What's on your workdesk Wednesday - A MESS!

My desk is a shameful mess this morning - and why? 

Because last night after my visitors had gone I decided to have a go at the first exercise of 'Your Vintage Gluebook' course. 

I know what you are going to say - namely that I have signed up for a few courses and haven't followed them through - and you are quite right!  

There are many reasons for this - hence my trying this collage course.  I am hoping it will help with my other areas of art work.

This is my first attempt.

It is a bit darker tham it appears on here - the colours being vintage, using mainly vintage ephemera.

Mary of Greenpaper said that 'you will not like your first attempt'.  Well last night I did - I thought it was rather good for a first attempt - but this morning I didn't and picked 'holes' in it for all sorts of reasons.

The size of the book is 3.5 inches by 5.5 inches - so it's a bit small and having big arthritic hands and fingers I do tend to avoid small things as they are a struggle.

(Notice all the excuses!)

I have laid the page on a frame which helps to focus on the 'dislikes'.

The title of the backing book page, which is a vintage pale coffee colour - is off centre (wish I had used a frame last night!).

I tend to tear everything as I have trouble cutting out images, which is OK in straight lines but not so clever with the child and dog - old newspaper images, which were a bit thin.

I like the overlaid vintage rose drawing over the green vintage paper strip.  I also like the torn at an angle, vertical vintage strip on the left hand side.

The vintage perfume bottle label, I thought looked nice last night as the colours matched - but now I realise that it is 'top heavy' and should have been smaller.

But I guess for a first effort - it's not bad!

I have spent the rest of this morning clearing up all the mess!

Lunch is 'calling' so just off to cook it, and I'll be paying a visit to other WOYWW participants

What's on your workdesk Wednesday

My little grandson, who is painting a canvas I bought him for Christmas.

'Nana, the elephant is grey, and you don't have grey in your paint box', he said.

He is marvelling at the grey paint, having mixed a splodge of white and black!

I wish I had taken a photo of him at the wonderment on his face when he made this amazing discovery that you can mix colours together to get whatever colour you want!

 But  he is still looking as though he can't quite believe what happened.

After that, I showed him the magic of mixing dark blue with white to get a light blue for the sky.  Blue and yellow to get different shades of green.  He just loved the mixing on a plastic lid part.  In fact he seemed to have as much fun experimenting with mixing different colours as he did painting with them.

(I have to confess that I was rather proud that as he had just had his 5th birthday 2 days before Christmas, at how careful, and painstakingly he painted his very first printed picture.  Not a bit like his dad and uncle - who at the same age were sploshing on paint with great gusto!)

In the photo above we have dried the paint with an air dryer, and he is just putting the finishing touches to the tree - he wanted red cherries on it, so is drawing them freehand with a felt tip pen!

Definitely a mixed media artist in the making

I thought I would join in on the fun blog hop which is What's on your workdesk Wednesday.

Why don't you hop over here to join in