Trying My Hand at Oil Paints

It's been a very stressful week filled with some drama. My little fur baby and faithful companion, Isabella, is very sick and fighting to get better. She's day to day...so I've been a little low key. As a way to occupy my mind I thought I would at least try the oil painting lesson from Misty Mawn's class this past week. We used Shiva Paintstiks to paint one of our sketches.

I had many bad attempts that I immediately tossed in the trash. It took me quite a while to understand how to blend with the stiks. I finally ended up with a painting that I was somewhat satisfied with. The top photo shows the painting that I used in a digital piece. I scanned another of my CitraSolv backgrounds, added her to it and then added some more layers in Photoshop. I wish I had the ability to do on paper what I can do in Photoshop!

Here is the original painting on watercolor paper:

I definitely want to work more with the Shiva's. After a while I began to understand where to put the dark colors before blending them; I still have a long way to go. I love the buttery softness of these paints. Most of the blending is done with your fingers and this really does help to achieve the color you want. This has been one of my favorite lessons so far. And for a little while it took my mind to a happier place.

Hopefully, Isabella will come through this sickness. Send her your good wishes!

Mixing It Up

I mentioned in a previous post that I am taking Misty Mawn's portrait drawing class. This is week two and I have already learned so much. She is an awesome teacher. I can't say enough about how impressed I am with her class. This is a sketch I did from week one. I'm still learning to do the shadows and shading. That's a challenge for me. I used a model from a fashion magazine as my guide, especially for the lighting and shadow work. Of course this sketch looks nothing like the model but that just makes her uniquely mine! ;)

One of the reasons I'm so interested in these drawing classes is that I want to incorporate more of my own drawings into my art. I'm obsessed with faces so I want to learn all I can about different ways to draw and paint them. Ahh, painting them. This week in Misty's class we start painting our sketches. I haven't drawn one yet that I want to paint but I'm working on one. Watching her paintings take shape is so inspiring (and scarey)! Oh, to be able to do that. Hopefully, someday...

In the meantime, another reason I love using my own drawings is I can paint them any way I want digitally and do something like this:

This was my entry for this week's challenge at Digital Whisper. I love all the special effects I can add to my drawings. Just for fun I did a little graffiti girl:

This one incorporated one of my CitraSolv backgrounds:

And speaking of CitraSolv backgrounds, today I am the guest artist at Toni Brown's very cool blog. Thank you, Toni, for inviting me! I wrote up a little tutorial explaining how I made my CitraSolv pages. Check out her blog. It's full of great tips, techniques and inspiration.

So I'm mixing it all up: original sketches, digital art, some homemade backgrounds...just to see where it all takes me. Stay tuned! More from Misty's class will be posted soon.

Blueprint: More CitraSolv Backgrounds

I have been busy making more backgrounds from the CitraSolv technique that I mentioned in my last post. I think I love this latest batch even more than the first one! I want to use some of these in my art journals as backgrounds and also experiment with painting and adding to them on canvas, fabric, etc.

What I love to do first is scan my favorite ones into Photoshop to have a "clean" version always available. Then I can have fun digitally painting a canvas. The digital piece above started out with this CitraSolv background:

The photo doesn't do it justice. The colors are gorgeous and it just looks full of texture. I think this is my favorite one so far. I added a lot of layers, images, brushes, etc. to get to the finished digital piece but I like the idea of always having this one in my archive.

Here are a few of my other favorites from this latest batch:

And there's usually a surprise or two that surfaces as I'm working through the process. While I was "painting" the pages with the CitraSolv every once in a while I'd come across a page of pure text. I usually would leave that page alone since there was no color to blend and I would just saturate the opposite page in the spread. In this instance shown below, I thought the colors around the man would blend really well and make a pretty background. I was working pretty quickly and didn't saturate the page very much. Much to my delight when I went to remove the pages, this happened:

The photo of the man transferred to the text page! How cool is that?! Evidently I left enough of an air pocket when I closed the magazine for the image to mirror itself onto the opposing page. And the fact that one eye was left with a blank circle...this all happened by chance! What are the odds of having that inkblot cover just his one eye so perfectly? I couldn't have planned it better if I'd thought of it myself.

That's what is so fun about this technique. There are so many little things you discover as you go along. I will definitely be using this guy (embellished) in more of my art.

And speaking of surprises, after I posted my last entry I heard from the folks at CitraSolv. What a wonderful group of people they are! They were so kind in commenting on my post and I was excited to learn about their website where they post the artist's results using their product.

Check out all of the info they have posted about different ways to use CitraSolv in your art. But the biggest surprise of all was this that arrived in the mail a few days later. Notice that they included a few National Geographic magazines, as well:

Thanks again to Melissa and the gang at CitraSolv. I will definitely put these products to good use! Now I don't even mind doing a little cleaning here and there... ;)

Total Immersion

This is a digital piece I made that shows how I'm feeling lately: head swimming with so many ideas! I'm drowning in ideas! They're trapped in my head...I've been scribbling them all down furiously so I won't forget any but I find myself wanting to dive in head-first and do them all at once.

Then I remember my word for this year: finish! Finish the current project. I love that piece and I've got to reign myself in and focus. Maybe that should be my other word: focus! So I take a deep breath and return to the project at hand. The fabric feels good to work with, the sewing machine hums along and my mind keeps swimming.

I'm practicing my sketching again in the evenings. When hubby and I sit together and visit about our day I have my sketchbook open and I either doodle or attempt to sketch a face. Thanks to my good friend Jackie, I've signed up for Misty Mawn's awesome portrait workshop. This is the first week and I'm very excited about it. Last night I sketched this lady (I haven't finished all of the shading yet). She definitely has an attitude. I don't know where she came from but she just burst onto the page:

What I would like to learn to do is paint these sketches. That is one thing that Misty's class will cover and I am so looking forward to that lesson! I can "paint" my lady digitally, though:

I seem to be in a purple phase right now. It could have something to do with the Citrasolv backgrounds I created (see previous post). This piece has one of those backgrounds. I love the "bubbles" that the CitraSolv produces when it does it's magic! Of course then I have to add tons of layers to the piece, but you can see at the very bottom how the base page looks. Scanning those pages into Photoshop has really given my digital art a boost! They have an effect I don't think I could ever produce with paint. Yummy. I love, love, love, them.

Since all of those ideas for future projects are safely written down in my project notebook, I'm content knowing I'll get to them as soon as I finish this current project. I promise!

Credits for the top digital image: model by Latte Queen at Deviantart.com and the birdcage by cfstock at Deviantart.com.

Dropping In

A funny thing happened on the way to working on my latest project: I got sidetracked. I have to watch that...I'm still sticking to my word of the year (remember finish?). But then I saw this art technique in the latest issue of Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazine and it wouldn't leave my head. I had to try it. Today.

You've probably seen and heard about the CitraSolv technique and how it works on pages of National Geographic magazine. I'd heard of it before and seen the awesome results that people have come up with. Something about seeing it again really made me want to try it. So after much running around hunting for a National Geographic (I finally just went and bought one), here are my results:

Do you recognize the first one? It's the background for the digital image at the top of the page. I've scanned in all of these backgrounds so I'll be able to use them over and over digitally as well as painting/collaging on the real things. I love the colors in this next one:

A very dreamy looking night scene could be made of this next one:

I put a random selection from the magazine onto the floor and just took a photo of them. Look at the variety of colors you can get. I just love this technique!

As far as I know you can only use this on National Geographic pages AND they have to be from within the last ten years. I tried a few of my fashion magazine pages but nothing happened. I'll keep experimenting but I haven't seen anybody else mention any other magazines where this works. There must be something special in the ink on these pages.

A bonus: the whole house smells like oranges now! ;) But now that the experiment is over and I have a little supply of cool backgrounds, I can get back to finishing my current project. I have to watch these interruptions. Now I'm beginning to understand why it has been so hard for me to complete some projects...

By the way, credit for all of the cute little character images goes to Granny Art.

Dream: Journal Page

I've been working in my art journal today. This beautiful image is from a note card by Sabrina Ward Harrison. I transferred it onto muslin. I like the ethereal effect that image transfers have; especially when transferred to a thin material like muslin. My favorite technique for achieving this effect is the Purell hand sanitizer technique. It gives the image the dreamy look I want and it doesn't stiffen the material too much. Plus it's clean! ;)

I have a lot of layers on these pages. Lots of paint, stencils, some French text, napkins, and pens. This is something I'm challenging myself to do: layer, layer, layer! I haven't added any journaling yet. I may do this on a separate sheet of paper and then insert that into an envelope that I'll adhere to the page. Still thinking about it.

I'm not sure the page is finished yet. I may come back to it at a later time and add something else. For right now, I like it and will let it sit for awhile.

Here is a closeup of the image transfer:

Other things I'm working on: a new art quilt. This one is about the size of the fabric paper quilt but made with fabric. I'm trying some new techniques for this one: silk screening and working with deconstructing the silk screened image. This technique involves making a convex rubbing of your image onto the silk screen and printing successive images from there. I first saw this technique in Quilting Arts magazine over the summer. It's stayed on my mind and I've finally worked up the nerve to try it.

I've done a couple of runs of the silk screened image. I love the deconstructed effect. There is another technique in the follow-up issue that discussed deconstructing an image using an engraved rubbing of your image. That one will be my next try. But it will be a separate art quilt.

I'm also making more journals because I'm enrolled in a couple of very fun journaling classes right now. One is from Cristina at Roses on My Table (Journal Journey) and the other one is from Monica at Hands and Heart (Zodiac Journaling).

Lots of stuff in the works right now. And, in between all of these, I'm getting more acquainted with Photoshop CS4. I'm slowly learning my way around. If I really get stumped, I just go to my old computer where CS2 is still loaded and work on something there. But don't tell hubby. He says I should work through it. :)

FINISHED: Fabric Paper Wallhanging

I finished the fabric paper wallhanging! Yay! Here it is hanging on a wall in my living room. You can click on the photo for a larger view. The lighting isn't perfect but I wanted to get a photo of it tonight. I'll take more photos of it tomorrow in it's surroundings. I love looking at it as I sit in my favorite room!

I'm very pleased with the colors I chose as I was dying the sheets. I think they all go together beautifully. They also tie-in really well with the colors in my living room. Even hubby got excited as I was joining all of those little jump rings together. He said he couldn't visualize what I was doing as I was working on it but now he gets it! I ended up with 94 squares, all beaded, with 4 eyelets and jump rings in each square.

Here is a closeup of a few squares:

And another shot. This one is a little blurry:

It felt so good to complete this project. I knew when I started it that it would take a while. I just kept plugging along, beading the squares at night while I watched TV. That brings me to my next item.

My Word For This Year: Finished.

I've noticed the trend in a lot of my favorite blogs to select a "word for the year". I like that idea. You pick a word that you would like to focus your intentions on for the coming year. My word, as I said, is finish. That's a big one for me. And a close second would be the word believe. As in, believe you can finish what you set out to do!

It's no secret that I LOVE new projects and new challenges. I LOVE to start them. I LOVE to keep starting them... I fall a little short on the finishing part. ;) I really, really want to concentrate on that aspect this year. Involved in all of that will be my art journal. It will be my ally and my confidante through this journey. I set my intentions there... the follow-through, the finishing will be recorded there as well.

I think I'm off to a good start. I wanted to share this tonight. I'll have better photos of the entire room tomorrow and will post those soon. Right now I have to FINISH cleaning up. :)

Anticipation

I've been offline for a couple of days due to the copying of all the files from the old computer to the new one that Santa brought me! And I'm getting used to the new operating system along with the newest version of Photoshop (another cool gift!). So there's been a slight learning curve for me with all of the new technology. I'm making progress and am LOVING the new setup.

While I'm learning my way around Photoshop CS4 I thought I'd make a little New Year's piece. I call this, "Anticipation" because I am looking forward to all of the great things I envision with the unleashing of 2010. I hope to really grow in my art, my journaling and my writing. I have some personal goals I want to reach in the coming year and plan to examine those more closely in my art journals.

So, here's to the New Year: may it be all you hope for it to be!

Heart Whispers

Here is the latest art quiltlet I made. I sketched the girl onto muslin and then cut fabric for her hoodie and roughly sewed it on. The hearts are beaded with glass beads. I painted the background in a bronze metallic paint which doesn't show up too well. I also painted the sun, her face and hair using Caran D'Ache Neocolor II crayons mixed with water. I left the threads hanging from the jacket because I like the uneven, loose feel of the piece.

I was inspired by the fashion sketches of Kat MacLeod. She is an awesome artist and I'm using her sketches as "models" while I try my own hand at skteching her style of faces in some fun little fabric pieces I'm working on now.

I've really missed working with fabrics and my sewing machine. These little quilts have been fun exercises in random sketching and embellishing. I've got some other ideas I'm trying out now and hope to have more to show soon.

The beading is what takes all the time but I love the random nature of the whole process. I sewed the piece onto black felt using embroidery thread and cross stitches. Lots of fun working with fabric again. Stay tuned for more little bits.

HeART Quilt: Part Two

After having the base of the art quilt set, I was ready to embellish. I spent the evening last night beading this as I watched the NFL games with hubby. After all the beading, I sewed the quiltlet to a big piece of black felt. I love the way this turned out.

I have another one in the works right now. I'll be doing the beading on it tonight. I've painted the face of the girl and the muslin background. I used acrylic paints mixed with fabric medium. It really helped the hand of the fabric stay soft. This is a new area of exploration for me, but I'm loving the results. I hope to have something to show of this one in the next couple of days.

The Shiva paintstiks are a dream to work with. After the 24 hours they are ready to heat set and then you can paint over them or do whatever you like. I've printed out a couple more of my latest sketches and transferred them to muslin squares. Now I'm working on designs for their little quiltlets.

Also in the works: I completed two collages today in Jamie Ridler's Soul Reflections course. This was a fantastic exercise that you can use again and again. I highly recommend it. I purchased the e-course but there will be a "hard copy" packet ready to mail in January. I couldn't wait for that so I ordered the e-version. ;) It's wonderful and so inspiring! I love Jamie's site...do check it out. There is so much inspiration and support to be found there.

That's it for today. Back to work on the quiltlets. I am beading the squares for my wall hanging in between breaks I take from the quilts. Hope to have those ready to assemble very soon!

HeART Quilt

It's been awhile since I've posted! Many things have been going on behind the scenes. I battled the flu some more and then managed to pull a muscle in my back and wasn't able to climb the stairs for a few days. Ugh!

I've been playing with fabric lately. I picked up the newest issue of Art Quilting Studio and that made me want to play with my fabric stash. Then I pulled all of my Sew Somerset issues and my Cloth, Paper, Scissors back issues and just started making notes. I've got Shibori dying on the horizon...really wanting to try my hand at that. But here is a little art quilt (about 5" x 7") that I experimented with. First I sprayed the fabric with Adirondack Spray Inks. Then I rubbed my Shiva paintstiks over rubber stamps of different sizes of hearts. After I heat set those, I stitched over them with gold metallic thread. This is a piece of muslin sewn to a felt backing. I think I'll mount this page into one of my journals after some more work. I want to add some beading and maybe something else; I'm not sure yet.

We had our Christmas party for hubby's students. I spent a lot of time getting the place ready for about 20 students, making them little gifts and assembling the gift bags. Here was the view from my second floor loft area right before we brought in the extra seating:

Here's the view from the first floor landing:

And, finally, from the bottom floor:

I painted each student a little ornament. I found some nice unfinished wooden ones at Michael's that had twine wrapped around them and a little bell at the bottom. They came in different shapes of snowflakes, hearts, a stocking and tree. Those turned out pretty good and then I decoupaged the Purdue "P" on the front and wrote their club name on the back with a date. I finished them off by edging them with an 18 kt. Gold Leafing pen. They seemed pretty happy with their gifts and that made me feel better.

So now that the annual party is over, I can get back to making art! So many projects are sitting right here in front of me and for the first time in about three weeks I'm feeling strong and healthy enough to start playing again!

Color Me In Watercolors

After making it through the holiday and then having to cope with a very bad cold, I was finally able to return to the computer today. Thanksgiving went very smooth and things are working out just fine (see last post).

So today I was able to sit down (for a very long time) and try to work my way through this Photoshop tutorial that was featured on Digital Whisper. It is a watercolor effect that you apply to a photo. For some reason I was just not getting it. Aaarrggghh! I was determined to sit here and try it until I was at least on the right track. It's still not quite there but is much closer than my first tries.

Mary Oliver's poem, "Wild Geese" keeps showing up in different places lately. I love these particular lines from it and decided to use them here with this old photo of me. These lines just ring true in so many areas for me. I love their brutal honesty and I try to remember them whenever I beat myself up over anything. These are the second and third lines from the poem; the first says, "You do not have to be good." LOVE that! I have this entire poem posted right above my worktable. It is such an inspiration.

On other things: I am working very slowly on my wallhanging but making progress, I'm making more journals using Teesha Moore's method (after finally getting some hot press watercolor paper), and I'm making a different sort of journal using old book covers and other watercolor papers. I've also been experimenting with some image transfer techniques for my journals. I hope to have something to show from all of this very soon.

I've been battling this cold that at times feels like a flu. Some days I just haven't had the energy to get upstairs to the studio. We are hosting a Christmas party for hubby's students on Dec. 10 and I have so much to do to get ready for that. I am trying not to let it overwhelm me but on days like today I am losing that battle.

I did another watercolor effect with my favorite photo of Andy Warhol using one of his quotes. I'll post that along with some other goodies next time. Now play time is over and I have to get back to the real world and start getting this place ready for 18 college students. Wish me luck.

Waiting To Heal

I believe in posting about everything that is going on in my life: good and bad. Not that this is bad. It's just bittersweet, I guess. My dad told me today that he is getting married Dec. 26. I haven't met her yet; I am going to do that Thanksgiving.

Of course I said all the right things, congratulated him, and even spoke with her on the phone. It's wonderful to see him happy and hear the genuine joy in his voice. That is something that has been missing ever since Mom died five years ago. I have been worried about him and knew he was lonely and depressed. This person came into his life soon after his motorcycle accident. They've known each other for years and she lost her husband a couple of years ago.

So it's great that he's moving on, he's happy and he seems like his old self. I'm very thankful for that. I will always struggle with my grief from her passing and I miss her every day. I remember she laughed and said that if she died first she hoped he would remarry but doubted if any woman would have him. ;) She knew he would struggle and he has. But this has just reinforced the fact that she is gone and we all have to move on with our lives. I'm sure I'll be journaling about this as I work through it.

I'm just going to have to wait for time to heal my wounds. It seems to be taking a little longer for me...

Make Your Mark

Ever since I made the five journals using Teesha Moore's instructions I can't stop playing in them! Here is a page I just finished. I'm obsessed with this photo of Andy Warhol right now. I don't know why but it begs to be used in my journal. The image surrounded in white is a transfer onto rice paper that I then adhered to the journal page. I added white oil pastels around his head to give it a dreamy effect.

On the top of the page in the background you can barely see a transfer of the same photo onto an old book page. I picked up this tattered copy of classic poems in the library throwaway bin. The spine is loose and the cover is cracked and coming apart. I'll use that in another project. I tore a page from "Paradise Lost" and transferred the image onto that. This time, the image was colored in Photoshop before I transferred it. After I adhered it onto the page I used the oil pastels to bring out the color more.

The little figure of Andy Warhol in the upper right corner was so much fun to make! That is a cartoon figure I cut from a magazine. I made a packing tape transfer from it and I love how it turned out. It's transparent but the colors on the figure are really vibrant! The face on the left in the top frame is also a packing tape transfer. I've been doing a lot of those and they will be showing up in my future pages.

I do have to confess that once I uploaded this page into Photoshop to resize it I couldn't resist adding a few digital items. I added the polaroid frames around the two faces and the film strip stamp in the lower right. I wish I had rubber stamps of these but for now I'll use the digital stamps. Other than that, the rest is the actual journal page. I'm really having fun with the Portfolio oil pastels and the pan pastels that Teesha mentioned in her video. My fingers are constantly different shades of blues, yellows and pinks (my current faves)!

I've been experimenting with every technique I can think of in these journals. I'm glad I made so many because while one is drying I can go to another one and start a new page. Some of the techniques have worked out very nicely and some, not so well on the watercolor paper. More will be coming soon.