Another lesson from Life Book 2016. This time from Effy - a photo of her original piece appears in this blog post. The lesson was 2 pages - the first included the bones of a story that feels formative to us (for imagery she used a skull and skeletal rib cage), overwritten with our learning and the second an expressive portrait representing the wisdom we bring from that - combined into one piece to show that our current reality includes all the difficult bits of our past. I love art that honours your story and celebrates who you've become.
I feel so blessed that I have always felt loved and supported in my life. Of course life is not always pure bliss, and everyone has experiences that make you grow and learn, but you don't need to have suffered traumatic experiences to create meaningful art. One of my recurring symbols is a butterfly, and I decided I would use that for my imagery.
First page - I believe that what you need is inside, you just need to find and embrace it. I used 2 layers of gel pens to write stream-of-conscious thoughts about my past and my present - the lessons I've learned and what I have come to believe. I loved how the gold and silver writing overlapped and how they complemented the colours of the caterpillar I chose to collage. And then I decided that what I really wanted was more green, so I added another layer with a green metallic pen with affirmations such as "you are worthy" "you can do what you believe" "you are creative" "you can inspire others" you get the idea ;-) and now I love that page even more!
I'm continuing to work directly in my journal, so I was able to turn the page rather than work on a separate piece for my expressive portrait. Here's my first sketch of her with the page cut away.
I knew she would have butterfly wings and I chose some to collage for this and made small cuts on her shoulders for later application. I found this wonderful book about butterflies in a book sale once. I use it so often
I cut the butterflies directly out of it. It has matte paper and so many coloured illustrations in varying sizes of so many species I don't think I'll run out of butterflies in my lifetime :-)
I always love using found words, so decided that my heart would be from a dictionary page - I added some extra heart words over the less relevant bits, edged it with staz-on ink, and when I went to glue it down, the words "the entrance" on the page were too perfect to obscure
Effy often adds gel pen details to her work, and I really enjoy that too, so I went a bit crazy on my background swirls and love them all the more for it. I used my sakura gelly roll metallics - just need to make sure there is contrast with the background for this effect, so used the pink on the purple background.
The girl is supposed to be a reflection of ourselves, so I started her hair with a "brown" layer of burnt sienna which I always forget is quite bronzey - loved that though and went with it adding strands with other paints and metallic pens. My girl's eyes are shut because I think it makes her look completely happy with where she is - thinking of her core and her heart and loving what is at her centre.
When I finished my lovely butterfly girl, I went back to consider what to do on the back of the page. I thought just putting paper on the back was a missed opportunity and after a bit of thought I painted it black like the background of the caterpillar, and then used the same green metallic paint I'd used for the girl's dress to stamp butterflies with a stamp I'd carved myself. I really love the effect, especially when looked at as an open spread
I am very happy with this piece, and am glad my art continues to manifest my word for 2016 : Transform. I wish you could see it in real life - the metallic gel pens make it glow.
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.
I feel like I struggled to make art this past month. Partly it was timing, fitting it in around busy times - some happy, some sad - finishing a piece sometimes freezes me for a bit (I want to make another quilt, but hard to make a decision about which one), and the change of seasons this time of year affects me. I've noted on my blog in previous years that this (any time from May-July) is my down-time in terms of creativity, but I always struggle when it happens and worry that I am losing my mojo, feel disappointed with myself that I'm not spending time creating when I KNOW it will help, but I just can't motivate myself. This spread reflects that - lots of photos of what we've been watching together as a family (good DVD watching weather!), what I've been reading and not so much art.
One of the Documented Life prompts was to use under paper, so I took that as my first page base! I'd always wanted to somehow use that gorgeous stencil print
Second page, I managed to make an Art Card from combining a couple of DLP prompts : using circle stickers and stamps. Again I started with something created previously - some spray paint on a piece of A4 cardstock - I'm sure the other pieces will show up in future daily journaling spreads
June is birthday month for both me and my youngest son and I look forward to happy social times with family and friends and to a creative play day with friends that always inspire me. I used the top left section to create my June card :
The edge along the top of the card is created with a handmade stamp. June begins with the long Queens' birthday weekend and that gave me a chance to create something that I enjoyed and reminds me my joy in creating is still inside and I am confident more of that will happen this month.
One of the fun things I found recently was these stencils on special at the Warehouse -they are for decorating cakes and were originally only $6, on special the day I got them with 60% off - do love a good bargain!
Think I mentioned earlier that winter has arrived - I thought the snowflake stencil could represent our morning frosts
I finished this spread with a butterfly stamp celebrating my latest Life Book lesson completion. I'll share that with you next post.
Here's the completed spread.
I feel happy that I am still managing these spreads, and they are so worth it because when I look back I will remember the lovely coffee catch-ups with my friends, and the excitement of ordering our new curtains and making progress on tiling our bathroom. It's a good reminder that I am living a creative life even when I'm not blogging about art projects!
You can see my Flickr album with all my daily journaling spreads HERE. You can find out more about DLP 2016 the unPlanner HERE.
Another lesson from Life Book 2016 - this was a bonus lesson from Pauline Agnew and was created on a page to which she'd added a base layer of random paint colours. Since I had some lovely under paper lying around, I decided to use that as my base.
Rather than draw an original face (this was a bonus lesson after all) we were to draw from an old master. Since I ♥ Rosetti's work, I chose this gorgeous "La Ghirlandata" 1873
I only wanted to do the face, so enlarged my book page on my photocopier to get a larger version in black and white, and started drawing with an Inktense watercolor pencil "Bark" colour so less harsh than black.
Click on the photo to see it larger. I am no Rosetti, but I like how she looks and I gave her a more modern look with her hair and happy with the flower addition that came from following how the paint appeared on the page
I wondered about adding a bit more colour, and decided to add some orange to her lips and hair once I put the original book plate beside my drawing
Here's a close-up of her face
I particularly loved how I could locate the left eye on purple paint on the page (I glued the paper down orientated with this in mind). Here she is completed :
I was getting a bit overwhelmed that I was "getting behind" on the Life Book lessons, but this was pure fun and low stress because I started with such an imperfect background. And I have a plan for which lessons I'm going to get onto next. See you again soon.
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.
