Week 2 at Lilla Rogers School

Where should I start? Even though I've only been in Lilla's class for two weeks, I have grown so much, and I am sure my classmates all feel the same way about themselves, too. I spent as much time as I could everyday on my second week assignment, and let me tell you, it was a lot of work. I totally feel like I am back at art school, but I am so happy, and I feel giddy when I work on the assignment. I love Lilla's approach; each week she breaks down the assignment for us so we wouldn't feel overwhelmed. On each Monday we get our mini exercise, and on Wednesday we get our real assignment. But because of Monday's mini exercise, by the time Wednesday comes we'll have enough materials to use to complete our homework. It's genius!

Let me show you what I have done this past week. For week two, Lilla covered the home decor market. On Monday and Tuesday, without knowing what the actual assignment would be, I did bunch of drawings using black India ink with my brush and bamboo dip pen, since our mini exercise was to draw lots of pods.



One reason I did everything in black was because I planned to color them later in Photoshop so I was not too concerned about colors at this point.



And another reason is, even though I love conventional artworks, I am never comfortable with brush and paint myself. When I saw my classmates' work-in-progress, I drooled! OH MY! There are so many painters in this class and they post the most gorgeous floral sketches on our Facebook wall (we have a closed Facebook group where we are encouraged to share with everybody our work-in-progress photos and feedback for each other, another reason why I LOVE this class). So, as much as I was admiring all the beautiful watercolor and gauche artworks my classmates did, I wasn't brave enough to do it myself at this point, silly me, right?

On Wednesday we got our actual assignment, and it was to design a collection of floral ceramic plates (2-4 pieces per collection). Using my ink drawings from Monday and Tuesday, as well as some butterflies drawings I did for week 1's assignment, I came up with these three designs:





I am pretty happy with my collection, though I still wish I could've come up with something more painterly and beautiful like many of my classmates' works. So after I finished my last plate design this afternoon, with a 50% off coupon in my hand (a surprise gift that showed up in my email today), I headed to Michaels and got myself some watercolors. I went back home and started to lay down colors on paper, without worrying too much, just played, layers after layers. It was really relaxing, actually! I then scanned the watercolors into Photoshop and combined them with my ink drawings from week 1 & 2, and this little piece just sort of happened on its own; it was like magic...




I guess I don't have to be so afraid of paint after all. A lesson learned and an unexpected mini break-through, at the end of week two. :)