Finished!!!

Oh My Word!  I just took a photo of my Goddess in daylight!  I am just so proud of her.  Having never painted a canvas any bigger than A4 AND I only really started painting seriously about 8 or 9 months ago (save for the stuff I did at secondary school) I am just amazed at myself!  Of course she isn't going to make it to the Tate or any other grand art museum or gallery, and she did have a few little 'accidents' along the way but to me she is perfect and I love her!  To be fair though I am fickle so probably the next one will be the love of my life too ha ha!

 

I finished the detail on the butterfly whilst watching Harry's Law last night!  I find it impossible to just sit at 'watch' TV these days, I have to be doing something else at the same time!  The butterfly is actually a sort of failed attempt at making a 3D butterfly in flight.  I cut some pretty colored paper from a glossy magazine and stuck it, face down, to  Habotai silk and then I thought I could dry it moulded over something curved.  This clearly wasn't going to work so I decided to dry it flat and then sew beads on it and build up the undersides with molding paste on the canvas.  Then I just chickened out altogether and applied it as it was to the canvas with Matte Gel Medium and detailed it with black ink, white gel pen and gold pen! 

Finished!

Remember this beautiful young lady?  This is Amber.  Her mum Sonia, a friend of mine, said that she would love to have a painting of her so I duly offered!  I just did Tam's Heart, Art & Healing course and have enrolled on her Magical Mythical Makings course starting in January.  I just love this whimsey style and experimenting with new mixed media so I was more than happy to have the opportunity to play with new ideas and techniques.  So here she is Amber: The Angel and The Unicorn

Let it snow...

let it snow, let it snow!  Well here she is... my little snow queen!  I have a sort of love hate relationship with a lot of my art.  First I love it.  Then I get real critical and I hate it!  Then again I look and I start to think I like it!  Why is that?

I experimented for the first time with molding paste, oooh what fun!  I really like this, can't wait to use it again!  I also learned a valuable lesson.  As money is a little tight right now and I'm not planning on selling my art work (it's purely for my pleasure) I purchased lots of little boards quite cheaply so that I could play to my hearts content.  The lesson is - cheaper boards and canvases are ok -ish providing you Gesso them!  This one I didn't because I was being impatient - what a difference!  I was also keen to try out my new breyer but I wanted definite snowflakes and wasn't confident I would get that so I used scrunched up paper dipped in paint!  The lettering proved a little difficult and isn't as crisp as I would have liked.  I find it hard to 'write' with a brush, but I wanted white lettering in this particular font.  Any suggestions anyone?  I find pens easier, can anyone recommend a white pen?

Anyway in the end I started to like her so much I framed her and put her on the wall!

An Experiment

Today I did my usual little bit of blog hopping and stumbled upon Cathy's latest post.  I too had signed up for Heart of Art, with Tam but as yet had not gotten round to doing anything.  The last two days I have met a creative block, two projects I had in mind were proving difficult for various reasons.  One project is something I simply sorta made up in my head but like all experiments things didn't work quite how I planned and I found I needed to put it to one-side until I was able to get to town again to get supplies.  The second one didn't even get to the experimental stage simply because when i found out what I needed to acheive the desired result I didn't have those either!

original photo of me!

Downhearted I started to watch one of Tam's tutorials, if i couldn't do what I wanted then at least I could learn something.  So inspired by what I watched I started to sketch a whimsical style face from a picture of me on the wall.  I quite liked the sketch and decided maybe I would try out some water color crayons I had been given.  Not wanting to waste my last canvas if it didn't work I decided to do it on watercolor paper.  i have used the crayons before but not properly with water.    A couple of hours later i emerged with this, feeling quite pleased!  It's not 'finished' by a long stretch but I am fairly happy with what I've learned from this piece:1. maybe next time try over Gesso on canvas; 2. be a little more confident with the crayons and the layering; 3. watch Tam's tutorial again to make sure there's no technique I've missed!  Of course I haven't even started the background, that's for the next one!  Also not sure of proportions, not quite right, but again next one!

First draft!

So...Thank you Cathy for inspiring me and thank you too to Tam for her lovely tutorials!  What a lovely lot of arty bloggy friends we have!