The biggest advantage of being a graphic designer is that you meet so many kinds of people and work for so many different types of companies.
Some clients wanted to talk as briefly as possible, while others shared more about their interests and their lives.
That’s how I found out that my printer was red-green colourblind and one of my clients was red-colourblind. How does a colourblind person see, became an interesting topic this way.
My personal challenge, an assignment to make a collage daily for 365 days, is almost halfway.
This month I focused on the combination of text and image. As I describe in another article, you can make text in many ways.
In some cases, very few tools are needed, whereas, in others, a bit more effort is required.
Either way, just as making images unleashes a lot of creativity, so does making texts. 🙂
Even if you consider yourself as non-creative, as a lot of people unjustifiable do, it’s pretty simple to make something.
These 3 ideas for DIY Valentine cards will inspire you to have a fun afternoon beforehand and a great day on February 14th.
Valentine’s Day used to be about secret love, yet has turned into a commercial fest. Personally, I don’t like that. It’s so simple to go to a store and buy all kinds of stuff, or even order it online.
When I was living in the Netherlands I made abstract, sculptural ceramics. You can see the sources of inspiration and the results of what I made in another article, but here I want to answer the question “Can you make ceramics at home?”.
In order to work properly, you do not need your own atelier – several of my students used their kitchen table – although a place you don’t have to tidy before every meal is an advantage.
The space I used was a small building located in the garden, which suited me perfectly. It was my atelier where nobody disturbed me and I could work quietly. And where I taught my students, so at times it was not quiet at all!
Decorating your ceramics can be done in many ways. Your clay object can be glazed or painted with engobes and underglazes. Even screen printing or applying transfers are possibilities.
A pure way of working is using the colour of the clay itself with at most a transparent glaze to emphasize the colours and make the object watertight.
Clay has different colours depending on the substances in the soil of the quarry. The clay you buy in the shops usually has only a few colours: it’s white, red, or ‘black’ (rather dark brown) after firing. Due to the industrialized process, the tones are generally the same every time.
Botanical colouring, natural colouring, or plant colouring are different names for dyeing with plants. All with the objective of having a toxic-free or almost toxic-free dyeing process.
When I was a ceramicist, I was very interested in the way colours are produced.
I made my own coloured slips for years and when I wrote my article about the different colours of clay my interest in natural colouring, in general, was aroused once again.
People today are living longer than they were a few centuries ago because of improved hygiene. But if you wash your hands and body too often, you run the risk of actually weakening your immune system. Exaggerating is never good.
Artists have to clean greasy hands a lot. And since the pandemic, we wash our hands even more than before.
In addition to being bad for the environment, many products are harmful to our skin as well.
Ceramics can be produced in several ways. Each method will result in a different surface.
You can press the clay in moulds, hand-build an object, or merge slabs.
Depending on completion or decoration it can be necessary to smooth the surface as best as possible.
How to smooth the surface of your clay object? I’ll explain my methods in this article.
I gave myself a challenge, an assignment to make a collage daily. For half the month I was ill (Covid, grrr). I did make collages some days, but on other days I had to skip.
Inspired by a friend who followed a course in art journaling, I too put some first steps on that path.
The main difference with the November collages is the text and the date stamp I added.
It’s great to see the art journal pages of others to get inspired. Look at my Instagram account and click the hashtag #artjournal or #artjournaling. (In the first comment of my posts).