Wanderlust : Sumptuous silhouettes

The theme for the classes in Wanderlust 2021 for April was Silhouette. Despite getting behind with these lessons, I still want to do most of them so will concentrate on them for the next few posts to catch up. Week 15 was a lesson with Kate Crane. I was excited to try alcohol inks on a gelli plate and to use this greeting card holder that has been waiting in my stash for the perfect occasion.

I am loving the grungy imperfection of these alcohol ink gelli prints and this colour combo makes me happy.

Then added Quinacridone Nicko Azo gold with a baby wipe to fill in the gaps and love it even more!

I decided to celebrate the meditative state art can bring.

To finish, I added those gorgeous gates.

I love working in my small Dylusions journal for these lessons. An open spread is smaller than 1 page in my watercolour journal and enables me to focus on the specific technique without the size becoming overwhelming.

See all my other posts about this class HERE. If you want to check out Kate Crane's free inspiration videos using a gelli plate, including some with alcohol inks, go HERE. 

52 Tags : Week 18

I'm participating in Anne Brooke's weekly Tag challenge. You can view her demo each week on Youtube #52tagshannemade. Got my colour scheme sorted before I began this week thanks to Anne's challenge in Week 17 to look for colours we haven't used much so far and purple's a favourite that I haven't used a lot. Week 18 : Tiny paper piecing. Anne used shapes measuring 1.4cm across! My tag is bigger so I've done mine 2.5cm across. Paper-pieced hexagons like this are traditionally used to make a pattern called Grandmother's Garden so I decided to make mine a night garden. I've had a frustating week with necessary surgery delayed again and the light wasn't very good for my hand stitching, but it's done and I'm keeping up with this challenge so calling this success!

Wishing you a relaxing and creative weekend.

Journal Jam : a lesson in persistence

I love arting alongside Effy Wild in Canada. Watch the unedited replay HERE. Effy draws prompts from art cards and then we do what they say. Have decided that rather than explaining steps I'm just going to make this a series of process photos. As you look at the spread, the left is from the prompts and the right is my palette and cleaning off page that will be finished separately at the end.

This is a painting of our now extinct Huia. I love my wooden block stamp.

The prompts stopped and I had a long way to go. I lost my way with the pink iridescent turning purple and the green gold background...I almost gave up here to be honest! Time to take a breath and remember that ALL journal pages go through ugly stages so if you don't love it, keep going. Small steps are best. Time to cover some stuff up! Used some gelli printed collage paper, re-stencilled with the kowhai leaves and stencilled over the feather again with bronze. This looks better with more analogous colours.

After some consideration I realised that I needed to doodle to make that feather more like a feather. Some words and suddenly I can call it done. 

Definitely learning in this one...and the facing palette page has been painted over with white gesso so I can start fresh! I share everything I create in the hope that it inspires you to keep going on your creative journey too. See you again soon.