Face to Face

Signed up to take Misty Mawn's Face to Face course. It started in January but you can sign up any time.   I had the paper taped to cardboard and was dismayed when the cardboard showed through.  It does make for a interesting texture.

This was done in charcoal. I had really a lot of problems here. The porportions are all off. I kept trying to fix and then putting my hand in places I had already worked and then having to fix that.  It truly became a nightmare after awhile.  I decided I had done enough and it was time to work on something else.

Here I am using a desk pad to draw face parts and more.  This course is pretty incredible. I know I will be a better artist when I complete all the exercises, plus I am having a great time. This course is pretty expensive but I think worth every penny if you want to improve in drawing and painting faces.

DaVinci Is In Town

The Museum of Idaho has been holding its exhibit Decoding Da Vinci for several months now but I had not managed to get there yet.

When I walked in the door I met my friend Robin who works as a docent at the museum. She is so much fun, it was great to see her.

The exhibit was full of models of his inventions but I of course was more interested in seeing the art. There were replicas of his most famous paintings like this one. I had seen the original at the Louvre in Paris back in 2006. This one was bigger, most people do not realize that the Mona Lisa is actually a very small painting.

and this one which I had not seen before.  I thought it was perfectly lovely.

I

I was surpised to see that some of the pics we used in Misty Mawn's painting class were actually done by Da Vinci like this one.

and this is one too. I had done a transfer with this and painted over it. I had not realized I was working with a DaVinci at the time.

Of course I had to pose with one of the posters. After listening to a movie on Leonardo I realized I am a lot like him. I have started many things that I never finished either.  It feels good to know I am in good company.

When we left there was quite the snow storm. This was taken sitting in the truck after just a minute or two. I have never seen such big snow flakes before. Winter has hit with a vengeance this weekend.  It melted a lot yesterday but today its snowing again.  I am glad that I have nowhere I have to go.

Finishing Up

Here are the final exercises that I wanted to complete from the class I took from Misty back in December.

In this one we were to do 4 different poses on the same page. It was an interesting exercise to say the least. I kept getting paint on ones I had finished. I get pretty messy when I am painting. It is sort of funny that you really don't see the big flaws in your work till you see a picture of it.  I am happy that these are all finished now.  I am ready to move on to other things for awhile.

I signed up tp take a class for the Cricut cutter at my local craft store.  Today was the second class out of 4.  The more I use this machine the more versatile I discover it is.  Today we learned how to etch a pattern on to glass.  First we cut out a pattern in vinyl and then used the negative image on a piece of glass and then added the etching material and transferred it to the glass.  It was really simple. I also discovered besides using vinyl for lettering and etching, I ended up taking the image and putting it right on the cricut as a decoration.  You can also make your own stamps and magnets and stencils.  I think it will take awhile to run out of things to use this machine for. Tomorrow I'll show some of the things we have made so far.

January Journaling

I decided to do January Journaling along with Misty Mawn again this year. It is really different, basically a prompt for the week instead of daily. I think I like daily better but here are some pages I did this week.

















The theme this week is to use your own pictures, usually when I try this they all end up looking like scrap booking pages. Even though this looks like a scrapbook page I did like using the Japanese paper over black gesso. I stamped Asian words in black but then I wrote over them in gold so they don't show real well.

















The stamping I did in the background is so subtle it doesn't show up well in photos. Sorry about that.

















Here I tried adding two photographs to see if that would help make it less scrapbook like and added some words.

















In this last one once again I don't think the stamping shows up, there are subtle roses int here that look pretty cool in the original piece. After doing these I am ready to go back to journaling my own way. Maybe if I had been taking a lot of pictures it would have been more fun. All my old pictures are on a different machine so I didn't have access to them when I was working on these pages. So yes I did jump out of my comfort zone and maybe I will try this again at another time.

A song and some paintings

I saw this video on my friend Kelley's blog and just loved the song.I really like the message.

Here are some more portraits from Misty's class.

















This one was started with a transfer and then painted in two colors Burnt umber and Titanium white. I added the blue background later using Magnasese Blue hue. I found this exercise to be lots of fun and easier than painting a face from scratch.

















This is a self portrait and I also transferred the face on to paper and then painted it.If you look close you may recognize it as my profile picture. I am not very good at transferring images yet. I don't seem to get the entire thing so its really textured in some spots. I mean that is not a bad thing but it make for a challenge trying to paint it cohesively.

Art Journaling is out

I found this at the store and its a wonderful issue full of great ideas. I have been wanting to get some of those Pan Pastels that Pam Carriker is always talking about but haven't done so yet. The first time I attempted they were out of stock and the second time I thought do I really need these, they are pretty expensive so I talked myself out of them. Maybe I will get a set soon because I really want to try them.

















I pulled out my moleskine journal and took a pencil drawing I had done previously and added regular soft pastels to it, painted the background and then added words.

















This page I just played with color. I painted the page with the same colors as the previous one but tried to make it lighter when I mixed the paint. Then I added some white gesso over it to tone the color down even more. I liked how these images blended well with the colors.

















This is an exercise from the class with Misty. I had an extreme amount of difficulty coming up with the right shade for the skin tone and then to try and remake that mix was virtually impossible. I either need to make bigger amounts or figure a way to duplicate what I am trying to do. This face has a zillion colors buried underneath it. I finally got tired of working on it. Although the class is over with I am still doing the exercises.

Oh if you are interested in painting faces Misty is teaching another class, this one is on strictly on faces where the one I took was on backgrounds and collage too. Information on the class is here She is a wonderful teacher so the class will be great. I won't be taking it since I have decided to take a break from classes.

Further Explorations with Paint

I've been taking an online class with Misty Mawn called Painted Layers. Its a pretty awesome class so far. I thought I would show the work I have done so far. These are the first two backgrounds I did.












I liked how this turned out.













I never liked this one no matter how often I worked on it. I think it was the colors I started with. They are just an odd red and blue to use together I guess.













This is one using a silhouette. I used a stencil for the butterfly and swallow. I like the bird but I think a smaller butterfly would work better. I had taken a swallow stencil I had and cut it smaller so I could use it on different sized pages. I like this tiny one.












Here is my first landscape. I like how the sky turned out. I kept trying to put a house at the base of the mountains but it never looked right and after painting over it the third time I gave up. Overall for a first one I like it very much.

I've been really putting art on the back burner while I work on my Nanowrimo novel but I am find if i don't get to do some art I really get cranky and the writing gets harder. Today I decide I would do art until noon and then write and I think that is working well. I just can't give up this art stuff no matter what.