from Miss Lily, my greatest critic! LOL Here’s a link to the schedule where you can watch the daily videos available from 1-14 May 2025.
Today’s art . . .
MM EXPO Day 1 – Tamara LaPorte
First up was Tamara Laporte’s Lesson which for me was the most frustrating lol as I just don’t / can’t work the way she does. I spent a lot of time trying to turn into something that wasn’t awful and this is the best I could do. After following her lesson, here’s a look at what I was left with… just in case you don’t believe me lol. It is not at all how it was supposed to turn out, but mine just went completely wrong. So I gave up on the lesson and just tried my best to end up with a finished page. It’s funny because as I am typing this, I am listening to a podcast with Jane Davenport (as part of Messy May) talking about failure and how just about anything is fixable. She’s right, even if you have to completely paint over it! See how there is absolutely no orange left in my finished page haha!
With all the birdies, this page eventually qualified for Neet’s theme of It Must Have Wings.
MM EXPO Day 1 – Laura Horn
Laura Horn is an Australian artist from South Austraia. I already follow her on Youtube as I really love her studio and discovered her by watching her studio makeover videos a while back. This lesson as all about abstract watercolour and this was the first attempt I did and I really loved the colours.
This was my second attempt and somehow I painted too many circles that I didn’t mean to paint so until this morning (after leaving it for three days) I tried to fix it by adding more detail, and after I was finished it didn’t look so bad, or I was at least happier with it.
Miss Lily also had her own opinion on the art and proceeded to show it with her paws.
And then she sat on it – is this a good thing or a bad thing – not sure!
MM EXPO Day 1 – Jane Davenport
Also on day 1 was another Aussie, Jane Davenport. I love Jane, I’m a huge fan and I have quite a few of her art supplies, though she keeps changing brands and now she produces her own range in Australia, so they would be expensive for me to order because of shipping and import fees. Her lesson was about swatching watercolours in a technique she called “colour weaving”.
The lesson was creating something similar to what I have here except Jane drew human faces on hers and then provided the finished artwork as a downloadable collage sheet and encouraged you to cut out the faces and use them. I decided to make happy cat faces instead. I also used a small dragonfly stamp to give the cats something to look at. This page is also for Neet’s theme of It Must Have Wings.
Let me know what you think in the comments below. As always, thanks for reading and Happy journalling!
Ingredients
watercolour paper, too many brands of watercolour paint to list, paint pens, gel pens, dragonfly stamp, Versafine Clair ink, acrylic ink, acrylic paint, stencil, mixed media paper, pitt artist pens, waterproof black pen, old Life Book freebie sticker,
Challenges
Art Journal Journey – It Must Have Wings
T Stands For – decaf
I would have been by sooner, but the batteries in my keyboard died and I tried to recharge them since I didn’t have any that were charged. However, after spending over a day trying to charge four different sets of 4, I gave up and bought some industrial ones.
I copied the swallows Tam provided, but haven’t worked with them except to cut them out. I loved the second video, but didn’t even watch Jane’s because I knew I couldn’t do what she did. I love how you created the second image from Laura Horn. And I also want to thank you for sharing these with AJJ using Neet’s theme. Of course, I am also delighted you shared you9r decaf in your Cat Mum mug with us for T this week, too.
These are great. I especially love the cat faces. Miss Lily gave her stamp of approval. Well done. Happy T Day
These pages are all so much fun. It looks like you took some great classes. I especially like your work from Laura Horn, even the second page you didn’t particularly like. And those smiling kitties are adorable. I’m glad you shared all of these, especially the pages for Neet’s challenge. Thanks for linking up. And I hope you had a fantastic T day too. hugs-Erika
Beautiful, happy art!!! Not awful at all 😉 And Miss Lily is so cute! Happy T-Day!
Elle, these are so beautiful.
For starters, ~ I think you are a dab hand at drawing those cats faces. They always please and make me smile.
Love your first page and its hard to understand how it arose from the orange page shown below. I love the birds you have graced the page with for my theme at AJJ. They look great amongst the billowy clouds and the rainbows. Love the stars too..
Your watercolour is pretty but it is the next one that caught my eye. No idea what colour weaving is but it is very effective and your cat faces set it off beautifully.
Hugs, and Thanks for joining me again at AJJ
Neet xx
ps not sure Miss Lily has added to your painting but am sure you will recognise her specialities in art. xx