Working Smaller

Today I thought I’d have a break from working on water-colour paper and play with some glossy white card. I got some new distress ink pads and was itching to try them out!

I applied the ink to the card using a pad of tissue, then sprayed the card with water to blend and create runs. I then blotted it with a clean tissue to dry it which added texture to the colour. When I looked at the result I thought it looked like a tree on the left. The words were cut from an old clear sticker I found when rummaging through my cupboard for something else, but I thought they fitted nicely with the image.

Take Two…

Take two images – in this case two leaf prints. Scan into the computer, then work some digital blending magic ….

…. et voila! – one new piece of art.

Both images have acrylic paint leaf prints on a background. The top background was coloured using neocolour crayons, the bottom background was painted with white gesso.

Celebrating!

This weeks Life Book lesson is about celebrating the things we have achieved this year. I am very fortunate in having many things to celebrate – having given up my security to travel, successfully navigating the subsequent soul searching and releasing that went with it, resettling in a new location, studying and developing my spiritual life, completing the first two levels of Reiki training, and getting back into creating every day.

So it gave me great pleasure to create this whimsey with her animal totem, Badger. I drew her in pencil, then coloured her using neocolour crayons. I used some patterned paper to collage her dress and used letter stamps to create the word ‘celebrating’ in the balls I gave her to juggle with. I added golden stars using star confetti and coloured the background using a neocolour crayon. It looked good but I felt something was missing. So… I used a watercolour pencil to write words describing what I was celebrating around the balls, then blended them into the background using a damp brush. Although it more or less obliterated the words, the extra colour just completed the picture.

Thank you Tam for such an inspiring lesson 🙂

Digital Tree!

Today I just couldn’t resist adding some digital leaves to my tree of life. Then I got carried away playing with different blends!

I couldn’t decide which one I liked the best so I collected them all together. Which is your favourite?

Green Goddess

I started today by painting a couple of backgrounds using derwent watercolour pencils, a blue one and a yellow/green one. While I was waiting for them to dry I felt prompted to draw a female face on the yellow/green background. So here she is – my Green Goddess!

I drew her face in pencil, outlined it using a uniball eye pen, and coloured it using neocolour crayons, leaving quite a lot of the background colours still showing through. Lastly I darkened the background using distress ink pads.

I have no idea where her face came from, but I’m quite pleased with the finished result.

Tree of Life

Browsing through blog posts in my rss reader a while ago, I came across a beautiful image called ‘Ablaze’ by Kathryn Dyche Dechairo. I was totally inspired!

This is where the inspiration took me! I started with a torn magazine collage on watercolour paper. I covered that with a sheet of crumpled tissue paper stuck down with lots of semi-gloss gel medium. When that had dried I used my neocolour crayons to add some colour to the mix. Next I drew the outline of my tree using water soluble graphite pencils and coloured it in using the trusty neocolours. The next part involved covering the tree with hot glue! The last bit was adding the text using letter stamps which I then embossed.

I toyed with the idea of adding some collaged leaves, but decided to keep it as a winter tree for now. Maybe I’ll try adding some digital leaves later!

Knotty Blend!

Today I decided to draw a simple knot. I’ve always been fascinated by the way the lines in knot work overlap and intertwine.

I started off by creating a simple background using acrylic paint and a homemade fun foam stamp. When it was dry I drew the knot in the centre of the page, coloured it using a mixture of neocolour crayons and acrylic paint, and outlined it using water soluble graphite pencils.Then I scanned it into the computer.

Somehow it didn’t look quite right, so I added a scan of another image left over from Thursday’s project, blended the two together and ended up unable to decide which ‘blend’ I liked best!

What do you think?

Digital Hocus Pocus!

Today I discovered some photographs on my phone that I had forgotten about and felt in the mood for a little digital hocus pocus.

I started out with the photo I took of the rusty seat bracket, duplicated it, inverted the duplicate then blended the two together. Then I added the leftover paint splurge scan and got creative.

I really like the way that turned out especially the ‘eye’ on the right hand side, but I wanted to add a quotation. After some more digital wizardry…

…I finished up with this. What do you think?

Making a Mess!

Making a mess and not trying too hard always seems to produce the best artwork!

Today’s piece of work started as a way of using up some leftover paint. I added some gel medium transfers to it, but they went wrong and came out as grey squares. Finally I thought I’d try out a paper stencil I made using a border punch – the footprints. As you can see the stencil wasn’t a brilliant success – the paper was far too flimsy and let too much paint through! But taken overall, I think my catalogue of disasters looks quite good. I may add some words to it later.

AEDM 2012!

When I started AEDM (Art Every Day Month) this time last year, we were in the process of selling the house prior to setting off on our travels. It’s been a very exciting year, we’ve experienced a lot and had so much fun along the way! Now – one year later, we have settled near the sea in North Yorkshire. I’m really looking forward to taking part in the challenge again.

I created todays art for this weeks Life Book class from Tracy Verdugo.

As I completed each part of the process I was reluctant to go on to the next stage – I liked it as it was, so I scanned the four stages. The first stage above started off with journalling using wax crayon. I was supposed to use oil pastel but I didn’t have any! The idea was to create a resist – I thought the wax crayon would work, but it didn’t seem to work at all! I added acrylic paint on top of the journalling.

The next layer included stamping done using a home-made foam stamp with distress ink, and some more acrylic paint.

More acrylic paint for the next layer,

and finally a doodle layer. I doodled using a selection of gel pens, sakura soufflé pens, uni paint marker, and rotring rapidograph pen then added some additional colour added using neocolour crayons.