Last week our Life Book 2014 lesson was given by the delightful Marieke Blokland She introduced us to her quirky divas – cute fantasy portraits with exaggerated features. They are great fun to create. Lots of layers of acrylic paint, pencil and a little doodling with a Sigma. Here’s mine…
She is going to be collaged onto a background – Marieke’s is a sugar diva but I don’t like sugar much, so I think my girl will be a flower diva.
Had lots of fun with these exercises…
Mickie Wild was our Week 2 artist and she gave us a short bonus lesson. The journal page focused on making an affirmation – what we want more of in 2014. At first I thought I would hate to work with a grey background… I mean, who’d want to. I decided to go with it and as I did, the paint seemed to have a life of its own. Instead of the neat, matte background I’d envisaged, I began to let the paint drizzle and drip until it looked like some crazed, dystopian landscape. I turned it upside down and it was obvious to me that balloons were required. It ain’t pretty, but it wasn’t meant to be.
The third week was Carla Sonheim (she’s so cute!) and her blobs, non-dominant hand doodles and crazy collage creatures…
For the fourth week, we were introduced to Kelly Hoernig. I love Kelly’s stuff because she works in a lovely, deliberate controlled way – the opposite to me. I am the sort to slap paint, glue and collage down where it wants to go. Kelly is a planner. Her collage was simple and stunning. We had to choose collage pieces to represent things we love. I chose an Alice in Wonderland tag, some black and white scraps and diamonds (not that I own one single diamond!).
There’s lots of texture and layers built up with gesso. I made it a bit more 3D by outlining with charcoal.
I’m really pleased to be part of Willowing Art‘s (Tamara LaPorte) latest LifeBook offering. A year log course featuring 23 fantabulous mixed media teachers.
The first lesson was posted this week and there’s a whole year of fun, learning and delicious, messy mixed-media delight ahead. Get yourself over there now and sign up.
This week we had a warm-up exercise followed by a portrait of our guardian angel to complete. The warm up used several techniques, such as applying Neocolor ll, collage, spattering, dripping paint and these were then carried through to the main event – our guardian angel portrait. Tam even posted a guided meditation to help us discover who our guardian is, though I allowed mine to emerge on the actual piece.
We were encouraged to do some journaling on the warm-up to get rid of negative thoughts and feelings about our worthiness as artists and human-beings. My biggest problem in this regard right now is feeling scattered and directionless. So I chose to add positive thoughts about being focused. We also had to ask our guardian for a word to carry us through the next year… mine is ‘release’.
Doodle Painting
After a long, long hiatus, I am back and ready to restart my 365 project.
I am really enjoying making these doodle paintings. I love the fact that the painting process is quick and easy but that I can spend hours (or not) playing with the doodling. There will be more of these, I’m sure.
Materials used: watercolor paint, watercolor paper or pad, black fine liner pen, whit gel pen. Click on the image or see “How to Paint a Doodle” for a step-by-step.
Inspired by Zenspirations
A slightly different take on Zentangle is Joanne Fink’s gentle ‘Zenspirations‘. She uses simple patterns to create monograms, alphabets, borders and pretty doodles. This page was created by spraying acrylic ink over stencils, then adding washes of watercolor. Once dry, I added lettering, dots, doodles and ‘dangles’.
In Philosophical Mood
Another exercise from Joanne Sharpe’s lettering course. I love doing these. Plenty of mixed media happening too. The backgrounds for this, the last, and the next few pieces were ‘ready made’ by me. Stencil sprayed some acrylic inks, allowed to dry. Then attacked the paper with watercolour washes, some wet-in-wet, some dry. No rhyme or reason. I was careful not to make mud by mixing warm and cool colours. Eventually these will be made into a small journal.
On this page, I used a Sakura Pigma Micron to draw the flowers – just quick little doodles. Did the same for the lettering lines. Coloured in the flowers and stems with my Tombows. Did the lettering with Microns and a bullet-tipped marker – forget which one. Added a little Letraset marker here and there – inside the letters and hearts. Then highlighted and dotted with the trusty white Signo.
Words
A little brush doodling and extra colour added with Tombow dual brush pens. A little 10-minute jobbie, this one,
Word Strips
I like this technique of getting words onto a journal page. I used some ordinary cartridge paper and splashed a load of color on to it. Then, when it was dry, I tore it up into strip and wrote on them. Used a grey marker to add shadows to the letters. On my journal pages I created some backgrounds with stencils, stamps and paint and just stuck the word strips on. Added shadow with more charcoal.
Accidental Art
This was great. After I finished the last page, I turned to the next one in my art journal and was horrified to see the bleed-through from the Promarkers. Then I realised that it was, in fact, quite a cool background. So I just got busy with my markers again.
Shopping Spree
Oh boy, have I got a ton of catching-up to do. I’m just going to post one entry after another. This piece was made with a background of Letraset Promarkers. Underneath, in yellow, are the words ‘art journal’. Then I used a Sharpie to mark out lines and wrote with a Copic on top. Then I used a gold marker to embellish with dots.
