Art Challenges - Weeks 3 & 4

Well inspiration did eventually hit for the week 3 challenges, but it was weak and I ended up using the same piece for both challenges.

Colour Me Positive Week 3 - LIVE LIFE

This week's quote was "Make today so awesome that yesterday gets jealous" - focusing on how we can make today the best day possible. The alternative challenge was to use some song lyrics on your page.

So I went with song lyrics and chose Carole King's "Beautiful" which is one of my favourites. My page started with a very wet acrylic wash which I smooshed on the facing page, ending up with a sort of marbled effect. I glued paper napkin paper to the page with white paint - I find this better than dealing with glues or sticky mediums. Spotted pattern on the bottom, a vase cut out of a blue & white napkin, then a rounded shape from a napkin featuring balloons.

I then painted over the balloons in co-ordinating colours and turned them into flowers, painted some stems and leaves to fill the spaces, and then wrote the words of the song's first verse around the picture.

 Journal 52 Week 3 - Song Lyrics / Favourite Bowie Lyrics

Quite weird that both of the challenges included song lyrics this week. I could not pick a favourite Bowie song and nothing at all popped into my head while trawling though lyrics on the WWW, so I decided to just post the page I had done for CMP. This photo shows some detail of  the texture obtained by using the napkins underneath the painting.

 Colour Me Positive Week 4 - Believe in Yourself

So the smooshing on the facing page just looked a bit drippy, but I could a vague face in the paint, so I sketched it out. I decided to use my watercolour pencils for this portrait even though I find them challenging to work with. Sometimes when you add water they disappear, other times the lines of colouring in show too much. I can't seem to get it right.

Also the paint on the page gave her face a splotchy look which I could not get rid of. Should have used paint!!

Journal 52 Week 4 - Full Moon / Moon Madness

So Effy wanted us to explore the full moon in our pages and Sarah wanted us to explore moon madness or lunacy. That's a bit weird because this weekend I just re-read Nora Roberts "Northern Lights" which is set in the fictional town of Lunacy!!!!

Anyway, I found this great quote "The night walked down the sky with the moon in her hand" and this image just popped into my head. The moon was made using crackle medium with battleship grey underneath and cream on top - although it didn't crackle much. The silhouette was traced from a magazine and the background painted with a mixture of paynes grey (looks dark blue to me), medium grey and pacific blue.

I am really pleased that I was able to translate what I had in my head onto the page.

Collages - C

The word is CAVALCADE and I had to resort to printing images from the internet to get enough for the page. I coloured the spaces with Faber-Castell Brushmarkers.

That's it for now - thanks for visiting.

Art Challenges - Week 2

Well, I managed to do my week two challenges OK, but as I post this I am behind on week 3 and at the moment, without inspiration.

Colour Me Positive Week 2 - BE BRAVE

 So CMP will offer two challenges each week in the form of a quotation to use and some other challenge. We can do both, one or none!!

This week's quote was "She took the leap and built her wings on the way down". As my garden has been visited every morning by a pair of rainbow lorikeets, feeding on the grevillea flowers, I thought I would try my hand a drawing one. I used Dylusions distress stain and it acted a bit like watercolour/ink on the gessoed page. I blended two greens, two blues, two reds and a yellow to get suitable colours.

The alternate challenge was to use a silhouette in your page. I kept this very simple with gesso, tissue glued down, painted silhouette and sign. The words around the edge are from Miles Davis, and read "I'm always thinking about creativity. My future starts when I wake up every morning ... Every day I find something creative to do with my life."

Journal 52 Week 2 - YES & NO

The two pronged approach is also being done by Journal 52 with Effy Wild and Sarah Strumpp both offering challenges.

Effy asked what will we say YES to in 2016, and Sarah asked what will we say NO to in 2016? So first, I had to make my list, then I had to find suitable images to go with each aspiration. After gessoing, painting and stencilling, I used letters from scrapbooking supplies, glued my pictures cut from magazines, and played with paint - literally, as I used my fingers to move paint around the pages.

Messy but fun.

Alphabet Collages - B

So today, I finally got around to completing this collage in my little journal. I've had the idea in my head for a couple of weeks. My B-word was going to be BIZARRE, but it sounds like BAZAAR and I had all these great images from an old calendar - so I combined the words.

I had trouble (as usual) with the glue and gel medium not sticking very well, but overall I am pleased with it.

As for the week three challenges - three of them involve song lyrics and I have no idea at all for anything to go with this week's CMP quote. Wish me luck - I'm going to need it.

Thanks for visiting!

Lots of Art Challenges this year

In 2016. I am participating in two Art Challenges and considering a couple more. My favourite on-line art supply store is running a weekly challenge called "Colour Me Positive" with prompts every Friday morning, and I have joined in on "Journal 52" where there are two prompts each week.

Work starts again tomorrow, so I won't have as much time to play, but I'm hoping I can keep up and maybe, even do some of the Diva Zentangle challenges. Anyway, here is what I have produced in the last few days.

CMP Week 1 - Gratitude

My favourite type of journal page - combining photo with paint.
I was looking for a quote for something else when I saw the one on this page and knew that I had the perfect photo to go with it.
(Photo credit - Shannon Nace, 2006 Lonely Planet Diary).

Journal 52 Week 1 - Your Word of the Year

This year my word is LEARN. Last year it was CREATE and the DLP kickstarted that in 2015, but along the way I found that my technique fell short in some areas.
So this year, I'd like to fix some of those shortfalls and maybe take some classes or at least find some YouTube videos to help.

Journal 52 Alternate Prompt - Strange Word

I chose my word by opening up my Thesaurus at random.
I had a go at straight collage with images from magazines and thoroughly enjoyed the process. It was quick and it was fun.
So much fun that I did another one today, and am thinking about doing an A - Z of strange words.

AWESOMILLION - courtesy of J. D. Robb in "Festive in Death".

I think Mavis uses the word to describe Dallas's dress for the Xmas party, and I had fun trawling through an old Marie Claire looking for suitably luxurious items.
And again, it was quick and fun to do.
I've been wanting to try this since seeing some of Frieda Oxenham's collages on her blog.








So that's what I've been doing in my spare time while on holiday - now back to work tomorrow.