Pokai Bay Designs

Portable Art – pastels and water color August 16, 2011

Snowbirds travel South for the winter. That’s what I’m looking forward to as summer progresses into Fall. However, how do I bring enough Art material along to keep me busy? Lately I’ve been working hard at improving my water color painting skills and this year I discovered soft pastel. Since I’m a mixed media artist I was delighted to find that the two media work well together.

Artist network tv has several water color and pastel painting workshops that are well worth renting to improve your skills or to learn new skills. I feel that expanding my knowledge of watercolor and soft pastels improve my mixed media art. Interweave Press also has mix media workshops which are well worth the time and money. Interweave has frequent sales on downloaded media — so if you get their email and wait you can watch top rated teachers for a bargain.

My current favorite  Mix media artist is Beryl Taylor — she has two video workshops and both are full of ideas. I plan to use some of her ideas and add some of my own embellishment, beads and wire. I can pre-sew squares and take them along to embellish and assemble on the road. I have tons of beads waiting for a place in my mixed media art. Travel printers are portable and most are set up to use photo paper and special paper which can be ironed to fabric or paper. The Southwest is a creative person’s paradise. Have camera — will travel!

Mary Hettmansperger has a couple of mental embellishment for quilts workshops found on Interweave press. Many of her ideas are adaptable to the portable mixed media Art projects. Metal and wire don’t take up much room — especially if the projects are planned ahead — leaving room for creative variations.

Amazon’s Kindle have a number of art and mixed media books that can be downloaded to your Kindle device or to your computer. Since the Kindle is not yet in color — downloading Art and Craft books works better on lap top traveling computers.

So far my Art Packing list includes — Moleskin watercolor notebooks, kurataki brush pens, assorted paint brushes, water color paint — travel kit, a few soft pastels — water color paper. Quilt squares — many colors. Oil sticks for the quilt squares. Wire, copper wire and silver wire. Copper clay — torch fired variety — from Whole lotta Whimsey. Wire pliers — various. Hammer — with replaceable textural heads.  Glass beads — various sizes. Cameras and tripod — and an easel for outdoor painting. My aim is to compact this list down into a small carry bag. I’m betting that the glass beads will take up the most room. I may leave the small beads behind and only pack my own beads, planning to buy small beads for embellishment on the road. After all we will be going through cities with bead stores! Also, I will bring my hand spindle and spinning fiber. That takes very little room and I can get a lot done while waiting.

I plan to visit bead stores, quilt/fabric stores and yarn shops as we head south in October.

This post will be cross posted at http://snowbirdruminations.wordpress.com/