Life Book week 8 - Courage

This week's class was from Jane Davenport and I was itching to get going as week 7 had no class. Instead we had a fab interview with Julie Fei-Fan Balzer. If you're a fan of templates and stencils then you probably own something designed by Julie as she produces gorgeous templates for The Crafters Workshop.
Anyway, in the class this week we were shown a very cool and surprisingly simple way to draw a complete body. Jane called it 'unstumpifying' as all to often the end result of figure drawing can be short and stumpy looking! I found it super easy to create a longer leaner looking shape and was really pleased with the end result. The journaling theme for this week was courage and I found a great quote online that resonated with where I am right now in life.
My journal pages ended up very different to the class sample (again) as I started off with a collaged background. I glued down scraps of brown paper, scrapbook papers and even a tag to create the base. I painted out an area with white gesso for the figure which I painted with a combination of Claudine Helmuth acrylics and watercolour crayons. I stamped my journaling using Archival ink and then realised that the layers of the collaged background added a lot to the meaning behind the words - it was just one of those happy accidents that wasn't planned, it just evolved. I enjoyed this process so much I may draw another figure just for the joy of it!
I'm happy with the end result and was glad to have something to get my teeth into this week. I must be one of the few people who actually looks forward to a Monday!!