Kaleidoscope Mandala!

I have been busy painting and working on Rae Missigman’s 21 Secrets 2013 Class, but I have nothing to show yet, so I thought I’d share some digital playing instead. I was catching up with my reading list yesterday and came across this post from iHannah about creating digital kaleidoscope mandalas. Well – I just had to give it a try, didn’t I!

I decided to use my Face Emotions image as the source and had great fun playing. iHannah’s instructions are very helpful. I created four mandalas, but that wasn’t enough for me. After downloading the results I had to play digital blending to take it that little bit further! This is the result.

Thank you iHannah for the inspiration, and thank you SumoPaint for a nifty piece of software.

New iPhone Case

I really liked the monster in my Finding Faces picture, and fancied having a go at using the image to create a case for my iPhone so I hunted around the internet to find a Uk based company I could use. The company I finally chose was photobox.

The whole process of uploading the image and placing the order was very simple. I placed the order at 00:29 on the 4th July, got confirmation of despatch later in the day on the 4th July and the case was delivered today (5th July) at 11am. Now that’s what I call service!! I love the way the phone looks in it’s new case.

Faces and Emotions

The last part of Misi B’s Life Book 2013 Class was to journal about emotions on the back of the page then to draw a group of faces showing different emotions. Not the easiest thing in the world for me – but I gave it a go!

I ‘wrote’ the journalling using acrylic paint, added some colour to the background, then drew the faces using a charcoal stick. I coloured some of the faces using acrylic paint, then coloured the remaining background using a mixture of acrylic paint and neocolour crayons. Finally finished! Wow – that was some class Mitsi – thank you so much – I learnt a lot!

Finding Faces

Today, I was very brave, despite serious doubts about my ability to do this, I sat down with a piece of charcoal and my acrylic paint and found the faces in my background. Very scary stuff!!

The first two faces on the right were easy to find. The third face top left took a little longer. Then I got stuck! I had this big space with nothing in it and I just couldn’t see another face. But I could see a rather strange looking leg. I didn’t have the courage to start drawing straight on the background, so I copied the leg onto the newspaper I was using to protect the table. The result was the little monster bottom left! Wow! – I’m quite impressed with how this turned out! What do you think?

Very Messy!

Late last night, about 1am, I decided to start Misi B’s Life Book 2013 lesson. I can always judge how much I’ve enjoyed something by the amount of paint I get all over me – I’m still picking the paint off my fingers now!! I only got as far as the first background, but I had so much fun and am really pleased with the result so far. So I scanned it to share with you.

I started with a collage of leftover bits of artwork prints then added some glitter sprays and ink sprays. Next I added several layers of acrylic paint using my hands and some hand made stamps – very messy!! The next step is to search for faces in the background and paint them in. I can see two at the moment – how many can you see? I’ll show you the result when I’m done – see you later!!

Collage Lady

As you may have noticed, I’ve got very behind with my Life Book 2013 classes. So I thought this week was time to rectify the situation and try to catch up a little! Rather than go back to where I got stuck, I thought I’d start with this weeks lesson from Joann Loftus and then move backwards in time!

I created the background using 3 layers of journaling, white gesso, an acrylic paint wash and a variety of stencils. Joann gave us the template for the lady silhouette which I covered in a collage of torn magazine images and stuck to the background using sticky pads. I added die-cut butterflies coloured using Twinkling H2O’s and a silver marker pen and added highlights and shadows using white paint pens and Pitt Artist pens. I really enjoyed the lesson and love how my lady turned out!

Finally!

Finally! I’ve at long last finished projects #5 and #6 in Kate Crane’s 21 Secrets 2013 class.

I started project #5 with a collage of printed artwork covered with acrylic paint. I used handmade stamps to add more depth then added a computer printed quotation and some grungeboard keys covered with metallic flakes. Lastly I added a metal key.

I just loved Kate’s acetate sandwich for project #6 but had great problems getting my sandwich contents to stay still. In the end I decided to use some double sided tape to keep everything in place! The quotation is handwritten on strips of cut up painted background and the leaves are cutout prints of handmade stamps. Great fun to do, and so effective!

Last but not least, I thought it was time I played with digital blending again! The background is a digital blend of an artwork scan to which I added a blend of a digital brush I created from a hand drawn doodle. I really love this quotation – it’s so true!

Playing with Ink!

Project #4 in Kate Crane’s 21 Secrets 2013 class is all about playing with ink! I managed to make quite a mess and had wonderfully coloured fingers for a day!

I started off with a piece of recycled cardboard and covered it with a patchwork of torn music squares then covered that with white gesso. Next came the messy part – spraying ink. It took several layers to achieve the look I was after and Kate showed us a really cool technique which disappointingly didn’t work with my homemade ink sprays. Still I was pleased with the result I got. For the next layer I used an assortment of background stamps with colour co-ordinated distress ink pads. I have yet to add acrylic inks to my supplies, so I thought I’d have a go at making my own using golden fluid acrylics and water. It took a bit of juggling, but I managed to get quite a pleasing result which I used in a dropper to draw circles on top of the stamping. For the final layer I used Pitt Artist pens and an alphabet stencil to create my caption, and collaged a quotation from Carl Jung that I printed on my computer.

Just two more to go now!

Transitions and Changes

Project #3 in Kate Crane’s 21 Secrets 2013 class called for us to draw three people representations and journal on their bodies. Just prior to watching Kate’s video, I had been reading these articles by William Bridges about transition and change: their meanings, the differences between them and their relationship to each other. While William Bridges is writing about these terms in relation to the work environment, I was thinking of them in a personal environment, and thought it would be interesting to use project #3 to journal about these ongoing experiences in my life. As a result I ended up with five figures!

As before, I started off with a piece of recycled cardboard, but this time I began with two layers of white gesso. Next I positioned and lightly sketched my people, then painted the remaining background using acrylic paint and a variety of stencils, stamps and stamping junk (old bottle tops etc). I used more acrylic paint to paint my people, then added more depth to the colour using neocolour crayons. I added the journalling using a dip pen and black indian ink and finished the piece off with six hearts cut from leftover scraps from a previous project.

Three done, three more to go. Keep watching this space!

Recycled Packaging!

We seem to have bought a lot of books just lately, acquiring as a by-product lots of those cardboard sleeves that books come wrapped in. So when I looked at Kate Crane’s 21 Secrets 2013 Class and saw that it was about trying out lots of different techniques, I thought the book packaging would make an excellent base for these projects.

For the first project I started off using spray inks and stencils. Because I sprayed them directly onto the cardboard, the colour was not as bright as I was hoping for. I could have painted over with gesso and started again but I decided to go with it and see what happened. Next I added acrylic paint using a variety of stencils, bottle tops, cards and stamps (including one of my home made foam stamps). I decorated a “dinner money” envelope with strips of old scanned artwork and stitched it to the board then added some ribbon and some more stamping. Lastly I added some cut out quotations to the envelope, and stuck one of them to the card.

For the second project I started off with some old sheet music which I glued to the cardboard. I covered this with acrylic paint, then used a selection of hand made foam stamps to create more interest. I finished it off with a collage of a painted stamped image and a die cut butterfly joined using a tiny split pin, and a quotation which I outlined using a Pitt artist pen.

Four more projects to go – this is fun – I’m off to do some more. See you later!