Love and Support

A card for a friend who lost his best friend yesterday. :(

Just Breathe

Feelings

46 years later and my dogs are still like comfort food. I grew up with Pogo. He was a basset hound and had the sweetest temperament. We were the best of friends. Today I have 2 standard poodles and I am a total convert now. Poodles are the BEST! Quiet, smart, loving and loyal, who could ask for more!

More Shapely

I made a stencil of a horse head to layer over the diamond background. They look a little like chess pieces. I am going to add some text but haven't decided what yet. I added "The Black Knights" in Photoshop to get an idea of what would look good.

Diamonds Shapes

I am excited about diamond shapes. I have started my spread using a stencil that I have from my horse riding days. Its called a Quarter Mark and you use it on your horses rump by brushing the hair the wrong way with the stencil on to give a subtle design. Kinda cool eh? I am not loving this yet but I do want to work with it a bunch more.

Art Gift

My gift is for a co-worker who is going through a difficult time. I made her a journal. Its not hand made, its a purchased one that I decorated. I wanted a lined one for her because I think she will primarily be writing in it. I decorated the inside cover and then stamped a few positive affirmations and imagery on some of the pages so it already feels well loved. I thought I would add a note on how journalling has helped me through some difficult times to encourage her to try it.

I sanded it covered in with black gesso and used my crayons over top. I then rubbed gold paint on the raised parts. I glued some silk paper over the spine.

Inspired By . . .

I had wanted to do a spread inspired by Amedeo Modigliani but when I saw Misty Mawn's crayon portrait I was torn between the two. So this is a combination of both :) Not sure if its completely finished yet. The woman is done entirely with crayons.

I started it on crayon night and got this far.

This is my version of the Amedeo Modigliani piece Madame Kisling that I did just a little while back. I love his angles, his eyes and his rich colours.

Rose petals from a bouquet my sweetie got my when I was sick.

Crayon Play

I got this idea to make an image that looks like a rubbing of a Greek coin. I found an image in a magazine that gave me the idea and I went from there. I decided to use this spread that I already had a coat of black gesso that would make my crayon colours pop. When I applied the gesso I played around with different texturing ideas, bubble wrap, credit card. The right side is watercolour paper and the left is canvas.

This next spread was done some time ago but I thought I would share one of my favorite backgrounds using the watercolour crayons.

First a coat of black gesso and adding texture is fun. Then pick a colour palette out and just fly at her! :) Then lightly blend the crayons with a damp brush let dry and stamp words all over using a good quality gold stamp pad. You may want to seal it at this point but I didn't.

Altered Photo

Gitanyow

On a trip up north I took this photo of one of the totems of Gitanyow with a long house in the distance. This is a village that Emily Carr visited and painted these very totems! I read about her visit in one of her journals.

The photo is sanded and rubbed water soluble oil pastels. The background is walnut ink, on the bottom half the text was sprayed with a mister to blur the words in a wet on wet like technique. While still wet the top had walnut soaked string dropped on and let dry.

This is how I mounted my altered photo of my Ginkgo Tree for my Green page.

Word Play

There is something so romantic about the life of a gypsy, to be able to pick up and wander on down the lane whenever you feel the urge. I love using a word and creating a page for it or conversely doing a page and seeing what word comes to mind at the end. This one started with the word and the rest followed.

Used a Pilot parallel pen loaded with Walnut ink, then outlined with a gold gel pen and filled in the missing bits with a soft pan pastel. I am quite happy with my lettering in this one. I tried to get a

decent picture but it just wasn't happening. The characters are rubber stamps by Acey Deucy and Non Sequitur. I doodled the map and water coloured the background.

Embellished

Meet Cari. She is embellished with rivets that have letters glued on top and her earrings are made from an anti-theft device I took off a CD I just purchased. She is mostly acrylic on watercolour paper, with a bit of crayon and pastel. I like this funky chick. :)

Details

In the Pink

All watercolours except the clown face is ink and pastels.
I worked on yellow pages all morning and had to tear myself away to work on pink. I love golds and ochres and rich Autumn reds. Misty's colour challenge really brought that front and centre for me. I don't wear yellow much as it makes me look sickly but I love it. This pink spread was started a while back and was inspired to finish it with the pink challenge today. :) I am still not sure if it is finished completely. Hmmmm.

Yellow

She has a Gingko petticoat.

Red Light District

Catching up on Misty's colour challenge. Friday was red and here is my journal spread. On the left is a inkjet transfer using Golden's soft gel meduim. Then I painted and pastel-ed over it and added the small label from Cycles Gladiator wine. On the right are free tags by Sarah Lugg from Somerset Studio magazine. I took the shot of Oriental Poppy and sanded and pastel-ed it. I am very happy with this spread. :)

Thursday is White

enfin!

I added some images with green chalk ink and made buttons out of canvas.

Ivory of Paris

The background is done with crackle paint. The base layer is copper and gold with ivory on top.

With a cute button nose
playing with crayons :)

Dreaming of Spring

Green

Green makes me think of springtime and all the plants bursting forth with new growth.

This is a photo of my Ginkgo tree that I sanded and rubbed with water soluble oil pastels.

I rubber stamped the Japanese poem.

This is called Horse Tails and they are growing at Beaver Lake where we go for Dog walks. I love how feathery and light they are. I have them growing in my yard too but not as robust as these ones at the lake. I am told that they are very unique to the Pacific NW and they are dinosaurs of the plant world.

Todays colour is Orange

Year of the Horse

I know it is really year of the Ox. And although I did the calligraphy I can't remember what this character means. I used "Quinacridone Burnt Orange" acrylic paint on the masking tape and sanded it and put some "Nickol Azo Gold" on after, the outer frame is walnut ink.

Blue Blue Monday

My calligraphy is pretty rusty but I forged ahead and did some pointed pen with my blue pumpkin nib (its really blue!) and white acrylic ink by FW. I used a flash on this picture and unfortunately the black is showing to much shine.

Blue Monday

Its a Rip in the Time Space Continuum.

I love using colour! Misty Mawn's January challenge for this week is to do a monochromatic colour scheme every day. I started spreading the paint with a credit card and then switched to 3 fingertips. One of her examples was Picasso's blue periods and she has a link to one of his works on her blog. Its a horse and I love it! It was definitely the inspiration for my spread.

Paint textures, photo and text.

January Pages and My Journal

This is the journal I am working in. I just recently finished making it so the timing was perfect for the Journal pages every day in January, the challenge Misty Mawn has put out on her blog. I have enjoying this so much!

This spread was the blind contour drawing of your face. I did two and painted one. I cheated a bit on the first one and peeked a bit but the second one was totally without looking and I quite like it. This was a very fun exercise.

This is my first self portrait again after I worked on the background more, adding many layers of acrylics. The medallion is made from 2 stamps embossed and cut out and coloured and mounted with a fancy brad. The building is from a magazine.

And this is how Gabriella's secret turned out. I was able to photograph it in the natural light too which makes the lighting better on the gold leafing.

Romancing the Paint

The background is acrylic but the portrait is all watercolours, watercolour pencils and watercolour crayons. Oh. ok I did use a fine pen for some detail work at the end. I don't think I am done yet but done for tonight. I was going to stop at the previous picture but one thing leads to another. :)

Well it is not exactly me. A romantic version, but I guess I can be forgiven as it is my wedding picture. Listening to Billie Holiday sing the blues.

The Iron Fairies

I found this interesting little book at a store in Victoria call "Instincts". Its kind of a gift store specializing in tarot cards, crystals, figurines of fairies and dragons etc. They carry a line of cast iron figures of fairies and this book is about them and their story. There is a metal plate on the front that has the design raised up and when I brought it home it was all rusty and so cool. But you could barely make out what the design was. So I set about fixing it up, I sanded the raised part and then coloured it with my watercolour crayons. Now the design pops out pretty nicely and yet keeps the gnarly look. :)

Text and starting Portrait

Playing around with text. Above is with the finished version. I used gold leaf but not just the plain stuff it is called variegated Black Leaf. I wish metallics weren't so hard to photograph. Below shows the evolution of the lettering.

This is my first self portrait. I didn't have time to start painting today, that will be tomorrows task. Now to bed with me!

The Secrets Out . . .

Rockin to Dave Mathews, Live at Red Rocks and fooling around more with my Gabriella spread. A self portrait perhaps? I did feel I know this woman. Maybe I know her very well??? She is now sporting a gold hat with a gigantic rose. I found photos I took of these beautiful roses that Tim gave me a few years ago. The roses were just stunning! The closest a flower has come to velvet that I have ever seen! The lettering for secret is with my Parallel Pen filled with walnut ink and then spritzed with water. This time I think I will go over my lettering with the gold leaf I just bought and see what that's like. I have to let it dry well. So off to bed I go to journal another day.

Wizardry

The page is not click-able in case your trying. Just going for intrigue. :) I had not thought of the click-able thing but its the first thing my husband tried to do. I was looking in my folder at things to post and I saw this spread. I was really disappointed at the time when the wind kept blowing my pages over and then click it happens right when I took the picture. Looking at it the second time with fresh eyes I see opportunity where earlier I saw disappointment. So now I have it saved so I can insert whatever text I want on the blank side. Funny how your perspective can change. No?

The left side is canvas and the right is watercolour paper. I found this beautiful illustration by Orson Lowell and it still had the tissue with the page. It had these extra spines in the back cover to advertise his other titles.

To post a journal page every day makes me realize that I don't work on just one page at a time. I like to work on doing a series of backgrounds with the same materials as you can do a lot quickly and spontaneously. I do my best stuff when I don't know what I am going to next, I just let it unfold. So for Misty's Great idea of a page a day I may post on how a group of pages are going so far. And I really want to try a self portrait. I have never done one. It's just never entered my mind. Hmmmm? should be interesting. So hang on and enjoy the ride. Yeehaw!