All caught up!!

I have finally caught up with all my Let's Face It 2017 lessons - courtesy of doing no housework and my job quieting down so I had extra days at home. That's the problem with working for various public libraries - feast or famine - and at the moment it is famine with all my libraries. How different from my last post when I was so busy.

Anyway, that meant a long weekend to do lots of art. I also cooked two meals to refill my freezer and did some laundry - but that was the extent of my homely chores. It is hot again with 6 days in a row around 30 degrees, but we are getting cool sea breezes at night to help us sleep.

I am amazed at how versatile the lessons are on LFI 2017 - every week another talented artist takes us on a journey through another technique. Some of the lessons are very detailed and require hours of work, which leaves little time for my Facebook challenges - but those are free, and I paid for LFI 2017, so I need to concentrate on that. Besides, I am learning so much!

Let's Face It Week 6 - Effy Wild

Wow, was this lesson complex!!! Effy had us build up layers on our background before sketching in a face. There were so many steps and I had to spray it with fixative so many times, that I lost count. We used glazes to delineate some areas with colour, i.e.: the scarf and the background.

This is an interim photo showing how a blue and magenta glaze changes the background which started out looking like her dress. The face gets painted with gesso as a basis for drawing and painting the face.

Eventually after various applications of paint and coloured pencils, I ended up with the lady below. It only took me a week!

Let's Face It Week 7 - Renata Loree

A a complete change, this week we got a mini lesson from Renata, where we could use either ink or watercolour to paint a face and try to fix values to show light and shadow. Renata had a great image of a dreadlocked girl, and to stave off the "shades of grey" jokes at work, I used  blue watercolour.

This was a fun and quick lesson - just exactly what I needed after the intensity of Effy's lesson last week.

Let's Face It Week 8 - Jennifer Bonneteau

Wow, again! Jen's lesson was so interesting and I'm not sure I really succeeded, but I had fun trying.
We were encouraged to pick a painting by Voka, an Austrian artist and use that colour scheme in our own painting.

I used Jen's reference photo and picked one of Voka's portraits of Andy Warhol. A tip we were given was to photograph our portrait and then convert it to black & white to check the values we had painted against the reference photo. This immediately shows up where we might need lighter or darker colour values - it was really interesting to do this and see the underlying values.

Her mouth still needs work and I need to watch the video where Jen shows us how to paint teeth without making them scary, but now I am ready for lesson 9 which came out today and promises to be very different.

Journal 52 Week 8 - Stillness

I had a play with some of the printouts I did of Voka faces and tried a messy collage, adding some watercolour pencil details. As often happens, things did not turn out how I had planned - so the best thing to fix that is to draw something and then paint over the mess. So inspired by something I saw yesterday, I drew some bird shapes and gessoed over the rest of the page.

I then used black paint to outline the birds, paint in their legs, and some tail feathers (to shake). I wrote the word "peace" which is a synonym of stillness, because in my experience birds are never still, but can be peaceful to watch.

Thanks for visiting, leave a comment if you like, and take care of yourself. Ciao for now!

Catching up again

I really can't believe how fast time goes by - it certainly doesn't seem like three and a half weeks since my last post. Partly, I suppose, it's because work has been busy - four full days per week and then on my day off I have to do shopping (to get a discount) and clean (because my cleaner has hurt her knee, and is out of action). That means that I am behind with all my challenges and my paid classes, so I have not had much to post about.

Anyway last week, I finished the bulk of the books for the new library I have been working on and managed to complete a couple of challenges plus what was a big lesson for Let's Face It 2017. So here I am catching up with posting my work.

Mission Inspiration - January 2017

I got this challenge in by the skin of my teeth, using the revamped list of steps. I still don't really like the rigidity of following steps like this, but I do like the colour suggestions and the words to use.

Personally... I think my page is very ordinary, but I followed all eight steps, so that means, mission accomplished!

Journal 52 Week 6 - Dream

I got the inspiration for this on Pinterest where I collect possible backgrounds, but this was really dreamy and I thought I could use some daubers to make the marks. It uses white, pink, purple, orange & turquoise paint with a hint of gold round the edges.

Journal 52 Week 1 - Portal

I had leftover paint from the dream page, so with the addition of black to make the purple darker, I made this page to signify a portal or doorway. The inspiration came from a photo of a nebula which I also found on Pinterest.

Both of these pages were really quick and easy to make in my 9 x 5 Dylusions journal and gave me a little pick-me-up to get started on the big lesson from Juna Biagioni on Let's Face It 2017.

Let's Face It Week 5 - Lynda King / Colour Me Positive Week 4 - How We Treat Others

I'm doing my LFI ain the same order that I completed them - that is, I did the week 5 lesson before I did week 4. I also used this panting for week 4 of CMP because of the lovely light in her eyes.

Lynda's lesson was about using watercolour pencils with mediums other than water to activate them. It was a very interesting lesson and is a technique I will use again.

Let's Face It Week 4 - Juna Biagioni

We are still looking at values and how we can use different values of a colour to highlight or shadow.

Juna's lesson used just three shades - light medium and dark - to get the image on the page. We spent time refining then glazed the portrait before adding subtle colour with oil sticks or soft oil crayons.

This was a complex lesson with lots of videos to watch, however, I think I chose the wrong photo to copy - there was not much contrast between light and dark. I also made her mouth too small and her hair a bit too boofy. 

The reference photo was altered to show the areas of light & dark. My portrait above is before any glazing or colour was added. It was done using just the three shades of colour.

The portrait below is the finished version with blue glaze added to the background, magenta to the face and a mix of magenta & yellow to the hair. I followed up with soft wax crayons, toning down the face and trying to emphasise the lighter areas. I also gave her lips, hair and eyes more colour

Lots of interesting techniques learned in this lesson and especially, the use of glazes. While I may not be really happy about my work, I am loving all the new things I am learning - I just need to find time to practise, practise, practise.

Thanks a lot for visiting, leave a comment if you want, and I'll see you in "blogland" sometime soon. Cheers.