Drawing with color

Hello friends! Hope your summer has been wonderful. It's almost September! How did that happen?
I'm here today to share some cards made for a challenge. My favorite artist is Henri Matisse. I have had the good fortune to see two exhibitions of his work in my lifetime. Once at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and more recently at the Tate Gallery in London. The show in NYC was a retrospective of his entire body of work and in London the show was just focusing on his famous cutouts. And that is what led me to creating this challenge.
Matisse said

“The paper cutouts allow me to draw with color. For me, it is a simplification. Instead of drawing an outline and then filling in with color-with one modifying the other-I draw directly in color...It is not a starting point, it is a completion.”

I asked some crafty friends to join me - in drawing with color - using shapes and color. 

Being cardmakers we use a lot of punches 

and dies to make shapes all the time, right?

I decided to use some dies and a punch to create the cards you see here.

The first card - I took some watercolor paper and a reinker and smooshed the color all over. I used my punch as I like to think Matisse used his scissors to cut out the colors and shapes I wanted. I arranged them in a square and used a starfish die and sentiment to complete my card. In this closeup you can see the colors and shapes in each shape that I punched out

 In this card I used a leaf die from PTI- very Matisse like shape don't you agree? I like to think this card has some of the movement of the shapes I see in many of Matisse' cutout pieces.

In this last card again I used a leaf die (as well as an impression plate for the background). I used more of that inked watercolor paper but also foiled one of the leaves with my Minc.





















Okay that's all for today. I hope, if nothing else, you'll go online and look at Matisse's cutouts. Google it - you'll see so many beautiful pieces of his. The shapes are beautiful.
I hope to be back to blogging on a more regular basis. In the meantime however you can find me daily on Instagram