Owner: Marazine URL:http://marayagalleries.blogspot.com/ Join Date: Sun, 01 Apr 2007 08:04:23 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Art, collage, techniques, ideas (some serious and some not). Frequent updates and lots of original art. Writing services offered. Site statistics:Click here
Just Kidding Collage 2007-03-31 16:46:00 Kids and collage are just like peanut butter and jelly. Messy, fun, and sticky. Give scissors, glue, and paper to any kid and see them jump into collageing without hesitation. Somewhere, Matisse must be smiling…These were done when our children were only 5 or 6. Settling down to create a collage can eat up a whole rainy afternoon. Best of all, you’re likely to have all the materials on hand, no trips to the store.Some materials to inspire – just arm the the kids with blunt scissors, white glue and strong paper, and let them loose: . Magazines and catalogues. Construction paper. Old greeting cards. Bits and pieces of doilies, thin fabric, tissue paper. Markers, pencils, crayons – whatever you can live withDon't limit yourself to these ideas - any safe material can end up "making" a collage. Try to avoid ready-made stickers, and encourage exploration of favourite themes, fantasy and imagination. Don’t expect any masterpieces – but do remember to enjoy the moment. Considering Read more:Collage
Sketch in the afternoon 2007-03-30 23:19:00 (Hubby sent me this from his sketchbook)Geoff and Rudayna's house is a very colourful place. Lots of interesting elements meet you at every angle you turn.On a cold February day while the kids were playing and everyone else was working hard to make lunch, I snuck away to the couch and spent a few minutes doing a quick sketch with pen and ink. I didn't have my favourite Ackerman pen at hand, but used a plain Pilot Fineliner that I had handy. Back home I added colours (as I remembered them) and diluted the pen lines with water as well.In reality, the red wall is a much richer red almost tomato coloured and lovely. It would have tipped the balance of the drawing though, so I made it paler.
My Nifty New Pump Pen 2007-03-30 16:22:00 Hubby lent me his Ackerman pen and I’m not giving it back.As my favourite 7-year old would say, I don’t like it, I LOVE it!This is an artist’s pump pen, an inspired work of genius that will do for your sketching and doodling what the Cuisinart did for my food prep: you won't go back to your clunky old tools. This oh-so-clever pen works very much like a regular fountain pen, but with an added pump feature, and nib and brush tips you can replace at will (you can use your old nibs, they work just fine). The fountain-pen design is this cool tool's most excellent feature - no more dipping! And it’s transportable!But you do have to be very careful how you store the pen, if it still has ink in it – if it’s not upright, you may get an unwelcome mess when you open it. You're also better off road-testing it first - it takes a little while to get used to the flow of the ink, and you tend to overpump when you’re first trying it out. At least I did.Another lovely feature: the pen
Darling Doily 2007-03-27 21:41:00 (This post by Neda) I think I am turning into a domestic diva of sorts. My new experiment does involve a kitchen item but it is not edible, more like a feast for the eyes and the crafty soul maybe.My newest creation was borne out of rummaging through the dreaded stuff-everything-in-it kitchen drawer. As I was tossing old fridge magnets and countless twisty ties, I came across a tattered doily paper, the kind used for decorating birthday cake trays. For a minute, I considered it tossing along with the ex-residents of the drawer. But I hesitated. I never met a piece of paper I didn't like. So, I took it to my studio to neatly shelve it in my box of found treasures. But, the temptation was too great, my head was already buzzing with an idea.I cut parts of the doily with scissors and glued them over a little drawing I had already started that morning. I painted over the doily pieces with Golden Acrylic fluid.
Things I’ve learned (Clorox 2) 2007-03-27 15:13:00 (This post by Neda) Having had a quite successful first experiment with the Clorox Bleach pen, I got hooked on the process. OCD aside, I could not resist experimenting more. Well, the results were less than satisfactory.Before I talk about the experiments, let me remind you of the following safety guidelines (I know it is a bore but you really have to stick to these recommendations) 1. Be sure to work in a well-ventilated area even if using you are using just a drop of bleach.2. Do not wear anything you care about, a drop of bleach could ruin your favorite Gap tee-shirt (unless this is the look you are aiming for).3. Do not, I repeat, do not smoke/eat/drink/multitask when you are working with bleach.4.If you get any bleach on your skin or into your eyes, follow the manufacturer’s recommended guidelines immediately!Okay, now for the humbling stuff:1. Bleach can ruin a perfectly nice drawing if you overdo it (see exhibit A - above). Be careful where you “draw” with your bleach pen.
Clorox anyone? 2007-03-26 19:35:00 (This post by Neda) I am notoriously impatient especially when it comes to following lengthy artistic instructions. Once, I even ran away in tears from a so-called “collage class” with a renowned collagist in Austin. In brief, I perceive myself as a spur-of-the-moment artist, which is why I love collage (instant gratification) and experimenting with whatever is available to me at the moment.Here is an example of such whimsy, aka a fun idea born out of almost nowhere (pictured here). It started when my 15-year old son accidentally spilled water on a photocopied color drawing he was working on. Having inherited a good eye and an adventurous spirit from his mom (of course), he came over to my studio to show me the interesting splashes of color the water had done to his design. He asked me if we could experiment with one of my photocopied color sketches. We then proceeded to the kitchen faucet where we experimented further. In the background, the washing machine was churning about and
What in Christie's Name Are Art Cards? 2007-03-25 17:14:00 By now, everyone’s heard of ACEOs, this ubiquitous new trendy trend in the art world that has spread like wild fire from North America to Europe. So, what are ACEOs? Let me put my researcher’s hat on:ACEOs, an acronym for Art Cards
, Editions and Originals, are small-scale original works of art, and like their larger counterparts, can also be produced in a series or reproduced in a limited edition (as their name indicates...). There is only one rule to ACEOs: They have to be 3.5" x 2.5" (8.9cm x 6.4cm). As for medium and material, it’s up to the talent and imagination of the artist – I’ve seen acrylics, pen and ink, watercolour, collage, altered art – you name, someone’s done it.Beyond the hype, the reality is that these art cards have been around forever – many artists do them as a way to plot their next project, as a quick exercise to try colours or techniques, or just for fun but they weren’t labeled as such. My sister, for one, has been doing these for years, way b Read more:Christie
Cheating is fun 2007-03-25 15:19:00 Isn't fun to change your work, without breaking a sweat? Photoshop is great for playing around with different textures and help me see what I can come up with next. I did this quick little sketch for my daughter on plain sketching paper and watercolour pencils (left) - It looks a lot more interesting with the fake canvas texture (right) which I added to the scanned picture. I like my little sketch a lot better now: it's tougher to use pencils on rough textures, but the resulting work may be more appealing. Read more:Cheating
Writing For You 2007-03-24 19:36:00 It’s always difficult to come up with a well-rounded, well-written profile for yourself – particularly if you’re an artist and your talent lies in whatever form your artistic expression takes, but not necessarily in writing about it. At least, that’s been my experience when trying to elicit biographical information from artists.For many artists, having a good bio is a necessity – for everything from a blurb on a leaflet to your own horn-tooting on a book jacket (or website). A necessity, but a wretched ordeal to come up with on your own. This is where I come in.When creating an artist profile, I incorporate biographical elements into the narrative with a detailed description of the style, technique and appeal of the artist’s work. Examples of the kind of profiles I have written for some of the artists we represent at the Gallery can be found on the website. I charge extremely reasonable fees for small write-ups that include research and free (reasonable) editing for six mon
Refurbishing A Beat-Up Winsor & Newton Tin 2007-03-24 15:41:00 My dear watercolourist husband who has a way with paintboxes wrote this for our Maraya Newsletter a few weeks ago under the title "Saving a Classic". Check out his blog to findout what he does with empty Altoid boxes... Watercolor artists fall into two camps: Those who love tubes and those who love pans. Count me in the second group.With two small children at home and limited space, I don't have the luxury of a real studio or the ability to spread my art stuff around too much.Watercolor boxes with pans or half pans in them are perfect for my needs. When Winsor & Newton
started putting their artist pans and half-pans in plastic boxes, I felt a deep sense of disappointment. A whole era was ending. An era where craftsmanship and durability were paramount was giving way to mercantile flexibility and sales. The Winsor & Newton Metal box is a true classic. The box is made of solid metal and has deep wells for mixing washes. It holds the pans perfectly in place. With its black enamel cov
Who Says Art Can Only Be Found on Canvas? 2007-03-09 16:52:00 Or paper, or board… you know what we mean. An artist’s unexpected instruments can also be made of sugar glaze or edible beads and her palette of a rainbow of food colouring concoctions. Under the edible art rubric, we found Hala Audi Beydoun’s fanciful, unique cookies both scrumptious and inspiring.(I wrote this article for my other newsletter, featuring Hala's very funky, very risqué Valentine's Day cookies - there are many more amazing pictures on my site)Adorned with delicate arabesques and boisterous colours, Hala’s completely original creations are lovely little objets d’art. A little Gaudi, a little baroque, a little Pop-Art, Hala’s filigreed cookies and bold cakes are crafted and painted by hand – no two are ever exactly the same.Although thematic by necessity - her work is commercial after all - Hala is never constrained by the expected limits of her craft. From designing and manufacturing her original shape cutters to riffing on a favourite theme, Hala’s mus Read more:Canvas
War d’Oeuvres 2007-03-09 16:22:00 “A nation without arts would be a nation that had stopped talking toitself, stopped dreaming, and had lost interest in the past andlacked curiosity about the future.” John Tusa, Art Matters (My very lovely and talented sister Neda, a collage artist, wrote this article for our Maraya Galleries Newsletter at the end of last summer)War Collage 1982 Future Gaze: one of the first collages, used Marie Claire magazine, rubber cement glue, only light source: candleCommenting on a commemorative “Art at War “exhibition he curated in his Chicago gallery, Nicaraguan art dealer Aldo Castillo remarked that “the history of conflict, aggression, and war shows no human evolution. We have not learned the difference between right and wrong. Nor have we learned […] that violence is no solution for violence.” War Collage Red: I did this collage in July 1983 using fragments of a medical review journal, rubber cement glue Castillo’s plainspoken words resonated in my mind as I was reading the
Meanwhile At the Art Gallery (Art explorations with wee ones) 2007-03-09 16:16:00 I love taking my children to various art venues – their favourites, of course, being any outdoor exhibition of the arts-and-crafts kind. They’re a lot less excited and a lot less well behaved when they’re subjected to formal settings like art galleries, where my hushed mantra is usually “no, you can’t touch this”.A while ago, I took them to see the works of an interesting sculptor, Andrew Benyei, which were being shown at a tiny local gallery. It promised to be interesting, at least for me: an exhibition of contemporary sculpture that was described as an exploration of the human condition, through several tableaux from everyday life (or maybe just the everyday lives of working stiffs).My children didn’t care much about the existentialist queries posed by these affecting, sometimes poignant compositions. But they were captivated by the seeming playfulness of the miniature people in “funny” situations – this was the first time they had seen such colourful sculptures i Read more:Gallery
Is It Spring Yet? (Cocoa & Co's latest) 2007-04-01 15:45:00 Back by popular demand! An update on Hala's scrumptious confections. She just sent me these pictures of her latest display for Easter. These cookies look like a breath of fresh air, a sure sign that spring is here - even though it doesn't look like it from my window... Read more:Spring
, Cocoa
Faux Mosaic 2007-04-03 13:27:00 (This post by Neda)Garage sales can cure artist block. This is a well-kept secret. Take last Saturday for example. While I was driving to run some errands, I stopped by such an unexpected treasure trove. Among boxes and boxes of old Texas Monthly issues and Lady’s Home Journal, I stumbled upon a small wooden box. Intrigued, I opened it. In it, there were more than 40 pieces of an antique (well, at least a few decades old) child’s matching game of animal pairs. Each picture was glued unto a 1 ¾ “ x 1 ¾ “ wood square (that’s 4.5cm x 4.5cm for those of us who are partial to the metric system).Although I am all for nostalgic sentimentality, I decided to buy the whole set (for a measly $1) and sacrifice it in the name of creativity. Rushing back home, I took 35 squares and laid them on my drafting table. I kept the remaining few in their original box in honor of the unknown child who played with them once.Using acrylics, pastels, markers, and images from some of my earlier colla Read more:Mosaic
Puff Away 2007-04-04 22:58:00 Another rainy day idea (I don’t know why I’m stuck on these kinds of activities – must be the weather here). This one’s a big hit with my daughters and their friends – and of actual benefit when you’re trying to match socks to put away.All you need are plain socks, the white cotton kind that you get in a multi-pack, some fabric paint in tubes, and patience (for the drying time). The tubes work best because you use the tips to draw the lines of your design and then fill in the colours. We like to use “puff” paint, the kind that puffs up when it dries, and glittery puff paint for details (princesses and tiaras are very big at our house these days).Choose simple designs, like a stylized flower, or a smiley-face sun, or a stick figure – it takes a while for children to learn how to control the flow of the fabric paint, and it’s hard for little hands to do anything more complicated than that. For smaller ones, you can outline a very simple shape for them (circles of var
BETWEEN YOU AND ME: An artist’s confession 2007-04-06 15:17:00 "What we see depends mainly on what we look for” – D.W. Winnicott (This post by Neda)I am almost never at a loss for words, except in two particular situations. One is a daily occurrence: “What’s for dinner, Mom?” with the customary answer “I don’t know,” and the other is a little bit more problematic: “What does your art mean?.” Although I may have another answer to the former (“take-out”), the latter always puzzles me.Is art an expression of our inner psyche? An expression of our feelings or a reflection of our environment? An abstract thought or just a reaction to some stimulus? A message to the world? An aesthetic exercise? DOES one’s art mean anything?At first, the artist might say: “yes, my art means something to me.” The tricky part comes when someone asks you - the artist -what it means.If you are like me, you might not think much when you are moved by the urge to create. I often start a piece without having any clue whatsoever where I will be goi Read more:confession
Reply to "Between You and Me" 2007-04-07 17:05:00 Fawzan sent this to comment on Neda's last post, and I've decided that it needed to be posted here instead. Yaay, we've got ourselves a new discussion going - care to join in? - Rima "I regret very much that I have painted a picture that requires any description" - W. Homer(This post by Fawzan)Modern society seems to always be looking for the Cliffs-notes version of everything, with the "You-Name-It For Dummies" series leading the trend. We want our news in 20 minutes or less, our novels translated into 1 1/2 hr movies and someone else to tell us what art “means” to us. DVD versions of movies now come with a running commentary track where the director can tell you what he was thinking and what he was trying to do when he shot every scene.As a society, we want to be spoon-fed all forms of art. We refuse to expand the effort to understand it and in the process we loose so much. (Artwork by Fadi Barrage, 1940-1988) When asked for a few descriptive lines about one of his paintings,
We're Such A Punny Bunch 2007-04-11 19:56:00 Well, three days into this migraine-induced haze, this is all I could come up with – a post explaining the name of this here blog. (Hmmm, still in the realm of “what does it all mean…”. Bizarre, bizarre, as Louis Jouvet would have said).So, why MaraZine? Well, this blog does have pretensions to be an online magazine of sorts. But what about the Mara part? Oh, so glad you asked – MaraZine evolved from our online art gallery, Maraya Galleries, thus named by taking the first syllables of our collective brood’s names and coming up with this lovely, musical monicker that means “mirrors” in Arabic. I later found out that there is an actual calligraphic style called Maraya, or mirror writing – even more appealing.Since I love a good play on words (which someone once dismissed as a lazy person’s facile humour – absolutely correct and I am the queen of laziness, witness this lame-o post), I couldn’t resist “MaraZine” – you see, not only is it a clever reminder of Read more:Bunch
Catchy Kitsch 2007-04-14 19:20:00 How do you like my little vintage domestic diva? It's one of those treasures you find at the Austin "keep-it-weird" City-Wide Garage Sale.Somehow, I am compelled to find alternative uses for household items (especially if the object announces its function on the front, 1966 Dava ceramic above) - like the recycled plant pot with a great platinum-gold patina for Yasmine's pencils... I never think of blooms when I find a pretty pot - being the one with the brown thumbs in this house - so I use them for brushes, pencils, kitchen utensils, combs and hairbrushes... Read more:Kitsch
Water on the go 2007-04-15 20:43:00 This terrific idea was given by Barry Lindley It's hard to find a suitable water container for outdoor watercolour sketching . Most commercially available containers either have to be placed on a flat surface, or be hung from an easel. If you are outdoors and can't find a flat surface or a place to hang your water container, you're out of luck. You have to balance your container somewhere close by to your work surface - and often-times disasters follow.Necessity being the mother of invention, Barry Lindley came up with this great contraption while sharing a few ideas in the FA-Watercolour group: By affixing a small, round magnet to the bottom of a transparent 35mm film canister, you can create your own portable water container. The magnet allows you to place the canister securely on the face of a metal watercolour box. While you may tip the canister and spill the water yourself, it is unlikely that the canister will fall of its own accord.I tried this nifty gizmo with a lot of suc
Colour Inside The Lines 2007-04-18 23:09:00 Sometimes, the best intentions do end up leading the unsuspecting to that proverbial hot place. When my oldest was around 4 years old, I had her enrolled in one of those (famous name) preschools that falls on the more corseted end of the “by-the-book” spectrum.My best intention of course was to provide her with a good start in her educational life – somewhere where her obvious genius could be harnessed and directed to productive ends (her mother had been ignominously stamped with the “could do better” tag on every single report card throughout her schooling – and beyond). Besides, this was exactly the kind of formal, humourless setting I had grown up in (hello, Collège Protestant Français de Jeunes Filles) and thought it was hence the best choice for my own daughter.But then, I also signed her up for the extra-curricular “art class” taught by one of the teachers there. Now, mind you, the teachers at that school were absolutely well-meaning, and this one was intent on Read more:Colour
, Lines
Me, Plein-Air? 2007-04-22 14:15:00 Yesterday was the very first day of spring here. Late according to my calendar, but the temperature finally hit above 20˚C and hubby insisted on dragging the lot of us to a nearby nature preserve. Not that we minded really, the girls were ready for an outdoorsy kind of day, especially with the prospect of bird-watching, snake ferreting (ha! like that was ever going to happen with me around) and most importantly - plein-air painting, hubby's obsess... favourite pastime.So here we were at the end of the afternoon, baking in the blinding light at the park, when I found myself with no option but to join everyone else in, gasp... painting outdoors. Unlike the rest of my brood, furiously engaged in this captivating activity, I found nothing inspiring in the still-denuded, dusty brown landscape around us - until my heart melted at the site of these two lovely creatures totally engrossed in creating their masterpieces.Of course, I only had about 45 seconds for each sketch before I had to ans Read more:Plein
Glass Pebble Magnets 2007-04-30 02:49:00 I learned how to do this really neat little project from a visit to the Work*Shop in Austin a couple of years ago. These adorable glass magnets make great little gifts, original kitchen or office magnets - as well as a terrific craft for an older child, a teenager or a real grown-up like me. If you do take the time to do it properly, these may be the most satisfying fifteen minutes you spend on an artsy-fartsy craft and end up with a really unique-looking creation, one that finally answers the elusive search for form and function. What you need:- Transparent glass pebbles with a flat back, the kind you find in the flower arrangement section of your local art/craft supply store. Try to choose the clearest ones you can, you should be able to see your chosen design underneath. It's okay if the pebble shows a little bit of a moiré effect as they often do, it may even add to the charm of the finished piece. You can use different sizes, but it's easier to work with the larger ones.- Smal Read more:Glass
, Pebble
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