LB2016 : Unfolding into intuitive art

Next lesson I attempted from Life Book 2016 was with Annie Hamman. This is her main lesson - I shared her Bonus lesson about being fearless in February. Again starting with one of my favourite bases - collage, I wasn't sure how I'd go with such a "painterly" face... here's what happened. 

Began my collage gatherings around that gorgeous piece of painterly floral paper for my colour theme - it features below as her dress. Thinking it will probably remain untouched 

My faces are coming along (only started creating them January last year when I started Life Book), but I still get the proportions wrong at times - especially placement and size of the eyes. This time I got confused because Annie talked about dividing the face into thirds - and I've always thought in halves and half again... I googled images and found this which is VERY helpful as a reference for me for basic proportions. It clarifies that some teachers talk about proportions referencing the head, and some about the face - this was a lightbulb moment for me! 

Sorry I can't reference where this came from originally since it's on Pinterest everywhere. I am very grateful for the original creator and will happily link if you can provide me with that information. Armed with this, I amended my face with watersoluble pencil and feeling very happy at this point.

Then I was feeling uncertain about painterly shading, so turned to Jane Davenport's lovely book

and used her chapter about glazing - mainly because she used purple for shading ;-) 

Decided to keep the background shading simple - I used Paynes Grey and kept many of the collage elements. I don't usually do halos but enjoyed the addition of the gold and added strokes to her hair as well

Turns out she's my new favourite ♥

Click on the photo to see it larger, or go HERE to see my Flickr album of all my Life Book 2016 projects. You can see all my posts about Life Book this year HERE.

Celebration of Quilts show coming up

This coming weekend our local club is having its biennial quilt show : 

When we had our last show in September 2014, I had nothing to share, and I vowed to make more quilts in the next 2 years so I could show something this year. I've managed to make a few and didn't give them all away so there are three I can show : 
Simply Delicious - October 2014. Just missed being able to show this last time around.

Feathered Christmas Tree - December 2014

Star 21st Quilt - March 2015

Wild Women Don't Get The Blues - May 2016

Baby Quilt- August 2016 

Obviously the Baby and 21st quilts have been gifted away, but the other 3 will be on show. If you're local, it'll be a great show - quilts on display plus a chance to win some lovely quilt or fabric raffles, and a chance to shop...might see you there :-)

WOW : World of Wearable Art

Looking forward to our Spring school holidays - last day of the term on Friday. I am starting off artfully with a weekend at Raumati beach with my lovely friends - hopefully the weather will be good enough for this

And on Saturday night we are going to this amazing show in Wellington - sooooo EXCITED.  
Looking forward to some creative time and art sharing when I'm rested and over this head cold...Hope you've got something to look forward to this week ♥

BOD : Sweetness

I won Book of Days semi-annual for July-December with Effy, and I'm loving her weekly lessons and the FB group. This is the first spread I've got completed in my journal from the first main lesson in July (week 27). I am working this year in a recycled art book that I bought at a library book sale for only a few dollars. This is what it looked like in June.

This means that sometimes I get blank pages, and sometimes I get pages full of text. 

I really love the look of that in my background so I always just start on the next page, even if a face falls on such a busy background. After drawing in the face and initial lines, it was time to block in colours and while sometimes I want to challenge myself to try something different, this time I just wanted to use my favourites, as seen when I created my Art Symbols Dictionary. Effy talked about using Tombows with iridescent medium to get a shimmery paint. I pulled out my Tombows and Aquamarkers - again my stash of these consists of my favourite colours plus a sensible brown for eyes ;-)

I did the pink with the tombow and the orange with the aquamarker and they both worked well with the medium. The other areas were too large to waste my markers, so I mixed dark purple paint with the medium, and then turned to my trusty iridescent paints for the turquoise and lime sections

Then we did the face in detail - I have been thinking prismacolors might go on my Christmas wish list since I have lovely watercolour pencils, but not permanant ones. However, I made a visit to our local art supply store (Ochre Art Supplies in Square Edge) and found I could buy Faber Castell Polychromos pencils individually. I bought 3 that I thought would be useful for face shading, and love them. Upon reading reviews, I have bought a brand that is fabulous - very expensive - but if I'm only going to buy them individually as I feel I need I am happy to do that, rather than spend $60 on a box of pencils that may contain colours I don't use. Anyway - here's how I shaded my face using Derwent Graphitint Slate Green and Ivy with water in the eye, and the Polychromos for shading - I rubbed with a blending stump, and later applied white paint in some areas.

Then the doodling began...Hair in progress.

Serendipity - the words grace and beauty were part of the background text so I kept them from the very start to inspire the entire piece. The theme for this lesson was Sweetness - I love the sweetness of creating with colours and symbols that make me happy. From a stressful week, I moved to the sweet spot that comes whenever I'm creating. I used a mix of doodles and my new stencils with gold in my colour block areas

I was thrilled with the look I got with my new star stencil in the sky area, and couldn't resist adding white pen dots for extra sparkle

It was worth doing this page after my art symbols spread. I felt that process added to the depth of meaning in this spread. She's all done here - all that shimmer makes me happy ♥

The time this lesson took was so worth it - I am very happy with the finished spread. Click on the photos to see them larger.

See the rest of my spreads in this year's art journal HERE.  

Craft and Quilt Fair in Porirua

Yesterday I had a road trip to the Craft and Quilt Fair in Porirua. Wasn't sure what to expect, and it has had mixed reviews from people attending. We were off to a good start when the first stand we came to was the very inspiring Dijanne Cevaal. She sat in the midst of her Medieval project - initiated by her with additional contributions from other textile artists, each piece has been hand printed and then layered, embroidered, stitched, quilted and embellished. Click on any photo in this post to see lovely details.

She had panels for sale which are her original linocuts printed onto hand dyed cotton fabric which she has also dyed. I couldn't go past this one - beautiful weeds. I discovered her original blogpost about it here.

The intention is to add some soft wadding and a backing, and then stitch it intensely similar to what she's done below 

Then we moved on to the stalls of other things for sale. Disappointing with how many shops there were, but I was happy to see a range of stencils I hadn't seen before. So managed to come away with these, as well as my weed panel

Then it was time to check out quilt displays. There were a few to inspire. First up was "Our Wishes for the World" - Queensland based textile artist with concerns about the environment. These were my favourites : 

"African Mahogany Seedlings" by Rebecca Saunton Coffey.

"Seed Pods" by Jane Rundle. Here's a detail of the lovely stitching

Next up was SALT : South Australian Living Textiles - their exhibition was called "Inner Journeys" and each artist shares 5 quilts. I wish I could share all of it! but explore more HERE. This is Julie Haddrick :  

 Francie Mewitt - click on any photo to see lovely details

Suzanne Gummow :

Moving on to the AQC Challenge : Tradition with a Twist. See all those quilts HERE. This was the winner : "A Happy Place" by Alison Withers

Colourful, quirky, and masterfully stitched.This was the kind of quilt you see more in the more you pay attention

Also loved "Illumination" by Jan Clark. Beautiful moths and butterflies

Last we saw the Hoffman Challenge Touring Quilts 2016. Quilts must be no more than one metre square, and the quilt is not allowed to be square or rectangular. The artist must use a recognisable amount of the challenge fabric.This was the challenge fabric :

Was great to see some familiar names in the clever quilt artists that got picked for this exhibition, but I'll post just a couple of my favourites cos this post is getting quite long! For photos of all the touring quilts go HERE.

Detail of mermaid quilt - perhaps making quilts with faces are in my future...."Honey! You're home" by Jo Hollings. This next is called "Parisian Bon Bon" by Mary Transom 

So overall, although we were disappointed about the number of stalls on offer, I am happy with the quilt photos I took for inspiration and had a lovely day out with friends - that makes for a happy Saturday :-)