Online art class: Diane Culhane's Between Speech and Silence

I'm taking an online art class this week by Diane Culhane called 'Between Speech and Silence - it's hosted at Carla Sonheim's blog. It's got some line drawing/coloring (above is my results from Day 1), some collage, and some painting. The nice thing about it is I can go at my own pace, so if I miss a few days, it's no big deal, the videos are still there for me to watch another day. Tonight I did the Day 2 exercise which involves tearing out magazine pieces then gessoing over a 'shape' - I picked colors and textures from the magazines that I thought were really pretty or interesting, then layered them to come up with this:

Then I looked at the page, rotating it to try and see something in there. I finally noticed this triangle and thought of a little guy in a sombrero dancing a jig and shouting 'Ole!' It made me laugh.

So I drew around the shapes, and really didn't want to lose all the lovely color I had put on the rest of the page so I drew a tree and some leaves and some floating balls to preserve the colors.

Then I covered most of it with gesso. It makes me smile to see the little guy dancing.

There is more to the project which I'll do another day. I recommend you take Diane's class if you're interested in doing a few exercises to motivate your creativity and playfulness. There are some other good classes listed on Carla's blog as well.

Edit 2/21 - here is my finished painted collage of the sombrero man: