Life Book week 9 - overpainting

I missed out the week 9 class which was due a few weeks ago as I was struggling with it. I'm the type of person who either 'feels' it or doesn't and for quite a while I really wasn't feeling it.
The technique for the class was to take a magazine photo of a face and to gesso over it. You then paint over the faint image to create something that has a more pop-art feel to it. I don't buy fashion magazines so that was my first problem so I had to find something online and print it on a laser printer so it could be altered. The printed image wrinkled like mad when it was adhered to the watercolour paper and so that's when I stopped again! I finally forced myself to sit and finish this in one last push and it was surprisingly easy. I struggle with drawing realistic faces so having a reference image to work off made it very much easier. I could follow the placement of features and use the shadows that were there already. It was simple to create a natural real looking face.
If you find faces hard to draw and/or paint then you might want to give this technique a go. It's very simple and a good starting point for drawing. I'm pleased now I've finished mine, now on to this week's class!

Whimsy angel

One of the things I'm enjoying at the moment is creating these whimsy girls in my art journal. They come fairly easy and are a great way for me to warm up into creating. They are also a way for me to express myself, get things down onto paper and enjoy making stuff.
While all of this art journaling malarkey is a bit different from scrapbooking at first glance, it's still 'cutting and sticking', playing with colour and design principles. I think that's why I'm also in my element here, it's coming from the same place. I also think its making me a better scrapbooker, it's inspiring me to create differently using different mediums and materials and that's exciting. So please indulge me through these art journal posts, there's so much fun to be had!!

Life Book week 10 - Heart Connection

This week on the Life Book art journaling course we celebrated the connections of our hearts - everything and everyone that we love and treasure in our lives.  Its hard to see but the background is made up of at least eight different layers and processes.  Within these layers is some really meaningful writing that you can just catch glimpses of is you look carefully.  I played with alcohol and acrylic paint to create amazing interactions, collaged with vintage book pages and sheet music, stamped, dripped, gessoed, stamped some more, added tapes, painted, sprayed - basically you name it, I did a little bit of it.  If you stop and look closely at the background in real life you can see each process but its so subtle it all works together as one.
The key technique for this class was creating little rolled love letters which were then formed into a heart shape.  As usual, I approached mine in a different way to Tam's sample in my construction and was really happy with the result.  Each one of those rolls contains a love letter to someone really special to me, they will never read them but that's not important here, its the intention behind this process that really matters to me.  I loved creating this and each step of the way gave real pleasure.  I added the gorgeous wide May Arts ribbon to tie my heart together - we have this in the shop in both the black/cream and the green/white versions (yummy!!).
Those of you who are eagle-eyed may have noticed that I've missed posting about the week 9 class.  This is because I'm struggling with it a little and haven't really got to grips with the idea behind the techniques.  I'll be working on it over the next few days I'm sure!

Life book 2013 - week 3

This week's lesson was by Christy Tomlinson of 'SheArt' fame and continued the theme of new beginnings that seems to have run through the projects so far. She showed us how she creates a collaged background and I had great fun sticking down scraps of patterned paper, stickers, diecuts and ephemera including my Asda shopping receipt. It a great way to recycle stuff and I'm looking at junk mail in a whole new light!
The key to bringing everything together into one cohesive background is to scrape gesso over the whole page. This highlights the layers, mutes colours and adds texture. Once the gesso was dry I added smears acrylic paints, shimmer mediums and inks using my fingers. It felt really great to get my hands messy but I couldn't quite use my palm as a palette as Christy does! I stamped words and added swirls of alcohol ink and splotches of Glimmer Glam, anything goes with art journaling and its incredibly free. I just decided to keep my colour palette limited to yellow/orange/red with touches of green.
The main focus of this week was 'new blooms', creating new growth to take us into the new year. Christy talked about taking lessons we have learned over the past year into the new year to help us grow but become something slightly different. Like a dandelion sends its seeds out with all it's genetic code from its past but it still grows into something slightly different and unique. I don't tend to dwell on all of the personal growth aspects of the classes but I thought that this was a cool concept and so I wanted to incorporate a dandelion into my page somehow.
The video showed us how to create flowers using tissue paper and foil plus a few paints, sprays, stamps and stencils. The result was a fabulous sheet of foil covered with layers of colour and texture that we could use to die cut, mould or tear flowers from. I created shapes that evoked dandelion seeds to me and added fluffy fibres to add lightness. I made a main flower at the bottom of the page and then added three seeds blowing away in the wind and taking my dreams with them. It was so easy and fun to make these flowers and I can definitely see me making more in a range of shapes and sizes - I have three more sheets of foil ready to use! This week's class was refreshing and what's more, I'm still keeping up!