More Faces

I am concentrating on the Let's Face It classes at the moment and not doing much with the art journal challenges - because, lack of inspiration and time.

Finding inspiration still presents the biggest problem when completing these set challenges - and then of course, when inspiration does strike it is another matter entirely to get it down on the page exactly as you see it in your head.

I've done two Journal 52 challenges and neither has turned out quite how I was hoping.

Journal 52 Week 2 - Hope

I did this in my small Dylusions journal, emulating day 4 of Effy Wild's pages for the #MiniMoleyDaily challenge that she is also running. Effy's is much shinier & brighter - her greenish paint was much more translucent so the gold stencilling showed up. I may have another go at this for a different challenge.

Journal 52 Week 3 - Strange

I started with napkin remnants covered over with paint in various shades and then dry-brushed with silver. I stamped the words and felt it needed something - so I drew a face. She has hearts on her cheeks and multi-coloured hair. The hair overpowered the letter stamps so I had to go over them with my black Uniball. Not quite the effect I was looking for!

Let's Face It Week 2 revisited.

As I mentioned last time, I decided to try my profile portrait from week one again. So I did both a grid portrait and a burnished portrait. Surprisingly, the grid portrait still looks longer in the face than the original photo - how does that happen?

The burnished version below is better - as it should be!

Let's Face It Week 3 - Values

Well we've finished the review portion and re now getting stuck into painting portraits this week with our first lesson on grey scale values. Again, I've made the face longer than in the reference photo - that is obviously something I'm going to have to work on!

I didn't have a board or a Stabilo All Pencil, so used a heavy duty paper and water soluble pastel. Using gesso to get the different shades of grey was interesting - it worked really well if you got just the right amount of gesso on your brush. An exercise in control for me who tends to overload her brush!

Something else I will have to try again when I have the right materials - but the Stabilo pencil is proving elusive.

Thanks for looking and reading - look after yourselves til next time. Cheers.

A new year means a new challenge

Happy New Year to everyone - I hope you all had a break from work and could spend time with family and friends. Because it was so hot here, we had a Christmas BBQ - just chops, rissoles and snags with salad, followed by pavlova and chocolate ripple cake. YUM!!!!!

It was the perfect lunch for the weather and we all enjoyed it very much. My brother rang our other brother (he's in Brisbane) so with the phone on speaker, we all got to talk to each other for the first time in about three years. The four of us have not got together since just after my 60th birthday.

So this year, I have paid for a year-long course on drawing and painting faces, run by Kara Bullock at Let's Face It 2017. (https://karabullockart.com/lets-face-it-2017-registration/) It is my first PAID course and I am wanting to make the most of it, so I will probably not do as many weekly challenges this year. However, I will try to combine some of my weekly prompts just like I have seen others do.

Anyway, here is a catch-up on what I have done since the last time I posted.

Colour Me  Positive Week 52 - Christmas

Having pulled out out all my Christmas stuff , I found this great napkin with the funky Santa image. The background was swiped in seasonal colours and the words are from a stencil. I added some glitter accents, did a bit of doodling and even added stickers from my Christmas lunch cracker.

Colour Me Positive Week 53 - Opportunities

As luck would have it, there were 53 Fridays in 2016, so we got an extra challenge. The quote was short: "1 year = 365 opportunities." I decided to do another mandala using the flower of life and used the colours of the rainbow seeing as how I had 7 flowers inside the circle. I changed the quote slightly to read: "365 days of opportunities = one year of creativity."

Kylie (the new owner of Lulu Art) also posed the question - What would you do if you couldn't fail?  So, I answered that with another journal page.

I've been experimenting with textured backgrounds starting out with napkins glued to the page, which are then covered in paint usually in analogous colours. Then I dry brush metallic colours - gold, silver or bronze - to catch the raised bits. It comes out looking a bit leathery. This one was a bit of a fail - the burnt umber was too dark and stood out from the other colours - so I used it as the background for my page.

Journal 52 Week 50 - Fire & Ice

Again with the mandala - I am really enjoying this art form, although it is very time consuming and colour choice can be a pain. I spent some time looking for images of fire and ice before embarking on this design. Of course, the obvious images work the best - flame and snowflake - with warm vs cool colours and doodling in gold & silver.

Let's Face It - Week 1

This week we looked at portrait mapping using circle/oval template with the face's proportions broken up into thirds & quarters. Kara showed us how to do a front facing portrait as well as profile and three quarter portraits. My first effort was 3 small faces on the same page - but they all leaned to one side. I think it was how I was sitting.

Later, I tried again in a larger format (and sitting properly) which worked out much better, although my profile portrait is too long in the face compared to the photo.

Let's Face It - Week 2

This week, we looked at using a grid to draw a portrait - this helps gives an accurate portrayal. (I'll have to try that profile portrait again using a grid!!)

Next, we drew around an image using charcoal or graphite then turned the page over and burnished the image onto a blank page. You have to rub really hard (using a bone folder or other similar tool) but you should get enough on the page to then draw the image and add all the details yourself.

I think this is a great way to practice and get used to drawing lots of different faces. This is the same girl as above but she is now the opposite way around!

And lastly, a free hand exercise using marks and shapes to build up an image. Kara wanted us to use only black and white charcoal to produce this image and show the play between light and shadow. I used the image that Kara supplied.

So far, I am loving these classes and exercises. Even when things go a bit wonky, it doesn't matter because I am creating and using muscles that have been dormant for about 40 years. Looking forward to the next lesson so much.

If you've got this far, thanks for reading my blog. I hope you have a good 2017 ahead and keep well. Cheers.