Wednesday, May 21, 2014

The Documented Life Project week 10

Another week of the Documented Life Project where the prompt is to make a list of what makes you "YOU". I started with bits of three acrylic glazes smeared and blended into each other over the page for a background blob of color. The lettering is all white gel pen and I tried out a few different doodle borders.

Monday, May 19, 2014

Compendium of Curiosities Vol.3 Challenge Week No. 2


Here's my tag for the CC3C challenge - this time it's sponsored by the Funkie Junkie Boutique and uses the distress glitter technique following page 56 of Tim Holtz's book.  My tag started with drawing a face with a Stabilo pencil on a big #10 tag and adding subtle coloring with Golden high flow acrylics. After masking her, I used a Prima flower stencil to monoprint the background using distress ink and spritzes of water. I also did some random stamping with a she art text stamp (Unity) - I love the added visual texture of the stamping. The distress glitter is used in the swirl pattern down the side.

48 weeks: week 12

This lesson for 48 weeks really speaks to me of a lot of Donna Downey's work. I love all the big bold flowers she paints and having these against a black background really accentuates the color even more.

Close-ups:


Friday, May 16, 2014

LifeBook 2014 week 8

This week's LifeBook 2014 page was a painty page by Alena Hennessy. It was a very intuitive approach to painting - no rules to follow, just following whatever path you start to go down when you decide to try a particular color or supply and ask "what if I try..." I liked how the background evolved by scribing into the wet paint and adding random doodles.

Thursday, May 15, 2014

LifeBook 2014 week 7

This lesson from LifeBook 2014 was by Jane Davenport and created a fun pop-up page. This is the closed page.

And this is when it's opened:


Her drawing style is fun and she taught about how to draw a leaping figure, so this is my attempt at that:


Tuesday, May 13, 2014

The Documented Life Project week 9

I did a post about these flowers yesterday.  Well, when I painted them, I had a piece of palette paper with little bits of color scattered all over it - several yellows and greens and some quinacridone red, red-orange, blue violet and a bit of gold - and I finger-painted my flowers. When I finished with the palette paper, there was still paint remaining on it and I smooshed it onto this page in a watercolor journal and created this effect thinking it will be a cool background to play with some time.


Afterwords, I still had the original piece of palette paper and it just so happened that the Documented Life Project prompt for the week was to collage something you recycled.  I added that piece into my planner and then had so much fun finding flower shapes and outlining them with a stabilo pencil. Then I used gesso to block out the background and help the flowers stand out. I LOVED the results!



Monday, May 12, 2014

48 weeks: week 11


The spread for this lesson for 48 weeks started with fantastic texture from paintable wallpaper, and then a bouquet was added on top.  I really loved how these flowers came out - especially the yellow/peach ones. I just kept playing with little bits of paint on my finger slowly building up the depth and finally just a touch of white also really helped to create the effect I wanted.


Thursday, May 8, 2014

48 weeks: week 10


The 48 weeks spread for this lesson used a figure viewed from the back. It set the tone for the lettering I chose to add:


I really love the texture you get by stamping into wet gesso:


Monday, May 5, 2014

Compendium of Curosities Vol.3 Challenge Week No.1

Yay!!!! There's another Compendium of Curiosities Challenge starting! This time we will be working through Volume 3 of Tim Holtz's book. Inspiration Emporium is sponsoring the challenge for this week which is "paint marbling" using distress paints, and I tried out the technique on the blue colored panel of my layered collage. I wanted to see what effects I could achieve on a textured background. Mine started with letter stickers stuck to a square of watercolor paper, then I put joint compound (yes, from the hardware store!) in several spots and stamped into it with foam stamps to create texture. I've been playing with this type of background in my art journals and love the depth it can create. After air drying which takes a l-o-o-o-n-g time, I sealed it with matte medium and then did the paint marbling over top. I highlighted the raised texture with a bit of gesso on my finger. It may not look like the paint marbling demonstrated on a flat tag, but I love the effect! So much so that I even wrote the word on my collage ;-)

This is a close-up of textured panel: