Yellow Azalea

I signed up for the Wanderlust 2021 class this year, run by Everything Art in the UK. I did this class in 2019, and decided to do it once again this year. The tutors vary each year, so it is not the same material, but it is still hosted by Kasia Avery (whom I adore) and this year, the other main host is Kate Crane – another really talented artist.

Each week on a Friday we are given a video class, to watch in our own time and then we can create and share our work on their private facebook page. So far, I have completed the first 3 weeks, which is a theme of Reflection.

Week 1 with Kasia Avery was based on reflecting on 2020- ouch. I had already spent a bit of time doing that here on the blog, so my page is about what was in 2020, (on the left) and what I hope to see on the right.

After completing week one, I felt it was really quite DARK!! So, I did another page using a similar colour palette to Kasia, and I enjoyed the look of this one below.

Week 2 – was a class with Laly Mille. In 2019, her lesson was one of my favourites. This year, it was to do a garden of wishes – there is collage, paint and pastels in there. I don’t mind the end result, but my natural style is far removed from Laly’s beautiful calm, pastel and soft colour palettes. I worked in a brighter colour palette and ended up with a golden sky – but I guess I made it my own. I decided to add the little stamped girl in the garden, to symbolise how we don’t always fit in to our environment.

Week 3 was a self portrait. This has caused a lot of hilarity. I am happy enough with the final result, but this self portrait ( that has a miniscule likeness) was a big challenge. I am not familiar with doing faces, skin tone, shadows – anything like that really, so I have spent around 3 weeks, redrawing, repainting before putting a picture in my actual journal. Part of the class was about choosing your word for the year, plus two companion words. I already knew I wanted health as my word, and then I decided on self and authentic for the companions. At some point I need to sit down and write my intentions for my word this year, but so far, finding the time and inspiration at the same moment, hasn’t happened.

It’s weird that once you photograph something you get quite a different perspective and my inner critic is shouting pretty loud about this – but hey, I’m learning and having fun, and that is the main thing.

I also did a couple more pages in my Everything Art advent journal – it might be finished by Christmas 2021. I don’t know what that owl is saying, but I did like that picture. Seems, I also have a love affair with orange at the moment. The topic for Day 6 was Don’t complain and you had to write a love letter for yourself. That was HARD! It seems the hard prompts take me longer.

This was Day 8 – Bring some colour. The idea was to choose 3 colours to go with one of your favourite colours, and make multiple palettes. I started with teal, and for this one used terracotta, orange and yellow. Somehow the page morphed into having a bit of pink and blue, but hey, it’s done.

As I am spending more time in my craft room, I am spending less time on keeping the house tidy. But I know which I would rather do. I really hope to continue keeping up with this class this year and to share more of my projects.

Hope you are having fun making art too.

Cherie