Turtle Fantasy

I wanted to use this background and had no idea what I was going to do until I found this sea turtle. This concludes my pages in Joanne's calendar journal :)

Crab Attack!

Regrettably, I do not know this woman's name, because it got covered up on the next page LOL It seemed weird to see this little old lady with a crab in her hands. I was determined to use this cool crab I found, but it was a bit too large scale, so now it looks more like a crab attack LOL

She Commanded

This page also seemed to be connected to my current predicament. Sometimes all I want is to command the sun to come out and I miss the power to control my state of mind.

The background is another piece of blotter paper I used when I was working on a project a while back. It was a linen-type printer paper. I loved the look of the inks over the linen texture.

The Oasis

I attempted an ink drawing on this page that looked horrible --- it's all a distant memory now though LOL I started slathering heavy molding paste on ... followed by crackle paste on the outsides. The formations I got seemed to resemble water, so I did an oasis.

I think this ties in with some of my ups-and-downs the past couple of weeks. I had some very low days followed by a few days of hope and the days of hope seemed like an oasis in a dry barren desert. I realized this all after the page was done, however.

This is my page for the Inspire Me Thursday watercolor prompt. My drawing and watercolor attempt underneath the molding paste was a big flop LOL -- so I painted the texture with Twinkling H2os.

Exasperated

This is a page I did using a technique I posted on the big altered book list. The bird is painted with acrylics. I painted the whole piece and then rinsed the India Ink to bring the painted areas back out.

Practice Face

Uggghhh --- this is my least favorite page this month. I wanted to try a more fantasy-like illustrated face using the technique Karen Michel taught us in class. She was such a pretty model to start with LOL I gave her a smaller less-pouty mouth and a larger eye on one side.

I don't think the shading in the face is quite right, but I didn't notice there was not a lot of contrast until afer the image was glued down -- but I'm really disappointed in the background and the hair. I need a lot of practice at hair LOL

If I Had Wings

I am definitely missing home and family these days, so I did a page in Joanne's calendar journal about it -- and my heart obssession continues LOL

Heart Journal

I have some other journals ... one nearly complete and one barely started LOL But I seem to have this obssession with hearts the past year, so I decided to give into that obssession and just go with that idea. I decided to take the plunge after I saw this blue heart journal on Karen Michel's blog and also this red one.

I decided I would make my own tall and skinny journal by cutting down a cloth-covered 3-ring binder that would be easy to paint. I just happen to have 2 binders like this -- except both have a clipboard attached with rivets that I could not get off for the life of me. I figured that was no problem with all the school supplies out ... but no ... everything this year is plastic or vinyl ... grrrrr!

I was absolutely determined I was going to make this journal happen ... so in a moment of sheer desperation I took the skil-saw to one of my notebooks and whacked off the corner with the clipboard ... and poof! Problem solved LOL

The more I worked on this cover, the more it strayed from what I had seen on Karen Michel's site LOL

That heart looked too lonely, so I decided it also needed a catchy title. Not letting my obssession stop there ... I compiled a list of about 30 possible titles playing off the word heart. As soon as I started digging through my chipboard letters this title jumped out at me ... and naturally it was not among the 30 on my list LOL My muse is definitely a non-conformist.

Duct Tape Postcard

Apparently, I never posted this, but here is a postcard I made for a technique swap on the BookArtz group using alcol inks and duct tape. It didn't seem quite interesting enough with just the alcohol inks, so I sprayed a puddle of copper spray paint and brayered across some of the raised areas and accented with black spray webbing.

Rockin's Girl Bloggers

Thanks for nominating me for the Rockin' Girl Blogger award Aileen and Joanne!

And I nominate ...

1. Angela Hoffman
2. Shirley McCutcheon
3. Angie Platten
4. Vale McFadzean
5. Jo Crabtree

Your turn to nominate 5 more rockin' girls!

Nefertiti

This image was a little scary to try with this technique, but I picked some stronger contrasting paints and did Karen Michel's technique in Joanne's calendar journal.

I used Modern Option iron surfacer and rust solution on her hat.

Teddy

Here is my second class sample. Katherine took a long time. She had a lot of skin to paint and I was worried about going down in infamy as the one who marred Katherine Hepburn's flawless skin and timeless beauty for life LOL Teddy had a lot of wrinkles ... and I noticed his teeth look awful dirty when I got the painting done ... wonder if his teeth were false ...

Class was close to ending when I started him and I wanted to get the face done while teacher input was still a possiblity, so I rushed through Teddy. He was much smaller of course, but I went wham-bam-bang and slapped on my paint in a hurry without changing brushes or rinsing. Karen does hers so fast ... it is amazing to watch. I cringed when I showed her, but I actually ended up with a decently blended face by using the same brush and not rinsing between.

Katherine

Yesterday, I took Karen Michel's Mixed-Media Portrait class ... and wow ... did I love that class or what? I have no formal art training and did not even take art in high school. People portraits have always terrified me ... even drawing. I have no real concept of how to draw, shade, or make things look dimensional.

Karen showed us how to take photos, color copies, or magazine pages and give them a hand-painted look. The photos I did were famous people, but I would like to do more of these with some less-known faces ... and go for more of a fantasy look.

Karen is so good at this. She can make the picture all her own ... and even showed us an exercise where she pieces multiple portions of faces together and reworks it to make an illustrative type painting with a lot of personality. I really hope she comes out again ... I just loved her class!

Katherine is far from perfect. I had gluing issues. I got a couple wrinkles in my background papers and Katherine has quite a few as well. I managed to get her painted, but the photo still reveals some of the wrinkles ... and the painting in real life looks a bit more impressionistic than it appears in the photo.

Gothic Influence

The cool rusted map paper on the right side is a gift from Val in my local group ... this stuff is awesome!! I was in the mood for gothic. It turned out a little different than planned :)

Sgraffito Doodle

I saw this wonderful piece of art on the internet the other day where someone had tried a technique called Sgraffito. The traditonal method is incising plaster I believe, but there was a more modern day approach for scratching into wet paint, so that is what I tried. I had to work pretty fast, as I didn't really use the right product ... I needed an acrylic retarder, so my paint wouldn't dry too fast.

Stiff as a Board

I wasn't sure what to do with this page. Seems like my whole month has revolved around health and back issues ... and here was yet another set of Leonardo skeletal drawings LOL

I decided to treat this page more like a gluebook and when I saw all these statue-like images it reminded me how stiff I feel in the morning if I forget to keep turning in the night.

Mona's Party

I wanted to use this colorful background I made and this idea sort of popped into my head.

Your Numbers Up

Well I originally intended to do this for Inspire Me Thursday, but fell down on the job and didn't get it pulled off in time LOL I just love numbers and thought I would find a neat way to use a bunch.

Rainbow Pegasus

This is an art journal page I did with my Color Mists for Aileen's Color My World Contest. I love the look of my background, but after I got it done I realized how 80s the whole thing looked LOL

When I was in the 3rd grade (not the 80s by the way LOL) I decided I would collect unicorns and pegasuses. I thought they were so flippin' cool and so unique. I wanted to collect something no one else was collecting. Then there was this big splash of unicorns and pegasuses ... and they were everywhere! Girls had them on their t-shirts ... on their backpacks ... on their bedspreads ... unicorns plastered all over their walls ... on their notebooks. My dream was dashed! My Mom got me a stuffed unicorn and then I told her I would have to find something different to collect ...

Then I moved on to castles. They also turned out to be a little more common than I would have liked, but never hit the big time like unicorns fortunately ... hee hee

Trojan Horse?

Okay ... here goes my own little art frenzy LOL I've been working on overdue journal pages all week and haven't posted most yet. This was for Vale's Leonardo calendar. I'm not sure what Leonardo really had in mind, but that image reminds me of the Trojan Horse, so I added a picture of Ulysses I found.