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.

Forgot something!

In my last post, I completely forgot about the last mandala that I completed in the Mandala Magic course that I did. It was quite complicated and you had to keep your wits about you to ensure you did all of the circles around the outside.

Mandala Magic - Flower of Life

I've included the mandala before and after it was coloured. It probably won't be a pattern that I return to much - although with practice you'd become quite proficient. And looking at the coloured version, I think I should have done another round of circles, just to finish off the "flowers" around the outside.

I am currently doing another mandala in response to a Journal 52 prompt, but that is for a later blog post.

Once again, have a happy Christmas and a safe New Year.

Coming up for Christmas

Well this year I managed to get a few decorations out around the house - better than last year when I didn't bother with anything. At least the place looks a little bit festive.

At work, it's always a mad rush before the holiday break to get as much done as possible, and of course, libraries want as many books & dvds as we can process. In consequence, I am working longer hours just so that I don't end up with a backlog to come back to next year!

I've added a new gadget on the left hand side of this blog showing the books that I have recently read, together with a link so you can see what the book is about. It's not all fiction - I often borrow nonfiction from the library or buy books about art, pattern, travel, etc.

On the art front, I've kept up with Colour Me Positive and done the December Mission, but have done nothing for Journal 52 since my last post - just not getting any inspiration from the prompts. Anyway, here is what I have done since last time...

Colour Me Positive Week 48 - Community

Still under the thrall of mandalas, I thought I would try an off-centre circle mandala showing some of the qualities needed by this community of artists. The paint was applied with an old credit card then stencilled over. My journaling is done with a grey marker so that it does not show up clearly.

Colour Me Positive Week 49 - New Beginnings

Lulu Art which runs Colour Me Positive has been sold and we will have someone new doing the prompts from now on. This page was an experiment with some inks which did not work as it should have. The page had been gessoed so the inks had nowhere to soak in to and just sat on top of the paper. Not my best effort!

Colour Me Positive Week 50 - Bloom

A flower mandala was perfect for this challenge and did not take long, once I had decided on the concept. The outline is done with a 0.8mm Unipin fineline pen, the colours with the cheap marker set that I bought, and I used some gold highlights.

Colour Me Positive Week 51 - Creativity

This page was also done quickly - fingerpainting with phthalo green, magenta, and naples yellow. I used a baby wipe with the stencil to bring out the decorative detail and added more paint including burnt umber to try and grunge it up a little.

Mission Inspiration - December 2016

I saw this photo in a magazine and knew immediately that I wanted to use it. For step 3, I used a christmas tree and a holly stencil and for step 5, decorated the tree with coloured hole punch waste. I think it needs something on the bottom, but I can't decide what to use.

I hope you all get some time off over the holiday season, have a lovely day with your family (no matter what you celebrate), and keep safe. I am celebrating Christmas by having lunch at my brother's house with his family, my sister and her family and my sister-in-law's mother. According to the weather bureau it will be warm, so we are having a BBQ and salads - but there will be traditional Christmas pudding for afters.

All the very best wishes for the Season and if I don't blog before then, have a safe and prosperous New Year. CHEERS!!

Mandalas and other things

I had lunch yesterday with my aunt and some cousins - mine and my father's - to celebrate my aunt's birthday (number 88). I had my great grandmother's photo album with me and we were able to add some names to faces, which means that I will be able to add photos to Dad's side of the family tree on Ancestry. I haven't done much work on my trees for a while - maybe I'll get motivated if my Dale cousins organise this family get-together they keep talking about.

Since the last time I posted, I have done a free online course on making mandalas - drawing them and colouring them. It was really interesting and I enjoyed the short lessons and was quite pleased with what I achieved. I posted some on Facebook and I think I got my niece interested - I know she spends lots of time with her partner's daughter doing colouring in and is really interested in art in general. You can see other courses at Julie Gibbon's website (http://www.juliegibbons.com/).

As well as learning about mandalas, I have completed a couple more mixed media challenges.

Lotus Mandala

The finished mandala followed by the coloured in version. I found my brush markers too dark for this, but you can see the flower structure clearly.

Concentric Circle Mandala

This was fun to do and would work well with Zentangle patterns. I'm going to try more of these, but I need a better compass first!

Hamsa

Julie showed us a really good way to draw this symbol of the hand. I think an eye in the palm is usual and after that you can put whatever patterns you like. I tried to keep it simple. This was coloured with a new set of markers - a better range of colours, but the tips were not as nice.

Colour Me Positive Week 47 - Enthusiasm

I love this one, especially the image which I found in a BBC History magazine - the article was about nudists in Germany!! I started with Distress stain over a mask and then glued on the b & w image. Using one of my favourite techniques, I painted in the scenery surrounding the girl and extending out from the photo. I did some outlining in pen to highlight the boat & the girl before writing the words on the opposite page.

Journal 52 Week 47 - #ARTISTSFORLOVE

I also love this page and am very pleased with it. The base is yellow oxide with phthalo blue, some magenta and a little phthalo green on top. I used one of Julie Balzer's stencils (a 6x6 TCW with 4 faces on it) and wiped off paint with a baby wipe. I did the same using a heart stencil and then used gold paint to stencil some butterflies on the page.

In my enthusiasm, I forgot to gesso the page so tore a bit of the page off when I was wiping away paint. To cover this I just cut a heart shape from a magazine picture & glued it in place. Then I just had to write out the manifesto with a white paint pen.

I've had a great week or so - done some good (I think!) pages, learned about a new art type and had a nice visit with some cousins. The cleaning lady came today so the house is clean - all I need to do now is tidy up. Getting the house into shape has been a long process and is still continuing - but I'm hoping to have everything shipshape by new year.

Keep well and ciao for now.

The missing bits - part 2

I missed a page from last week on my catch-up blog post - how did I manage that? Never mind, just one more picture to add to this post. OK, so the missing Mission Inspiration page first, then all the missing Colour Me Positive pages. Get ready for another long post.

Mission Inspiration - November

I used some leftover Tim Holtz tissue for the lattice background, followed by warm green, yellow & orange paints. For the nature elements, I used some stickers from Daphne magazine - which is where I also got my focal image. You can't see the sparkle in the photo, but it is definitely there in real life.

Colour Me Positive Week 30 - Creativity

This was so long ago I couldn't remember if the background paint or the stamping came first - but looking at the actual page, it seems to be stamps first, followed by paint smeared on by fingers, then I used a card to make the lines. This page has a little sparkle too, but I'm afraid the photo must have been taken in dull light and nothing shows up.

Colour Me Positive Week 31 - Sparkle

The quote  made it obvious that this week's page should be about friends and as my BFF is also my sister-in-law that was easy. I took a photo from her 60th birthday celebration dinner, added a crown and a gold star. The background is a bit of a mess, but as usual, the page looks better in real life.

Colour Me Positive Week 34 - Best

I did this page for myself back in July, and it is perfect for this week's challenge from CMP. I used a page from a magazine to cover up some private journaling, and then painted out the unwanted text. See my previous post (http://jennyjotting.blogspot.com.au/2016/08/a-z-collages-finished.html)

Colour Me Positive Week 35 - Generosity

This was done sort of following a lesson from the Art Sherpa on YouTube, except mine is much smaller - done in my small Dylusions journal. The basic background shape is an arc from where you add paint in solid colours and also drip paint. It looks like a horizon with colourful buildings in the rain.

Colour Me Positive Week 36 - Travel

This gave me a chance to use a set of Tim Holtz cityscapes stamps that I have had for a while. I painted a very rough background, glued down a map and some photos of places I have visited. I painted over the map to reveal the word JOURNEY.

Colour Me Positive Week 37 - Change

Quite by chance, my nephew shared a post from someone with an amazing quote about choice and change:

Choice is the most powerful tool we have.
Everything boils down to choice.
We exist in a field of infinite possibilities.
Every choice we make shuts an infinite number of doors and opens an infinite number of doors.
At any point we can CHANGE the direction of our lives by a simple choice.
It is all in our hands, our hearts, our minds.

My page was simply covered in feather stencils and then leftover paint was rubbed around (using a makeup sponge) in the blank spaces.

Colour Me Positive Week 40 - Future

Here I've used my favourite technique of covering up the background so that words or shapes pop out. Lots of bright colour was used with some glittery stamp pad ink too. The page was covered up by the turquoise paint and then given a few gold accents with sunray & harlequin stencils.

Colour Me Positive Week 41 - Simplicity

On this page, I've reproduced a Mark Rothko painting on which to place this week's quote. Rothko's painting always look deceptively simple but there is a depth in them that is quite profound. I haven't managed any of that depth and in fact did not try - I simply wanted the colour field background for the quote.

Colour Me Positive Week 42 - Free / Gone Fishing

Rather than 'gone fishing', I've chosen my favourite pastime - reading. The background is where I used up some excess paint. All I did was stencil & stamp some script over that. As well as some pictures from Mr Google, I have included one of my own with Gromit (of Wallace & Gromit) reading a book about dogs, and of course, a DO NOT DISTURB sign! Some small drawings of books & glasses finish off the page.

The End

Phew - I think that's everything and I haven't missed anything else. I will try to get back to a regular blogging schedule so that the posts are much, much shorter. If you've slogged through to end, thankyou - I hope you enjoyed the art.

Keep well and cheers for now.

The missing bits - part 1

Wow, I only did one other Journal 52 between August & November, but managed four Mission Inspirations and nine Colour Me Positives! That means that I'm going to split my catch-up posts in two - one for J52 & MI, the other for CMP.

How on earth am I going to keep up next year when I have additional (paid for) tutorials to watch and then make art for - I may have to drop something. Anyway, here goes.....

Journal 52 Week 44 - Heritage

So the challenges this week were for a spread inspired by Halloween, or one for Day of the Dead honouring your ancestry. I went down the ancestry path because we don't really celebrate Halloween in Australia. I made a background using stencils with fleur-de-lis and shamrocks to indicate my French and Irish lineage. I drew the girl with acrylic paints and used some black and white paint pens for detail. I wrote surnames of my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents in the girls hair,and added a couple of arrows to indicate the convict in my family's background.

Mission Inspiration - June

The hardest part of this month's challenge was finding some food can labels. I didn't want to use anything in my pantry, but I didn't really have any that I could "rescue" from the recycling. Luckily I had a small can of soup for lunch one day and then used a tea bag wrapper.

I wanted to make a page about the Murray Goulburn crisis where MG had not only lowered their prices for milk but had back dated it and forced many dairy farmers into debt. It was essentially a heartless decision by heartless men for heartless investors with no thought for the dairy farmers who started the co-op in the first place.

As one farmer said - management and executives of MG were either complicit in putting this particular strategy in place or were ignorant of it. Neither made them look like competent business people!!

I don't often get political - but this made my blood boil, especially since the man in charge then left with millions in his pocket - definitely COMPLICIT.


Mission Inspiration - August

Obviously using map fragments pointed towards a travel page or quote of some sort. I ripped up a map of Victoria for the first layer and used a butterfly from a colouring book with thread trailing out behind it. I think I missed step 8 - but who can tell?

Mission Inspiration - September

I think I did all the steps for this one, but did everything in the wrong order and my paint layer was way too thin and my girl does not stand out as well as she could. I used watercolour pencils for her face, acrylics for the feather stencils and StazOn ink pads for the stamps. It's all a bit of a mess!!

Mission Inspiration - October / Colour Me Positive Week 43 - Dreams

This month I completely missed the bit about using a baby wipe for the black gesso - so mine is painted on thickly. This was one month where I found it hard to fit everything into the design, so it all looks a bit messy - again! But, big bonus, I was able to use this for week 43 of the Colour Me Positive challenge.

Well that wasn't too bad - just the rest of the colour Me Positive pages to do now. I hope you enjoyed this post.

Cheers, Jenny.

Lots to catch up on

Well, since my last post I've been in hospital for an operation, had six weeks off work, gone back to work for three days a week instead of four, had my garden tidied up and found a cleaning lady. I've also completed lots of my mixed media challenges and signed up to "Let's Face It 2017".

I attended another cousin's funeral in September - very sudden heart attack, but on a brighter note, a couple of weeks ago, my sister and I went to another cousin's 75th birthday celebration.

Fabulous day had by all. She is quite blind so another cousin organized a petting zoo where she could hold the baby animals, and a didgeridoo player who demonstrated various didjeridoos and explained about how they were made and how that made them sound. A very unusual birthday indeed!

So first of all, hospital - I had a cyst on one of my ovaries, or so they thought. Turns out it was attached to my uterus, so I ended up having a partial hysterectomy. That meant at least six weeks off work, particularly as my job involves some medium to heavy lifting. It also involves no heavy work around the house - no lifting, carrying or reaching up! As I live on my own that was hard because you can't do very much without lifting, carrying or reaching for things.

Luckily I have a very nice sister-in-law who took me grocery shopping each week and the hospital social worker organised a cleaner and bed-maker for me (mattresses are heavy). I got to sit or lie around for most of the day reading, watching telly or snoozing.

While I was off work, the other cataloguers split my work between them and E who I replaced, came back two days a week to do one library. This was good because it meant that I could ease my way back into work for three days a week, which I am still doing as I cannot decide if I want to go back to four days or stay on three (if I can manage money-wise).

The garden was done by one my co-worker's sons - he is a landscape gardener but makes "pocket money" doing weeding and trimming for family and friends. Luckily, I qualify as a friend and he put in a good days work clearing the weeds, the overgrown shrubbery and hauling away the mess. Next project, the little bit of garden next to my garage - body corporate property but I want a say in what gets planted!!

This last week, I have completed five pages for various challenges which I will post here. Anything else I will catch-up on in a separate post.

Colour Me Positive Week 44 - Laughter

I decided on a collage for this one because I have not done one since I finished the A-Z collages. I downloaded some images from the internet and found more in magazines. One page had some spray ink on the edge, so I decided to paint both of them first. That just meant I had to wait for the pages to dry!

Colour Me Positive Week 45 - Attitude

The base for this page is some leftover paint applied with a brayer. As one of the colours was Burnt Umber, it was a bit dark and too brown. I lightened it up with some stencils and then because it was still a bit brown, decided to use the technique where you paint over most of the page - a favourite of mine as it hides a multitude of sins.

I spent part of my recuperation re-reading J.D. Robb's "... in Death" series which I just love. I have them all and every few years, I start at number one and work my way through all the titles to date. The main character, Lt Eve Dallas has a favourite saying that I think expresses attitude with a capital A - Bite me!

Journal 52 Week 46 - Dear Leonard

The challenge posted this week was to honour Leonard Cohen who had passed away the previous week, but I am not such a huge fan. However, last week Leon Russell also passed way and being a big fan and a contrarian, I changed my challenge to Dear Leon. I listed to a CD in the car and chose the song "If It Wasn't For Bad", because I knew I had some really gothic images in a fashion magazine I purchased a couple of weeks ago.

Colour Collages - Green

Lastly, I finally completed the first of my colour collages which I first decided to do back in July when I researched names for various different colours. The palm leaf kicked off the green theme, then I just found images in my Royal Auto magazines - they just keep giving and giving.

It has been a very productive week - just as well, because I need to make up for the lack of productivity in the past couple of months.

Another post soon with the rest of the challenges done since my last blog posting.

Hope you are all happy and well - all the best for now.