A Bubble Painting Workshop and some goodies for you!

Last Friday I held a bubble painting workshop at the Unley Town Hall for a dozen 7 – 13 year olds. As you can see above, there was much art making and a lot of fun to be had. There was bubbles and paint everywhere.

I got a very quick education on some of the possibilities of this technique as the kids put it through its paces with every colour combination possible with what we had. And I have to say that some of the pieces created were absolutely stunning. Some knew exactly what colours would work together and came up with some wonderful combinations.

The technique was explored more fully in the hour and a half of workshop than I could do by myself over several weekends.

I also learnt a lot in the preparation for the event. I now have a tried and true recipe for this technique which I am will to share.

If you would like a copy plus some extra goodies:

1. Subscribe to my blog by email (put your email address in the subsciption box in the right sidebar).
2. Email me via liz (at) gumnut (dot) net to let me know you want the goodies
3. …and you will receive both the recipe and some good quality digital images of some of the prints I have already done so you can do art with them yourself – print them out, draw on them, cut them up, photoshop them, whatever. I’m really interested to see what others can come up with.

I also made a chance discovery while playing with the bubble prints on the computer. Check this out.

This is my green bubble painting, the first one I ever did that makes up part of the graphics for this website…inverted. One single click of a button reversed the colours of the image. This is a negative without looking like a negative. I discovered it while writing out the recipe. I had to highlight part of the text and it caught part of the image, automatically reversing it. I saw these stunning colours and immediately opened it up in my graphics software and inverted the whole thing. I love this. I have to find something to do with all this wonderful colour.

I, of course, had to do the same with the rest of my prints to see what would happen. Some were a bit boring, but I also found these…

This technique keeps showing me new possibilities. Paint and colour are such wonderful things.

Oh, and this post is about a week late. After the lead up to the Workshop, during which I had several very late nights, and the Workshop itself, I crashed and hid from my artwork for a week. I think I just needed the time off. But now I’m back and I gessoed a couple of canvases today and put down the first layer of varnish on a finished painting.

I missed this month’s Monthly Painters Challenge 🙁 which was ‘Reflections’ this month. I couldn’t get any concept to gel right – from the reflection of John Lennon’s killer in his glasses to one of my little girls picking up sea shells on the wet beach, to sunsets, sunrises over lakes to a reflection of a jumbo liner in the windows of one of the twin towers, wine glasses, water droplets, my little girls smiling in the mirror….none of the ideas worked (there were dozens of them). So I gave up this morning (it was due today). Hopefully I’ll be able to give the next one a better showing.

Tomorrow Gumnut Inspirations will be hosting a new Inspired People interview! This week it is the wonderful Tracey Fletcher King, so tune in tomorrow to find out about what inspires this inspiring artist.

Best wishes,
Liz