Loved doing these splatter flowers. They were a bonus exercise by Tam.
Probably won’t be posting any more Life Book 2014 as the course is finished. I have my remaining exercises set aside and you never know — I might get round to completing them one day.
I have caught up – yay! This week’s lesson was created by Alena Hennessy, author of Cultivating Your Creative Life, and it was all about intuitive painting. She gave us a guided meditation, which I’m ashamed to say I haven’t partaken of yet (I’m a meditative wriggler) and a free form exercise using collage, acrylics, crayons and pen.
I had a lot of fun with this – it’s one of favourite ways of making art. There was a stage (which I oughtta be used to by now, you’d think) where it got extremely ugly and I was about to bin it. I kept telling myself to press on and it would be okay in the end. Well, it’s not great, but it’s okay.
I have to admit it… I was very resistant to doing last week’s lesson. I love Jane Davenport’s style, her energy and verve. However, I thought that the lesson, which involved making a sort of folder with pop-ups inside was more suited to card making than an art journal page. After huffing and puffing a bit, I decided that I was indeed resisting, and there was no earthly reason why I shouldn’t try it. Of course, my underlying problem is that I thought I *couldn’t do it*.
My ‘creation’ is based on my home and family – it’s where I feel good with the people I love. I used spray inks, fabric tape, watercolours, acrylics, pen, a bit of collage and I made the bunting with watercolour diamonds and a bit of yarn.
As promised, here is my version of the main exercise for week 6. My first attempt was a disaster but I gessoed over the mess and started again – being too mean to discard the Fabriano paper. The Brusho paint worked really well over the gesso and I got some really good streaks going. Loved how they mixed – even yellow and purple – together and didn’t make mud.
We had to make a list of our positive attributes before we started but I preferred to do mine on the fly. I wrote them in the third person as I couldn’t bear to write I, I, I, me, me, me, all over my art.
Week six was another couple of exercises from Tam – she’s always fun. This week we were dripping and flowing ink. She used Dylusions; I haven’t got any so I used my diluted Brusho paints. Brusho is a powdered watercolour/dye that can be used in many ways on paper and fabric. It can be diluted and kept in spray bottles – you only need to use a little, or you can sprinkle it onto wet paper for some lovely effects. We had two projects; here is the first.
I used homemade tape, fabric tape, rubber stamps and my Brusho paint. I’ll post the second piece as soon as it’s done.
I hate my first week one exercise – there’s no way I wanted to include it in my Life Book, so it has to go. Today I had an hour to spare so I decided to give the exercise another try.
Here’s my girl. I thought she’d be a nice ‘Daisy Diva’. I don’t like cupcakes and sweet stuff much (‘cept chocolate), so couldn’t bring myself to use sugar as an art theme.
The background was painted charcoal (white gesso mixed with black acrylic paint as I have no black gesso). Then a fuscia pink layer over that. Some fabric tape for a border, plus loads of Neocolor ls. More gesso, more paint – this time teal blue.
I collaged my girl, gave her a fabric dress, cut out some shapes vaguely resembling arms and legs. Coloured them with pen. Doodled on her dress and daisies all around. Some more Neocolors and that was it. Much fun, although I wouldn’t want to hang her on a wall – too scary!
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’.
