painting the feminine

I have been busy with lots of stitching, none of which is finished, and my painting challenges.  I have also started a course with Connie Solera of Dirty Footprints Studio called Painting the feminine.

I am really enjoying the course and I felt the need to share my process with my first (official) page

I picked up an oil pastel and just played and these shapes came up. They could be babies, or women, or even leaves and seeds.  I wasn't sure yet.
I left them for a while and eventually, I started adding paint, and got lost, so no photos.

This is where I got to.  I started colouring the little areas and shapes in the middle, but they felt wrong, so...

I painted over it.  I  tried straight orange and yellow, but they were too transparent,so I added some white to them and added more, making a sort of stucco texture.
I still felt I needed something to connect the two figures

I had an idea of some spirals, but I wasn't sure, so I put a page protector opened up over the top and  tried it out with posca markers.  I liked that, but I added some dots as well.

Finally, I added more dots around each figure and the eyes.  I call this connectedness and for me it is about how the feminine connects us in our hearts.

Whilst I was working on this, which took a while and a lot of reflection, I also started painting over an old canvas, which was covered in flowers and a vase.

The same shape in another incarnation.  I was actually using up all the leftover paint on my palette and was not happy with the colours, but they have given me the form I wanted, so this is a work in process and we will see how it changes over the week!

Happy creating!

A catch up

A week has gone by since I posted and the last thing I posted was the sketchbooks I put together and these two pages are ones I finished during the week.

The one on the left was a ghost print from some monoprinting which I have added to and made more interesting.  The one on the right was a sunflower print (background) and on top, I  used a silhouette stencil I cut from a fashion magazine.  Then I added a bit of shading and detail with black ink.  This was for Natalie Kalbach's lesson from creative Jumpstart which I am enjoying a lot.

This page used a gorgeous stencil.  An old Amy Butler one and a quote which I altered a little, adding "She"  instead of "He".  This one is the story of my life!

Under my magnifying daylight lamp here, is a piece of printed chiffon, which I did some free motion of, but didn't like.  The reason for the magnifying glass is that I am unpicking it!

This is my Feather collection.  It is very varied,although many are white cockatoo or black and white magpie feathers, but I also have some blue and black rosella feathers and in the centre is a speckled feather which I think may belong to an owl or night jar.  I pick these up when I am walking each evening, and it is always a great walk when I find one.

These are a couple of quick warm-up collages, a task that I have been neglecting this month!

This is my first page for DLP (Documented Life Project) which is  a site my friend Lisa put me on to.

And lastly this is a page from my doodling journal.  It has lots of prints and painted pages in it and all I do is doodle and use pens and markers in it.

Doesn't seem much for a week, does it?  Well, there are lots of other things, that are in process and a couple of things that are for swaps and such, which I can't show until the appropriate time.  So we will see those the next time or the time after that, or....

Happy Creating!

Journals everywhere

Yesterday, I spent some time, gong through my huge stash of gelli prints and put together two new journals.

As you can see I am really short on journals!  Hmmm.  Well, I still went ahead and made two more.

I call these "Serendipity" journals, because they have a mix of blank and coloured/printed pages, so it is just fate what you get to work on.  I find I tend to create things I never thought of or planned with these journals.  Here are a few spreads.

As you can see, I have a variety of pages, including deli paper, cartridge paper, watercolour paper, card and even some black card as well as a wide variety of prints and failed prints, all bound together using my old comb binder.  I am quite pleased with these.

Here are a couple of recent art journal pages

This one started with a scrap of watercolour paper with some test painting on it and a tree cut from a page taken out of an altered book.  The branches were cut of in the cutting, but I put them back in with drawing.  The autumn leaf drifts began as bits of gelli prints which I scribbled all over with oil pastel then melted with the heat gun and moved around with a baby wipe.  It turned out very atmospheric!

This page has sat around for nearly a week.  I had "drawn" the tree and grass, with some elmer's glue on a coloured background and intended, when the glue was dry, to wash over black ink and wipe it off from the glue to create a coloured tree on a black background.  But alas, the ink dried too quickly and I couldn't get it off.

today, whilst I was playing with the oil pastels, I thought I could rub over the tree and get the pastel on the glue, but again, that did not work, as the pastel also got onto the background as well in places.  As I was rubbing the background to try uselessly to remove the pastel, it simply created more of a misty background - AND  the cloth rubbed the pastel off the glue!  So I eventually, after many plays, got the opposite effect of what I originally intended, but I really like it and especially love the shiny, black dimensional tree.

Happy Creating!

Being Productive

The last few days have been quite productive.I have been working on my crazy quilt, which got a little behind in the winter when I was ill.

I have been working on this block (left) this week

And as you can see, it is nearly finished!

I also coloured some pieces of lace for crazy quilting.  White gets a bit boring after a while.

I finished my 12" block for the ravelry  2015crochet-along.  I have also done a 6" one.
On the journaling front, as well as my daily journal, I did these pages.

I drew all over the pages with inktense blocks and the little book, was drawn on every page.

I sprayed the pages with water, saturating them and ran a brush over them.  At present, they are spending a few pages drying.  I saw this recently on design matters TV with Laura Kemshall.  I have not done it the same as Laura did, but the video reminded me of this method I saw on you tube a few years ago using ink.

This is a little thread sketch I did this afternoon.  It is obvious I am a little out of practice as my wren is a little fat!  A bit more practice will get me back into the routine.

This is a small thread painted/mixed media collage I put together with a few scraps of fabric, some papers and a card die cut.  I like this one and as I was stitching, the name 'Into the darkness" came to me.

I had been thinking about a textile project for this year and had been thinking of doing the thread sketches (like the bird), but In April, I will be doing a class with Ro Bruhn at AQC.  She makes beautiful fabric books.  I also saw Leslie Tucker Jennison on Quilting Arts TV 1503 making similar collages and  Liz Kettle also talked about thread sketching practice in qatv 1505.  So this is a cross between all of the above, with a little bit of Cas Holmes thrown in so  I think this will be my project for this year. A mixed media collage with fabric, paper and stitch, including thread sketches.

Often with these yearly projects I have planned to do it every day...and I always failed, simply because life happens, so this year my intent is to do at least 1 each week,with the intention of doing at least three.
One might think that, since I have failed at these yearly projects in the past, that I might give up, but although I have never been perfect (ie each and every day), I have learnt a great deal from these projects.  I have a vast library of journal quilts, atcs and stitched squares

Whilst I was looking for all the links above, I found The Slow Stitching movement  which has podcasts and a blog  This looks like great reading and listening.  Go have a look!


Happy Creating!

A little bit of narcissim

I have been caught red handed!
Many of you.  In fact probably all of you have no Idea what I look like.  I avoid photographs and on facebook, you are only likely to see childhood pictures of me.  My theory has always been that I make beautiful things, I don't need to be beautiful.  And as far as I am aware, I am not.  Just a middle aged, overweight woman who mostly dresses in old clothes, except on special occasions!

Some of my friends over seas have suggested a face to face online (Cringe) and I suppose I will have to actually do it!

I have been doing creative jumpstart, from n*studio and Julie Balzer's class was to make a stencil.  From a photograph......Of yourself.
So I did.

Except for the pixie ears, I am told by my hubby that it looks like me.  But I know that it looks like me a few years ago.  In fact maybe even ten!  So that is where the narcissism comes in.  I am actually pleased with the picture, because of course, it flatters me!  My hubby is half blind anyway and can't see my face very well at all, lol.

Vincent van Gogh painted a huge number of self portraits and when I worked on painting with the masters last year, we were all encouraged to do so.  I hadn't got around to it.

Well now I have and although it is a bit nicer than I really am, it's a good start, don't you think?

Even if my ears look like pixie ones!


Happy Creating!

Playing Around

Well it was last year last time I posted and it's now this year!
I am still keeping busy, even though the weather has heated up quite a bit.  It is now true january weather!
First, Stitching
I have been working on a Sue Spargo sampler for the craftsy class I bought ages ago!

Here is my base for the sampler.  The one on the left is just pinned and the one on the right has been stitched down.  My hubby couldn't tell the difference and remarked on how little I has got done.  Men!
Of course, as I always do, I got distracted by something.

This is the beginning of a pincushion by Sue spargo I saw on Quilting arts TV  episode 1501 (don't go looking for the pattern as it is not there yet - I made it up myself)

And here is where I am with it.  At least this is a related project!

This is an old piece of work, that I am currently beading the edge of.  See on the right.  Madness, I know, but it is easy, mind numbing work.
I have done a bit of journaling, as well

This was my first page for the year.  Just playing with  inkblots.

This is my second page for the year, based on Jane davenport's Art Lesson 1 from last year on inktense blocks and pencils.  I finished the dragonfly with a silver gel pen

And here is today's page, which is based on Yesterday's lesson from creative jumpstart by Jimmy Leslie.

And it all came from a bit of napkin I had collaged down!

I have a word for this year, although I will leave it to you as the year goes by to decide what it means!

EMERGE

Happy creating!