A pleasant surprise.

I came home from shopping the other day to find this card from the person who reads our electricity meter stuck in my front door. It put a big smile on my face. It is always nice to receive compliments, especially about my art.
Usually meter boxes are placed on the front or sides of homes in Australia so they can be read by the service companies. We have a gas and electricity meter on the porch near our front door. Normally they are painted a plain colour to blend in with the house.

About 10 years ago I kept looking at that big blank square, every time I entered our home, thinking it would be a great place to do a painting. Then one day I got out my paints.  I first painted the bricks on to blend in with the real bricks and then added the birds and animals. Over the years a lot of people have commented on them because it is very unusual but because I painted them so long ago and have seen them hundreds of times I tend to forget how unique they are.

 

 
The photos don't really show how well the fake bricks match the real ones but I have seen one meter reader look at the porch area then go around the side of the house to find the meter, only to come back to the porch with a confused look on his face. Now that I am looking at them again I think I would do a much better painting if I did them today but for now I am happy to leave them as they are.

I love drawing!!

This is the latest art journal page I did for my "I heart drawing" course I am doing with the wonderful teacher Jane Davenport. She has removed any fears I had about drawing and now it is one of my favourite things to do. Merry Christmas everyone.

Playing with atcs

I made some atcs yesterday with embossing powder as the main feature.

 

This one is a miniature version of my journal painting. The scroll on the right is cut out with a cuttlebug machine then heat embossed with Opals brand embossing powder. It covers the writing that was too small to read on this little painting. 

The seahorses are cut out with a cuttlebug then embossed with copper coloured Opals embossing powder. A stamp was pressed in the embossing while it was still hot. The background is distress inks smoosh technique. 

My final atc is a "Twiddly bits" butterfly embossed with purple and green embossing powder. The background is sponged gesso coloured with glimmer mist sprays.

More fun with friends.

I went to another Kaszazz workshop with my friends yesterday. I liked the cards we made but if I was allowed to I would have chosen a different coloured paper. I don't work with pink very often. I don't like the overall effect when it is teamed with the black. I would have preferred a blue or green with the black, just my opinion. I find it interesting that we all have our own preferred colours that we like to look at. Some colour combinations just don't work for me but I know others love them.

Inside reads....it is your birthday.

Did I really do that myself?

Sometimes I finish a piece of art and wonder if I really was the one who made it. That is how I felt yesterday when I finished my latest journal page for the I heart drawing course I am doing. I am quite happy with the way it turned out. Wonderful Jane has been teaching us the start of the clothes and a lot more poses for hands and arms. I found a photo of a dancing lady for my model. I liked the way she had her arms.

The background was sprayed with mica dyes and then stamped with watery distress ink. The girl is mostly acrylic and pencils although her hair is watercolour. At one stage I spilled a large amount of water over the page and after cleaning up had to redo the background. Luckily I didn't have to redo the girl.

Right now I feel like I am dancing to the music of my dream to become a better artist. It really is a lot of fun.

New online course

I have been slowly becoming more and more obsessed with online art classes. It started with Supplies Me with the lovely Jane Davenport where I learned to draw faces in a way I never have before. I did a couple of others after that and am currently doing I 'heart' drawing, again with Jane. This time we are doing the whole body and clothes, like fashion illustrations.

The first week we were experimenting with different body shapes.

The second week involved learning to shade a little. I will probably do more shading and patterns on this page when I have a little more time over the Christmas break. I am still amazed that I am actually learning to draw. I have never been able to before.

Transparent ATCs

I used acetate this week to make these transparent ATCs. They are stamped on one side then coloured with alcohol ink on the other side. I then placed another piece of acetate on to cover the alcohol ink so it doesn't rub off. On the back of the second piece of acetate I coloured the images with alcohol based markers. It adds a lot of colour and makes the images stand out more. The acetate is then sandwiched between two frames that have been coloured and decorated in various ways.

 

 The fuschia one is my favourite.

 

Etched metal book

I did a workshop last week at Scraptivate with Jen Crossley. It was etching stamped metal with chemicals. I chose to use beach themed stamps for my book. The metal we were given to work with was brass.

The front cover had little dots all over it but I liked them. I thought it helped add a little visual texture to the vast area of sky. I added charms later. The little bottle has a local sea shell that I crushed with a hammer in it.

The back cover is a set of Hero Arts tile stamps. I like the was they turned out and if I was going to do it again would like something similar.

We were given white and craft paper to use for pages but when I got home I used my own hand made paper to make the signatures and put the book together. I like the way the hand made paper looks. Some of it has shiny inclusions that make the pages sparkle.  You can never have too much bling, lol.

Mermaids...

Last week was Mermaid week on the willowing course called "Mythical magical makings". I did two journal pages before starting on the larger painting. The person who was used as the inspiration for this week was Marc Chagall but I didn't like his surrealist style and really struggled with ideas for this one. I ended up reverting to my own style and the ideas flowed after that. I think I have to really like an artist to be able to copy their style.

The first page was to give me ideas for the large painting. I thought I might put a lot of fish or seashells around my mermaid so I drew a few different ones in my journal. I drew some bubbles which gave me an idea for the final painting.

We also had to do a whimsical mermaid. I like the childish look she has. Again I was trying out a  few ideas. I thought I might put sea horses into the large painting but after the mermaid was done I couldn't figure out where to put them.

The finished painting. I did a whole bunch of bubbles instead of the fish. The red paint is iridescent and shines when you walk past it. The background was done with splattered paint and glimmer mist sprays so it also sparkles in real life. The shading is more pronounced on the painting but the camera always seems to blend the colours more. I wish I could scan these big pictures instead but you still get the idea.

Christmas cards.

A few more cards I made with the Kaszazz demonstrator. These ones have embossing as the main technique. My favourite is probably the first one.

Angels

As promised I have finished my angel pages in my journal and also the painting. I like doing the online courses, it gives me ideas on what to paint as well as teaching me new things.

The inspiration this week for M3 on Willowing was Alphonse Mucha. I have long admired his paintings and have used some of them in my crafts before I knew who he was.  I think his clean, soft style is closest to mine.

This was my first attempt in my journal. I was playing around with the layout, colours and the pattern in the frame. After it was finished I decided I didn't like the halo behind her head.

 

Then I decided to make the background more like a Mucha image with a lot more detail. I wanted to use Australian plants to make it more like my painting rather than a copy of Mucha's work so I painted some Eucalyptus leaves and blossoms with Kangaroo Paws on the ground. I liked the way they looked so they became part of the finished painting. 

 

I was very happy with the final piece. It is a watercolour. It is hard to see in the photo but the gold paint is quite shiny. I also painted the wings with white H2Os so they shine as well. I am going to frame this one.

ATCs

I made a bunch of ATCs yesterday using my paintings as the focal image. The technique is to clear emboss an image over a dark background and then colour with metallic creams or paints.
 
These ones were stamped on the background with versamark and then embossed with clear embossing powder.

Others were dry embossed with a cuttlebug then I heat embossed the raised parts with clear powder.

After that a little Viva Inca Gold paint is rubbed over the top. It sticks to the clear embossed areas very well. I used two colours on each background. It was a little difficult to only do the Viva on the raised areas of the stamped images so I put the metallics over the whole background. It still makes the images stand out, I like the effect.

This card was green instead of black. I like the way it looks and it has a lighter effect.

I think this technique might be an interesting background for an art journal page. I might give that a go sometime soon.

Magical Mythical Makings

I am currently doing an online course at Willowing about mythical beings. The first two weeks were about Goddesses. We had to do a canvas painting of a Goddess in the style of Klimt. I had not heard of Klimt before but looked at his work and used collage and acrylics to do my Goddess.

I tried my ideas in my art journal first.

 The finished painting took a long time because the dress was so detailed but I am happy with the way it turned out.

More Cards

A few more cards I made with friends. Too many punched flowers for me but I like the finished cards. I just won't be making them again any time soon, lol. Click on each image if you want to see them in more detail.

I am busy drawing angels at the minute and I will share them when I am finished the painting.

Some masculine cards

I went to a friend's house to do a little cardmaking the other day with a Kaszazz instructor. Kaszazz is an Aussie papercraft retailer. The first set we made were masculine easel cards. It is a fun technique that can easily be adapted to any theme you want but you will probably need to show the recipient how to stand them up.

Faux encuastics with Jodi Ohl

I recently did an online course at creative workshops. It was faux encaustic with Jodi Ohl. The link is http://www.shabbycottagestudio.com/  I changed the design for mine. I don't like to make exactly the same thing as the teacher when I take classes and if I can will do my own work.

I used the same techniques but used images from Flickr that people have allowed to be used in art works. I will put the links for the photos underneath so you can download them if you want to. I won't go into details of the technique because that is not fair to the teacher but basically it is many layers of paper, drawing, stamping and mediums. It gives a look of wax encaustic without using wax. I still have to do a final layer of matte varnish but you get the idea.

 flickr.com/photos/fftang/4316126962/in/photostream/

 flickr.com/photos/amynkassam/2866419139/

flickr.com/photos/tubagooba/365796347/

flickr.com/photos/lipkee/2281219861/

It took a while to complete the canvases but I am happy with the final result. Even my husband likes them, lol.

Playing around with art journalling

I tried to load these photos the other day and for some unknown reason I couldn't. They are a couple of experimental pages I did using acrylic paint and alcohol. You start with a base of paint that you allow to dry (I added texture to the page first with paper and gauze). A different colour is put on top and while still wet drops of alcohol (I used rubbing alcohol) are applied randomly. The alcohol removes some of the paint and it makes an interesting pattern. I then went over it a third time with an interference colour but it covered a lot of the previous work. Next time I would only do a watery final layer.

I had some butterflies already cut out so I decided to make this a collage page. I drew the sunflowers on with alcohol markers.

The sunflower image is from a sheet of images I bought at Stampington magazines shop.

More Art journalling

I have not been updating this blog very often in the last month or so. I have been creating but just haven't got around to showing them here. I will try to post more often but in the meantime here is some of the work I have been doing.

This picture has textured gesso, acrylic paint and markers. The face is a little darker in real life. I like the way it turned out. It was done for acrylics week of the Supplies me course.

This one is the final piece for the Supplies Me course. The whole page is done with waterbased markers except for the original sketch of the girl that was done with a pencil.