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.