A New Approach

Where art techniques collide. Print-making, oil painting, and collage, all brought together to reveal a story. Just start somewhere. Mark your mark and listen to what it tells you to do next. 

 Art Journaling Workshop

Date: 5/17/2025

9:30-3:00

Discounts & Other Fees: $5 Resident Discount

Location: New London Adult Ed - Three Shaw's Cove - Room 21

Description

We will explore the creative process and the imagination behind illustrated stories- our stories-and the marriage between words and images. The process of image making through drawing, painting and collage allows everyone the ability to give form to their imagination, while creative writing gives voice to your ideas and memories. We will cultivate your individual voices through the written word and a personal vision working with art mediums.

Sketchbook or notebooks, what is an art journal and why keep one? An introduction.

Paper, pencil, paint and photographs; what do you need to begin?  Choosing materials.

Words and inspiration; what goes into the journal? Writing it down, creative writing.

Creating images; finding your muse. Working with: Paint, Pencil, and Photographs

Finders Keepers; Working with: Found materials and Collage.

Putting it all together

 Keeping a journal doesn’t require remarkable skill in the art of writing or painting but the final work is worth all the effort to keep your own creative journal. Teens are welcome.

 BRING YOUR LUNCH and personal photos you can cut up.

 Workshop: 5 hours (breaks included)

$10.00 per attendee for materials

 

Return to Sender

 

                                     Return to Sender

                                              4”x5”             

2025 has begun with a flurry of work. Mostly printmaking. Drypoint engraving to be specific. It’s a wonderful technique that doesn’t require a lot of expensive tools or materials. It’s best to print using a press, and I have a small one for the work I produce. Plates can be of plexiglass, aluminum or copper (this work is on copper) and each have their own qualities. 

There are a varieties of ink that can be used, Akua, Gamblin, even Windsor & Newton water soluble oil paint, also each with their own characteristics. 

It’s all in the mark making process. I mostly use an inexpensive scribe I picked up at the hardware store. Creating lines a lot as if I was creating a drawing.

The paper is often watercolor paper that is soaked before being placed on the inked plate.

This work is derived from a travel photo I took in Croatia. I like the imaginative narrative behind the image.

I’m going to continue with a new work of the Bridge of Sighs. Returning to a plexiglass plate that I haven’t used in many years. 

Onward into the new year! Happy New Year!

 As 2024 comes to an end, it has been anything but quiet.

Art Therapy

In 1987, somewhere in the midst after being released from college with a degree in painting and awaiting a world that had not quite yet embraced my work, I enrolled in a class called Art Therapy and Human Development. As it turned out it became my therapy and my development. To this day I believe my art has always been a  form of self therapy.

-Laura

Creative Journal Arts

A classic approach to pastel painting is working from a monotype underpainting. Here I created a monotype using photo reference. It was done in a burnt sienna focusing on texture variations. The next stage was pastel washes. Broad strokes of color liquefied with water (or 91% alcohol). This is now my starting point for my pastel application.
 

Pure Pigment