the white space demon I love to hate...

Sometimes I get on a jag and the issue of white space can do that to me. I mean I love how the colors pop against a white background and how clear the images are that I paint against a clear stark background.  So why do I find this so difficult? I did a video for Gel Press and you can see it here where I also conquered the white space demon! BUT I really have to work at it...so does anyone else have this problem? Am I alone?..echo....echo...echo...

GEL PRESS featuring STENCIL GIRL video frenzy!!

White space is hard for me!

Maybe because white space is termed as negative space? lol

I made a purposeful effort to include white space in my project today! I'm so proud of achieving this look because it's very hard for me to accomplish, I'm one of those "fill-er-up" kind of artists, wanting to cover every square inch with color!  

Want to see how I made it and visit all the other design team members videos?

Go here and get started!

Shameless me, I put my link there...lol

Here are all the links, I can't wait to see what everyone came up with. It's kind of a Fall/Halloween theme thing...lol

Elena Lishchenko
https://youtu.be/_qMDi8nhbZk

Ann Strecko Koeman
https://youtu.be/15BJx4RzyNI

Jen Doyle Kitchen
https://youtu.be/eoYe9S4sIq0

Cindi Bisson McGee
https://youtu.be/mTqZ20Pg4G8

Sandee Setliff
https://youtu.be/gdZDar_Ihmw

Cynthia Cesare
https://youtu.be/OSHUCfUgmN8

Kathy Brauning Adams
https://youtu.be/6z8hFd9Qm2o

Teresa Abajo
https://youtu.be/TkpA5htG6vw

It was a struggle...

 Day 6 - Drawing and Painting Beautiful Faces by Jane Davenport

I have to admit that there are those times when I hate to cover a background up and then there are times when the background is so fugly that I have a hard time covering it...literally! It was a combination of brayered paint and collaged bits that just couldn't be formed into anything inspiring no matter how hard I tried and it just kept getting worse and worse, gathering momentum like a snowball rolling down the proverbial hill...lol It took a couple of layers of gesso and a couple more layers of paint to tame the beast, but in the end I am happy with the results. I did struggle with this one, determination and sheer will prevailed in the end though!

Tiny dancer...

Day 5 of Drawing and Painting Beautiful Faces by Jane Davenport

Go ahead and play the video so you can have some music while reading, I mean you knew I was going to have to use it, right?

 If you didn't, then you don't know me :) Just saying...

I learned 2 things today:

1. Black gesso will cover alcohol inks very well. ( Yes, I painted over an art journal page that I didn't like, I know, I know, some people consider that a big no no...but it's my art journal and I can do what I want, dammit lol ) If you want the alcohol inks to show through, then use white gesso. Good to know, and you could always use white gesso over the top of the black if you didn't want a dark background.

2. OK, this lesson I already knew...spray your work before pen work so the pen ink doesn't absorb into materials like gelatos etc. What I learned is that I REALLY need to remember this rule and just face the fact that I need to slow down, but I get on a roll and want to do my quotes now! ( Impatient artist I am )

I just love the little dancer which seems to be either coming out of her hair or holding onto a strand for balance, either way I fell in love with her. Day 5 also finds me wanting to make the eyes a little smaller which I think helps age the girls a bit? And making the lips a little wider and not as pouty. What do you think? I'd like to bring the girls up in age to at least their late 20's, early 30'd maybe. 

I need to go back and add the author to the quote but I was having problems finding the proper attribution. It seems a lot of different people have been given credit for this one. However, I found a site called Quote Investigator that was very interesting and I agree with what they said, so I will be adding the names of Susanna Clark and Richard Leigh, who wrote a song using the quote back in 1987. 

You’ve got to sing like you don’t need the money

Love like you’ll never get hurt

You’ve got to dance like nobody’s watchin’

It’s gotta come from the heart if you want it to work. 

Letter to myself...

Ever think what you would say to yourself if you could send yourself a letter? 

I do.

I created the background by using my Gel Press® plate and a stencil from Joggles called Woodcuts. I like to pick the plate up and use it like a stamp directly into my art journal, you can see me doing that here in a video called The Haunting of the Aqueduct.

Day 4 of Drawing and Painting Beautiful Faces by Jane Davenport.

Embracing whimsy

Seems like it would be easy enough, right?

Using color in unexpected ways helps me a lot. Pink, purple and red hair and  purple eyes give this young girl some whimsical attributes. Other ways are to exaggerate features like large eyes and elongated necks.

Practicing the art of loosening up by adding whimsy to my faces has been a lot of fun. I am really enjoying the process.

This is day 3 of Drawing and Painting Beautiful Faces by Jane Davenport.

Not only am I practicing some techniques for drawing faces but I am also learning new words, like impetus. For someone like myself this combination is heaven!

impetus

[im-pi-tuh s] 

noun, plural impetuses.

1.

a moving force; impulse; stimulus:

The grant for building the opera house gave impetus to the city'scultural life.

2.

(broadly) the momentum of a moving body, especially with referenceto the cause of motion.

Yes, I am enjoying day 2 of Jane Davenports book called Drawing and Painting Beautiful Faces. I am picking up some pointers on drawing hair which has always been, well, not difficult, but stifling for me? I am trying to be looser and more flowing and Jane definitely has that down to a T.

I love using my previous backgrounds I created using my Gel Press® plate along with the alcohol inks. The blog post for making this background can be found HERE. I used the one on the right...the one on the left is too pretty to cover up...so far. lol 

I love the way the designs from the alcohol inks rise up through the acrylic paint so you get all that painterly layering...the easy way! I chose to do the white highlights in the eyes with lettering, and yes it's hard to read but  I really like how it looks. It says..I have impetus...

Thanks for stopping by and I hope we all have impetus today.

 Make your move in the right direction today!

close to the cusp...

Since I was a young girl and began reading my horoscope along with the Sunday funnies I have always thought I should have been born in the "cusp zone"...I was close, one day off but I have always felt the dual influence of both signs. I would sigh when I read my horoscope and then usually agree with the next sign. But I was labeled a Pisces so I stayed committed to it. But now, maybe I have finally been justified, the stars has shifted!

Loving Jane Davenport's book, Drawing and Painting Beautiful Faces.

Archetypes are interesting

archetype - a very typical example of a certain person or thing.

What exactly is an archetype anyway? Even after reading the Webster's definition I was left confused. I mean, how was I going to art journal an example of a certain thing anyway? BUT curiosity ( the seeker ) always gets the best of me and I got this book. I cannot begin to tell you how much fun this has been for me! I hope it will be for you too.

You can buy the book from Amazon or order it for your library if they let you do that sort of thing. Mine does and I order library books for their art department on a regular basis. As a Seeker I am always looking to further my art, along with  Gabrielle Javier-Cerulli's Art Journal Your Archetypes here are the latest books I have added to my local library and currently reading:

Creative Girl Mixed Media Techniques for an Artful life by Danielle Donaldson

Drawing and painting Beautiful Faces by Jane Davenport

You can also enter a chance to win a book given away by MaryBeth Shaw ( one of the participating artists ) over on her blog The Common Denominator. 

There is a test in the book to take so you can figure out what your archetypes are and I am really glad because it cleared everything up for me. And like I do, I did an art journal page listing all my archetypes that were highest ranked.

I took it a step further ( which I love to do The Seeker  that I am ) and wrote out all my archetypes, and then started deciphering them into patterns of how they fit into my life and my art. I discovered 4 groups...so far.

1. Art journal ( art ), do I already use these archetypes in my journaling? I figured I should since they were what came up with when I took the test. So I went through just my current art journal and made a hash mark beside every archetype as it was recorded. And in order of this ranking, Nature, Mother and Goddess really stand out the strongest. ( Mother surprised me as I don't consider my myself "nurturing" yet I use a lot of quotes that do nuture and encourage...interesting. Goddess also surprised me, I guess cause I think of that term as being "all that and a bag of chips" symbol but it pertained to supporting females and using the female form. Nature was the only that came as no surprise.

 2.  HOME (personal values) - As you can see I have a lot of archetypes, but that didn't surprise me as I am a strong person. I would have been more surprised to find only a few were represented but I was surprised to find some were not related to my art in any way and upon further research discovered these were my personal values or my way of life. ( engineer, Queen, hermit, judge, Princess )

3. Spotlight - Yeah, this one was easy for me to recognize, I love being on design teams, blogging and making videos for You Tube. So while this is art related it is not "art journaled", if that makes sense to you, it does to me but I am all up in my head right now. ( Performer )

4. Knowledge (self awareness)- I'm always taking tests, trying to figure out things about myself, what makes me tick and all so this one has it's own category. You'll notice I didn't even mark it on my chart as self awareness because it didn't dawn on until I started writing this post and began thinking about all the things I love to learn...about myself, my personality...oh and did you know I was a Sociology major. Learning about why man does what he does has always been interesting to me.

I wonder what I'll figure out next...isn't this fun?

The haunting of the Aqueduct...

I took Carolyn Dube's stencil: The Arched Aqueduct from StencilGirl and used it to create a haunted scene with my Gel Press® plate and acrylic paints by DecoArt. I made a short video showing how I created this page in my art journal and you can see it HERE. 

I am also entering this in

The Mixed Media Monthly Challenge #29

"Mood board"

Butterfly moon

Halloween in the mountains...

I loved that I had some dried paint left over on my Gel Press® Petite round plate, it made for the perfect pick up print to create a moon with. Have you ever looked at the moon or clouds and tried to see images in them? Well, sometimes you can find a butterfly on the moon :)

On a kick, on a roll...watch me go!

So I've been on this Netflix kick these days and no Netflix does not give me anything for doing this, heck they don't even acknowledge that I'm alive except when it comes time to pay the bills...lol...big company, don't expect anything else from them, right? OK, so maybe I was hoping...lol

I had to stalk...mmmm...hunt down....errrr FIND all these lovely artists in order to give them credit...Netflix didn't make that easy either. Their names are on the envelopes but I wanted to link them to their websites so I tried to find the proper sites. I know I would like for someone to give me credit if they used my art, right?

Netflix artist: Ksenia Annis

Netflix artist: Jim Seaver

Netflix artist: Cris Hamilton

Netflix artist: Alice Malone

Have I mentioned how sorry I am for not entering this contest?

sighs

It doesn't matter...

Another collage piece using the "fan artist" Netflix envelope, if you look closely you can see that it's the head I grabbed from the flyer and then added the mermaid body to it with matching grey paint. I did add some glitter to her hair cause a mermaid just has to sparkle somehow! lol

I had a couple pieces left over from a sea themed gel print using my Gel Press® plate so I added them to the corner of the page, so glad I hang on to little bits and bobs like these.

I really don't like the grey coloring but she really does stand out from the background which was made from left over paint on my brayer from mono-printing. 

Netflix artist: Cris Hamilton

A charming gift box for a friend

I'm not really going into how I made this yet as this was my practice before making a tutorial over on Gel Press®. However, I couldn't wait to show some pictures of how it turned out.

I really enjoyed painting my box using the gel plate along with my DecoArt Americana Multi-Surface paints.

I love the way the butterfly hovers above the flower and the heavy gem button is perfect for keeping the end of the ribbon hanging down.

I also did the inside of the box too, but next time I am going to use a smaller pattern for the inside.

The last really cool thing is making matching tissue paper to wrap the gift in.

All in all I can count this trial run a success and will make another one along with a step out tutorial soon.