My First Book Sculpture

The other day I was googling "Altered Books" for tutorials and ideas when I came across an artist called Sarah Bodman and fell in love with a particular book sculpture.  This is my version along a similar theme and the first one I have ever done.  It is nowhere near as intricate as Sarah's lovely piece but for a first, with no instructions or tutorials, I really am rather pleases with it!

Summer Mermaid

Summer Mermaid in the style of Marc Chagall

Today I finished my Summer Mermaid.  Well actually I'm not sure if she really is finished or not...I can't decide!  Not sure if I want some little houses in the bottom right hand corner or not, or some more foliage around there instead.  Or, do I just leave well alone?  What do you think?

Hellooooo I'm Here....Honest!

Well I have been painting like the very devil hence why you haven't heard from me on here for a while!  I'm deeply engrossed in Tam's M3 course right now and as I said before I wanted a set of four Goddesses, one for each season, on canvas for my new dining room.  Well I had them all sketched ready and new exactly how I was gonna do them, what they would look like and so on.  But as usual things change, the ideas I had suddenly morphed into other stuff!  So right now I have completed Spring, she is very loosely done in the style of Klimt, and I do mean VERY loosely!  Probably the only thing Klimtish about her is her hair and the flowers in it!  Summer, on the other hand, has changed dramatically.  She started out as my dear blogland friend, Kelly, in a sarong on a beach.  Then I decided she was going to be in the style of Mucha so I changed the background.  However, our third project on M3 was mermaids in the style of Marc Chagall.  At first he did nothing for me whatsoever!  I watched the video and decided that Tam's approach made Chagall look a little more appealing.  Then the idea hit me like a steam train and I got REALLY excited!  Kelly suddenly leapt up off the beach dived into the blue waters and grew a tail!  Not only that she lured her darling hubby into the depths with her!  I sneaked a peak on Kelly's facebook page and found a photo of hubby and away I went!  Unfortunately poor hubby looks rather like a young Noel Edmonds in my picture, however I am quite pleased that I managed a man's face at all!  Fortunately Kelly says it's kinda cute even tho it doesn't really look like hubby.  Anyhow enough blurb, here is Summer Mermaid so far.  Still quite a long way to go with this one before it's finished, much depends on dear old Canada Post's delivery schedule as I am waiting for some lovely gold leaf and mica flakes to give it some magic.

The Trials of Love

Well!  I put off doing my Angel picture, if you recall I was struggling with the paper I had bought and generally wasn't enjoying things at all :(  Last night I even contemplated starting the whole thing again on canvas.  However this didn't really sit comfortably with me because it felt like I was giving up.  I really needed to grit my teeth and try again.  Thanks to Lovely Man and my friend, Jackie, who told me exactly that I went out for a nice ski this morning across the lake and in the bush, then I came home and got to work!  So here she is!  And you know what?  I really quite like her now!  In fact I'd go so far as to say I love her! So there we are, proof that even when things are looking quite dire it is worth soldiering on and finishing it cos you never know how it's going to turn out in the end!

So now I've just got to think of something nice to make for the "Blooming Complimentary" Creative Color Challenge!

Catching Up

I seem to have developed an intolerance to wine :(  No joke here, I had just two glasses with supper yesterday and felt really yuk this morning, and this seems to be happening every time I have more than just one small glass.  So skiing was abandoned today and I stayed at home.  As it happened I had two articles to get done and plenty of stuff to catch up on so it didn't hurt I guess.  So, Spring is at last finished and hanging on the wall!  I am fairly pleased with her, although in truth I'm not as in love with her as some of my other paintings.  Actually to be fair, I love her... it's still the overall thing that's bugging me, but no matter what I try it's just not doing it for me.  However, I figure perhaps I am just being over critical and if I keep fiddling with it I could spoil it beyond repair!  So here she is... Spring

Then I set about trying to catch up with the M3 project.  What can I say?  As mentioned before I did the background and was thoroughly disappointed.  I just couldn't seem to get it right.  The watercolor paper I bought just doesn't behave well at all.  It seems to dry out real quick so you can't blend/spread the color and yet if you add more water it simply buckles and looks like something you may have produced in primary school.  Acrylic doesn't help at all and won't blend nicely like it did on canvas.  I'm not sure whether it's because I'm just not used to working on paper or whether the Canson 85lb paper is the wrong stuff for this.  Anyhow suffice to say I didn't find the painting a joy to do and there were times when I just wanted to throw yet another piece in the bin and do it on canvas!  But I persevered simply because I thought what is the point of doing these courses if you're gonna ditch something half way thru and go back to the way you always do stuff?  It's about experimenting and trying stuff, stretching your comfort zones and all that.  It is however, quite frustrating when you have in your mind how it should look and it just doesn't cut the mustard in reality!  So here is my background!

Blooming Complimentary

      This week I signed up for another challenge with  Louise Gale,

I have to choose a pair of colors that are of “opposite” hue (complimentary) in the color wheel. This is quite open, but of course, the challenge is just to create using those 2 complementary colors (we can also use black and white).  We will be creating with the theme of Blooms, Flowers, Fauna (Blooming).  Hence Blooming Complimentary, neat eh?!   Each of us has a 'swap buddy', which means basically we complete the piece and then send it, via snail mail, to our swap buddy to keep,  and I am just so honored to have Louise as my swap buddy!  I have already chosen my colors and have a little idea or two but I can't share until a few days after I mail to her otherwise it will spoil the surprise!  I am just so excited!  Watch this space toward the end of February when I will not only be able to share what I produced but also what I received from Louise!

Spring Is Nearly Here...

Today I worked on my Goddess Of Spring canvas.  She has not been an easy bunny.  I bought the canvas from Michael's, they were a twin pack on offer so you would think they would both be the same wouldn't you?  Not so.  The packaging stated they were ready primed so I figured they were ready to use, no Gesso required.  My Goddess of Freedom was a delight to paint in comparison with this canvas.  I found out all too late that it seemed to have some sort of coating, or perhaps wasn't primed as thoroughly as its twin.  Not only did it repel the water color crayons it just wouldn't grab acrylic very well either.  Using the breyer was also a nightmare as it lifted not only the acrylic but the blue watercolor underneath leaving huge bare bits of canvas.  So I tinkered for ages and this is as good as it gets!  Then finally, an I know Darla with sympathise here, I opened a flip top tube of blue acrylic and it sort of popped and splattered tiny blue spots on her tummy and arm!  Jeez!  so then I had to touch those in, first with gesso and then try to patch the skin tone.  Finally my hand slipped on the third 'vine' and now juts off to the side of the painting.  However, tomorrow is another day and I will finish the fine details, add the butterfly and try to 'repair' the vine.  Also the pink flowers look a little bit like they've been thrown on, not sure whether to do some more green vines going upward from the bottom of the painting.  Any thoughts peeps??  Oh and just for the record some of you guys on Tam's course were complaining, like me, about taking photo's under electric lighting.  Well I found a solution that seems to work if you have photoshop at your disposal.  First go to Image>Adjustments>autolevels.  I do this with all my photos and it seems to help a bit, but they often still  look a little yellow.  So next go to Image>Adjustments>auto color and hey presto she looks less like she suffers jaundice!

A Little Gift

Fairly late on Sunday evening Tam's video tutorials came on-line and so I just had to watch them before I went to bed!  As per usual I had not paid attention to the previous video telling us what we needed for the course. So there I was with A4 watercolor paper instead of A3.  Luckily a friend is going to Thunder Bay this weekend and has offered to pick some up for me, so I decided to carry on with my Goddess of Spring canvas while I wait.  Spring now has hair and is in the process of having her highlights done, she should be ready for a photo session tomorrow.  Anyhow I had a message via good old facebook chat to say a friend of mine had just given birth to a baby boy the other day, her second.  I had planned to do a little painting for her to celebrate the new baby's arrival so tonight I sat down to sketch.  I had a clear idea of what I wanted, and then... well it sort of morphed itself into this, which incidentally fits this weeks theme of angels quite nicely.  So, because it has to go in the post and A4 is easier for that, I have decided to go with this.  I can still do another, on A3, for myself later after all!