Blogging Along With Effy!

I’ve been thinking for a while that it was time I started blogging again – its hard to believe that its over a year since I last wrote a post – so when I saw Effy’s invitation to blog along with her during September, I thought it would be the perfect time to re-start my blogging practice!

So I’m kicking off today with some of my digital playing. I began with the cute insect I spotted on the path while walking in our local park. I thought he’d look happier if I added him to a flower, so I removed the path and added him to the pink flower. Then I thought I’d like to play with him as a shape, and created the mandala at the bottom of the picture. I really like how that turned out – what do you think?

Virtual Reality!

I’d been reading online about Tilt Brush the new virtual reality 3D painting app by Google, thinking that it looked like a lot of fun. So I was really excited yesterday at work to be given the opportunity to try it out – absolutely awesome!! This is a picture of me creating my 3D landscape – totally oblivious to the world around me!

Back in the real world I’ve been busy creating lots of physical artwork as well.

When I finish work late at night, I often play with paint in my everyday notebook just to let off some energy and get messy. This is the result of one of those playings.

This next image was completed over a week – playing with the techniques taught in Effy’s Book of Days week 18 lesson.

I really enjoyed learning these new techniques and found the whole process very therapeutic.

Back to the notebook again…

… I had great fun using the wrong end of the paintbrush to scratch some texture into my image.

Staying with the same colour palette, I moved over to my small art journal…

…and had some more fun playing with textures.

This next spread was inspired by Tracy Verdugo‘s lesson from the Spectrum 2016 course.

It was an amazing lesson and I loved the process. I really like the Alan Alda quote that I found to go with it too.

And finally, I’ve just finished this last spread, inspired by Effy’s Book of Days week 20 lesson.

Following the BOD prompts this month has really taken me on an amazing journey and I’ve been continually surprised by the synchronicities that have appeared in my world as a result. Thank you Effy!

Anticipation

I’m really grateful for the inspiration I have had from Effy Wild and Sarah Trumpp this year. This page was inspired by both of them. The idea for the spread came from my response to Effy’s Book of Days prompt for the 29th April, and Sarah’s week 18, Journal 52 video inspired me to try drawing with my watercolour paints.

Although it’s not perfect, I’m just loving the result and will definitely be using this technique again. Thank you both for your combined inspiration!

At last my postcards for the iHannah DIY postcard swap are ready to send.

Here’s a quick sneak peak at them before they start winging their way across the ocean.

This next image is a bit of digital wizardry.

It started out as a photograph of some bare stems in the evening light. I desaturated the colour to make it black and white, then inverted the colours. I really like how it turned out.

Playing with Layers

I really enjoyed all the mixed media work I’ve been doing recently, so I decided to do some more playing with layers, both physical and digital.

This first image started out as a collage using a mixture of old papers, book pages, old paint stained tissues, and magazine clippings. This was followed by a liberal application of acrylic paint, stencilling, homemade stamps, washi tape, and more collage. The quotation made me smile, as it’s the kind of thing I say all the time!

This second image was inspired by some work I did at the weekend on the Person Centred Expressive Arts workshop that I attended run by Dinah Brown and Nuala Eden. It began life as a geometric abstract created using watercolour pencils. Although it was quite colourful, it looked a bit flat, so I gave it the mixed media treatment. I added acrylic paint, stencils, homemade stamps, paint markers and indian ink, then finished it off with some letter stamps and collaged letters.

Its been a while since I played with any digital layers, so this last image is a digital blend of two journal pages – a series of swirls drawn with watercolour pencils, and a page created to use up some leftover paint.

Only five days left before the start of 21 Secrets Fall 2015 – I’m really looking forward to working and learning with all the amazing teachers Connie has gathered together.

Into the Bliss!

I’ve just realised how long it is since I posted anything online. I’ve been busy keeping up with Julie’s Mandala Magic classes, I just haven’t got round to posting anything online. So here’s the first instalment – moving on from the Void to the Bliss…

… I created this page of symbols that are important in my life right now.

I found the bliss quite a difficult stage to be in, and had trouble with the shaving foam technique that Julie recommended. After struggling for a while, I gave up and decided to use a mixture of other watery techniques to create the mandalas on this next image.

I quite enjoyed making this page which has a background made from patterned tissue paper covered in water activated neocolour crayons. The free birth chart I used comes from the website astro.com. To complete the spread, I handwrote the poem ‘For A New Beginning’ by John O’Donohue.

Slightly apart from making mandalas, I’ve been playing with paint in a very free way and have taken a few of those images and created this blended mandala. Keep watching for the next instalment!

The Great Round of Mandala

Mandala Magic, Julie Gibbons year long Mandala course started this week, so I’ve been busy creating mandalas for the first round. The course is based on exploring the twelve archetypal stages of the great round of mandala developed by Joan Kellogg and written about by Susanne F Fincher in her book called The Mandala Workbook: A Creative Guide for Self-Exploration, Balance, and Well-Being. I had already bought the book before I signed up for Julie’s course but you really don’t need it as Julie provides an amazing wealth of information and the group members are a constant source of inspiration and encouragement.

These are two of the mandalas I made for this stage of the journey. The mandala on the left represents the Void – a place to rest in the darkness. The mandala on the right draws on traditional wisdom drawn from many sources in which the spiders web is used to represent the darkness and safety of the womb.

This next image is a blend of acrylic prints digitally altered to create a 3D effect.

And this final image, created with acrylic paint using various palette knives, reminds me of an ancient battle scene. I can see lots of fighting figures in it – can you?

Playing with Mandalas

Thinking about mandalas, I created this hand drawn one in my small journal the other day.

But as usual, I couldn’t just leave it at that. I had to play with it once I’d scanned it. I started off by adding some ‘twirl’, then blended the two together to come up with the final version.

Once in the blending mode, I find it’s difficult to stop! This image is a blend of two paintings to which I added the Maslow quotation.

Creativity Rocks!

Creativity rocks! I’ve been so busy writing my dissertation that I haven’t had time to do anything else. But I took a couple of days off last week and did a bit of catching up!

A couple of weeks ago we had our dissertation tutorials and as part of the tutorial, our group were asked to create an image to represent our finished dissertation. I knew I had to create a doll, but as we didn’t have much time for the art work I knew she had to be simple. So I made a wrapped pipe cleaner doll and called her “All wrapped up with a feather in her cap!” Do you like her?

This image started out as a photograph of the kitchen sink with splashes of water all over it. Then I blended a painting into it – et voilá!

This one is a blend of two paintings created during a recent painting workshop.

I’ve been fascinated by mandalas for a long time as any of you who have followed my blog or flickr stream will know. So when I saw Julie Gibbons was running a five day free course, I just had to sign up and play along. I must say, the course is one of the most comprehensive mandala courses I have ever seen and I am learning so much. Thank you Julie. This is my first mandala created on day two using a pencil drawn grid, neocolour crayons and watercolour pencils.

And I just couldn’t resist playing digital with the mandala after I scanned it!

Old Photo Rummaging!

The other day, while rummaging through my photo files looking for an old remembered image, I came across three images which caught my attention: a bag of grapes, a string sculpture, and some old seed heads.

They looked like they might work well together…

…so I just had to try them out with some digital blending! I love the 3D effect of this one…

…and the mosaic effect on this one. But as usual I can’t decide which one I like the best. How about you?

Finally – I just couldn’t resist playing with this flower!

No blending on this one, just a few digital adjustment layers, some grunge brushes and a layer mask. What do you think?

Reflections and Light

It all started with a piece of white paper and four bottles of ready mix poster paint in blue, yellow, purple and fuscia pink…

…I squirted the paint into the paper, folded it in half, and squigged it everywhere! This photo was taken when it was all gleaming and wet. As soon as it was uploaded to the computer, I just couldn’t resist playing…

…and this was the first result created using the Snapseed app. I think it makes it look like a piece of beaten up metal. What do you think?

Next came the serious photoshop stuff…

…and this is what evolved! I called it “Looking for the Light”. You’ll have to look at the large image to see the light at the end of the tunnel which reflects the meaning of this image.

Which one do you like best?