Week 8 and some collages

Since I last posted, I have only completed one art challenge, but have done three collages - so not exactly idle, just a bit uninspired by the challenges. I'm finding it all a bit airy-fairy - too much soul searching and not enough technique. I suppose I must have a different expectation after doing last year's Documented Life Project. Anyway, onward and upward!!

Colour Me Positive Week 8 - FEARLESS

This week's quote was "Everything you want is on the other side of fear"  and we were encouraged to explore fear vs. creativity and use cut-out words on our page.

I used bold and bright colours, finger painted onto a double page spread in circular patterns. I scribbled circles and scrolls with coloured pens within the circles, and as usual, went with a different but relevant quote: "Be afraid of nothing. You have within you - all wisdom, all power, all strength, all understanding" - Eileen Caddy.

I then cut our butterflies to paste onto the page and wrote the word FEARLESS on card to cover up some staples from the previous page.

Journal 52 Week 8 - Hearts / Skulls or Crows

The challenges this week include exploring what your heart knows vs. what your head knows (from Effy) or to use skulls, exploring what wisdom is in your head or bones, or use crows in your picture (from Sarah).

I have to say that both challenges left me cold - I'm heartily sick of  hearts - in art or otherwise. And, as for skulls or crows - they have no appeal for me whatsoever.

So, in consequence, I have done noting for Week 8 of this challenge. However, I may come back to it later.

Collages - G, H, I

G is for GALLIVANTING in every possible way - walking, driving, socialising and moving any old which way!

H is for HEREDITARY. This is another digital composition with lots of old family photos including my favourite great-aunt as a girl, my convict ancestor and his wife, my elusive paternal grandfather, my mum as a baby, my dad and his sister, their beloved grandmother and her in-laws.

My personal  favourite is the 5 Georges - George Dale (my grandfather), George Dale Snr (my great grandfather - son of the convict), George Dale (my uncle), George Trowbridge (my other great grandfather) and Georgie Dale (my cousin).

I is for ILLUMINATIONS of every possible type - bright lights, lightning, fire, fireworks, the sun, the stars, the moon, and Melbourne's White Night.

I'm glad that I decided to use the small Dylusions journal for the collages, As I sometimes find it difficult to find enough images to fill the space. Once I have an idea in my head, I spend a lot of time trawliing through old magazines for suitable images.

Anyway, thanks for looking and I hope you liked what you saw. Cheers.

Art Catch-up

I haven't posted for a couple of weeks as I've been busy elsewhere - work, doctors, reading, cooking, etc, etc. But - I have kept up with the weekly challenges and here they all are up-to-date.

Colour Me Positive Week 6 - KINDNESS

As usual, I went looking for a different quote from the one given which was "Be kind wherever possible. It is always possible." - Dalai Lama, and/or do some stamping on the page.

I really wanted a longer chain to go round my family, but the bracelet I found in a jewelry catalogue was OK. The background is a mixture of Opal & Gold with Teal & Purple sprayed and dripped over. I raided that week's Target catalogue for my family and the whole spread came together really quickly.

My quote from Goethe, reads: "Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together."

Colour Me Positive Week 7 - HEART

This week the quote was from Confucius: "Wherever you go, go with all your heart.", and/or collage an image (or three) onto your page. Lisa also gave us some YouTube videos to look at and I was inspired by Nika in Wonderland to replicate her page.

The heart is glued down before being torn in half and then cut out and glued on the underneath page. Nika's heart got torn in this process - I made my hole deliberately heart shaped. This represents the hole in the heart I was born with that still gives me some trouble and means that I am on my fifth pacemaker.

I did some stencilling, used the challenge quote as well as Moliere's "The heart can do anything." Underneath the torn page, I have journaled about my experience with this page.

Journal 52 Week 6 - Beneath my Feet / Above my Head

The upshot of this week's challenges is to let the prompts lead you in any direction. Direction got me thinking of maps and where I come from, where I've been and where I am now.

So I printed a map showing the area where I grew up to signify what is beneath (behind) me - a solid upbringing rooted in family, friends, learning and work. Paired with that I printed some old photos of myself and my three siblings (circa 1961). The tree stencil denotes solid ground and the arrow stencil moving forward/growing up.

To keep to the same theme, I printed a map of the area where I now live and paired it with a photo of a beautiful clear, blue sky through my pergola. This signifies that ahead of me is my home, family close by, friends and retirement looming. I stencilled some roses and butterflies to finish the page.

Collages - F
Journal 52 Week 7 - Nerdy Love/Self Love

So I have two F words this week - flamboyant & fabulous. I did a collage on the computer using some of my photos from the Phryne Fisher Costume Exhibition that my sister and I went to last year. And as I have all the books by Kerry Greenwood and have seen all the episodes on TV, it should qualify as a Nerdy Love for the Journal 52 challenge.

I had no ideas and no time for Self Love - may get to it later!!!

If you've stopped by for a look, thanks heaps and I hope you liked what you saw.
Bye for now.

Week 5 Challenges

I've been a bit more productive since the last time I posted and had no problems coming up with ideas to complete the challenges.

Colour Me Positive Week 5 - DREAM BIG

This week's inspirational quote was "If your dreams don't scare you they're not big enough" and/or use bold colours on your page.

Well I immediately thought about losing weight and was going to do a mirror image - one before and one after, but when I had taken a selfie, drawn a slimmer version and cut them out, I suddenly thought about shadows. This, of course, tied in well with using the words "become a shadow of my former self".

The page was covered in paper napkins and stenciled in yellow oxide, white and pink, then the before picture was stuck to the page and painted black to become a silhouette. I painted the shadow directly onto the page. The words DREAM BIG (or smaller!) are stamped on the page and the other words are written under the shadow.

Journal 52 Week 5 - Monochromatic/Psychedelic

Sarah offered up the monochromatic challenge - to use the same tints or hues to express your mood, and Effy offered the opposite - psychedelic, using all colours to express your mood.

I actually started with the psychedelic challenge using book paper and bright green paint as a background. I then stenciled and stamped before adding lavender paint. This made the page look a bit dull so I rubbed some off with a baby wipe and added patches of pink, orange and teal. I painted over one of the stamps in teal, then did some pen work to highlight the shape. I'd call it more colourful than psychedelic though.

Excess paint and ink from the stencils and stamps was used up on the facing page. One of the stamps - a lacy doily - looked a little like tree tops, so I drew some trunks and scribbled in some foliage using a graphite pencil. The water brush brought out the colour more, as did more pencil marks. Not what I would call a good effort, but I had fun playing.

Collages - D & E

I am having fun doing these too. A trawl through some recent Royal auto magazines and a travel brochure culled enough "daredevil" type activities for the D page, and the Daphne magazines provided what I needed for the "encompass" page. I interpreted "encompass" as surrounding or encircling, so most of the items on the page are circular, and yes, that is a devil's tail coming out of the L in daredevil!!

Cheers and thanks for stopping by.

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.

What I did this week-end

DLP - Week 44

So here we are at week 44 of the Documented Life Project, and I am still participating and uploading my efforts into the Gallery on the website, where they often pale into insignificance against other participants efforts (http://www.art5academy.com/gallery). There are some very creative people participating in this project.

We have just done five, yes five, weeks of translucent papers for the month of October.  I had to improvise in a couple of challenges as I was not sure of what was meant by deli paper and I had no glassine. Luckily the last challenge was "Tea bags, Dryer sheets, Fibrous papers" and I have plenty of tea bags - having saved some unused, very out of date tea bags to use for dyeing at some stage.

So I steeped one tea bag in hot water, emptied several others and added them to the pot to colour up - which they did nicely. Once dried, I carefully pulled them apart so they were ready to apply to my page.

Here is the page I started with:

It was made using up leftover Paynes Grey and just dabbing the make-up sponge onto the page. I also added some alphabet stamps to use excess ink, from the same project (see Dream BIG below).

To this page, I glued  my tea bags and selected three Distress stains which I sprayed on the page. Again, AS USUAL,  the red is too strong for my tastes but I  stayed with it because that was my original choice.

Here is the page after spraying over the tea bags:

As you can see the first spray with mustard in the bottom R/H corner is very tentative, but they get stronger with the red and stronger again with the peacock.

From here, I covered the page lightly with gesso, found some paint to match the stains and used the make-up sponge again to stamp square shapes on the page. I wrote this week's DLP prompt "Just Create", added some stencil elements, and called it done.

Not my best effort, but it has several layers and the colours look much, much brighter in real life.

Dream BIG

The other page I completed this week is in the journal where I use up any leftover paint or mediums. It had some brightly coloured geometric stencils on the page which I covered up with two different paper napkins, I put a pink wash over the napkins and outlined the edges in green. I added a fern-like stencil using olive green distress stain, but it didn't show up very well - BUT when I turned the stencil over to press the excess stain onto the facing page, I got a great effect.

So I redid the stencil in Paynes Grey (hence the start of my page above), and added a rubber stamp of the Paris skyline to go with the top napkin. A couple of tissue paper butterflies, some pen work around the edge, and letter stamps to say "Dream BIG" finish off this page.







































As you can see, the reverse of the stencil looks great and I will use this page in a journal  in the future. All together a very successful weekend for me. I am happy with what I produced.

It is hard sometimes to get inspiration or even motivation to keep creating. That was one of my goals this year, and I am very pleased that I am still going with the DLP and still creating something each week ... and sometimes more that one something each week!

It is very satisfying to have achieved at least one of my goals this year.