Reflections On The 29 Faces Challenge

Here are the last few faces from the 29 Faces in September challenge. This is the second time I have done this challenge.  I have learned different things each time. The first time I used different art supplies each day. This time I decided to work on different facial views, some profiles and 3/4 and I tried drawing braids.  I did more sketching and less painting this time. Its always a journey I feel that my faces always look better at the end of the month. Practice does make perfect.  It takes challenges like these to make me do all the practice. I am grateful to take part. Here are the rest of the faces I drew this month.

Face 23

Face 24

Face 25 and yes this is a self portrait.

face 27

Face 28

 


















Face 29

So where is face 26 you might ask?  I am counting my Oracle painting and #26.

Do you like to do challenges? Do you think they help or do they take up too much of your time?

Sunday Sketches

I hope you are all having a wonderful Sunday.  Wow my second post in a day, that does not happen too often.  Today's sketch is one of my raven buddies.  I created him with charcoal pencil. The pencil sharpener I had with me was not working well so I couldn't sharpen my pencils. Its hard to make definitive lines with a dull pencil but I think it turned out ok.

Check out what other sketchers have done at the Alex's blog Blue Chair Diary.

Oracle Deck Pre Sale

In Friday's post I talked about creating a painting for an oracle deck.  In today's post you have an opportunity to purchase a copy of this deck at the pre-sale price. Below is more information about the deck and a preview of some of the cards.  The deck will include 44 cards, all original paintings and a booklet of instruction and guidance.

Awakening To Your Divine Self
Wisdom and Love from your Fearless Sisters
Oracle Deck

This Oracle Deck is a unique collaboration between 39 Intuitive Artists and Healers from around the World! The Beauty, Wisdom and Love that fills this Deck is amazing and we are having a Pre-Sale special until October 4, 2013. Anticipated Delivery of the Decks is early December. Below is a little sampler of some of the images.

Local Sales 19.95 + 1.20 tax = 21.15

Out of state sales include shipping 25.00

Oracle Painting

For Paint Party Friday I would like to share the long journey of a particular painting. I belong to a group of intuitive painters who have all taken Connie Hozvicka's BIG and DEEP classes. Some of us have met in person but not all. We decided to make an Oracle Deck together. Its going to be called Awakening to Your Divine Self - Wisdom and Love from your Fearless Sisters Oracle Deck. Isn't that a cool name? We've all chosen a word to focus our paintings on. My word is create and here is my painting.

After first session the painting is just color and a swirling vortex of energy. Can you see that swirl on the bottom left?  It looks like a dress to me.

I went with the dress/figure idea to see what would emerge.  I also see all this energy coming from her solar plexus so a spiral of energy is going to be placed there.

First steps on her face and hair came out next. I wanted wild electrified hair. So this was a beginning.

Then I tweaked her dress, changed the body shape a little and added the moon and the raven. I had added my first owl in the corner but it was awful so I painted over it. I forgot to take a picture before I did that.  Her hair is supposed to simulate braids and dreads and loose hair all tied up with beads in some of the strands.  I loved working on it.

I played with the moon a lot trying to get it more golden looking. Then the snowy owl was added. liked this pose of the owl so much better.  Snowy owls just make me smile, they are so pretty just sitting there.  I hope I get to see one in real life at some point.

More work on the face and playing around with the hands.  I keep moving them and repainting.

She is almost done, still more detail to be added though.

I want to keep tweaking this but realize it will never end so I am calling her complete.  I hope you enjoyed the journey through all these pictures.  Happy PPF

Exploring Color

I've been working on a painting for a special project.  I am not great at color mixing. In mixing flesh tones for my faces I always have trouble.  I can start out with three primaries and white and then need a brown for shadow and it always seems to be too green or pink, I just can't seem to get the portion right.  So I give in and use burnt sienna a lot. I want to learn this skill so I thought maybe if I took Julie Balzer's Getting Started With Color Mixing  class it might help.  I knew how to do most of what she shared but I kept thinking brown was a combo of red and green but I learned there are other ways to make brown. This little class just pushed me in a new direction. Julie also talks about the fact that if you mix your own colors your work is more unique.  I liked that idea. I really like these short and simple and inexpensive classes that she teaches.

I have a moon in the painting I'm working on and I wanted it to be golden colored. Had a hard time coming up with how to do that. Either it was too yellow or too orange, so I kept going back to a whitish grey moon which I didn't want. So I started making a sheet of Golden fluid acrylics samples. Just the gold like colors at first.  There are a lot of colors I have from that great sale I got at Michaels a few years ago, that I never use.  Time to remedy that. I hadn't planned a chart or it would be more uniform that this. Once I added the gold colors I ended up doing a chart of all the colors I have. Now I have made charts like this before but I never really used them. This time I studied the colors and did some practice mixes to come up with what I needed.  It was really a great tool. I don't know why I never did this before. Now I have the chart right with me so I know which colors I want to start with.

I really wanted to learn more about this subject. So I headed to the library to educate myself a little bit more and found these two books.  Betty Edwards book is more on the theory of color and understanding it.





















The color mixing bible is full of pages of charts of color mixes for all mediums.  Its pretty comprehensive.  I think I'll use the first book more.  I want to know the reasons behind the mixes so I can do it intuitively from now on. This is just one more way to challenge myself, do go deeper like my word of the year.

How do you challenge yourself?

More Faces

Its Sunday night as I sit here writing this. I got a big disappointment yesterday. I had sent my journal full of the drawings with writing incorporated into them to Art Journaling Magazine. They accepted it and I was told I'd be in the gallery section of the October issue. Well the issue is out and I discovered that what they put in the gallery section was not any of my drawings but the cover of the journal. Very disappointed at what they did. Its hard not to take it personally.  So some retail therapy was in order.

So I took myself down to Michaels and got some of new graphite pencils and these metallic Faber-Castell pitt pens. They are pretty nice.  There is nothing like a new art supply to help soothe a soul.

This is face 20. I painted her on watercolor paper with acrylics, her dress was made with gelatos and a wet brush. I cut her out and then added her to a background made from a gelli print. I like the way the braid came out but I think she came out a little stern.  It seems to be hard for me to get a smile with a profile. Just need to keep trying till I get it right.

This one is just graphite in my sketchbook.  It is getting difficult to come up with something new to say about all these sketches. I'll be happy to finish up this challenge.

A Crow Landed on My Desk Today

We had our first frost warning last night.  I know I wanted fall but not this cold.  We didn't garden this year but we did grow basil.  I brought the plant in last night.  Its now hanging drying out.  I should get quite a bit of dried basil out of these plants.

Now on to some art and more faces. This one is number 18 and was made with charcoal pencil over a gelli print background.

This one was drawn with one of those woodless pencils.

A crow landed on my desk today. He was drawn with charcoal pencil.  I am really enjoying playing with charcoal this week.  You can really get a piece dark quickly.

I am linking to Paint Party Friday today. Check out all the wonderful art here.

Prayer Flags A guest post

I am honored to be posting on my friend Kelley's blog today. I met Kelley at the Writer's Spa in Taos a few years ago.  I was so fortunate to have her as a roommate.  Although we went there as writers, we soon realized we were both art journaler's. We had both brought our journals and supplies so we had impromptu journaling sessions.  We've stayed in touch every since. This is one online friend that I met first and then continued the connection.

Kelley has been doing a series all week on prayer flags, in her first post she goes into the history of prayer flags and the post is full of information and great photos. On day 2 she has a video on gypsy prayer flags that she has made, you can see that here.

 For her third post, I am a guest poster, you can see that here. I share my experience with prayer flags when I was ill a few years ago. I have also included pictures of the flags when I got them and how they look now worn and faded.  Its a great story and Kelley has done a wonderful series all week.  Make sure to check it out.

Lady in Lavender - 29 faces

Its time to catch up on all the faces I did for the 29 faces challenge this past week.
My lady in lavender was done with PanPastels on watercolor paper. She seems to be an elegant lady from another time.

This one is in graphite.  I did this while watching my team the Packers play football.

Then I did this one since I was a day behind.  My quest continues on learning to draw braids. I will get it one of these days.

This was my attempt to draw an older woman.  I was using an ebony pencil and it worked very different from my usual graphite pencils.  I found it to be very challenging.

Next I pulled out my artist oil pastels.  It was hard doing the eyes because they no longer have a point on them. This one went through a lot of layers to get her to look right.I am finding this second half of the challenge to be, well challenging.  Its at the boredom stage when I think oh I have to do a face again.  That when I try a different medium or mix it up a little to make it exciting. Often when we push through the boredom we grow or gain some insight. I think I learn something from each portrait.

Art Date

Friday night I had an Art date at my house with my friend Jolene and new friend Sharon. Jolene has gone back to school and Susan is one of her instructors. They were both delighted to find out that they both loved art journaling. So I set up a place for all three of to work. It was so much fun to create art with others. We three had a blast sharing our work and making new art.

This is Susan, my new art journaling friend. She is trying out some Neocolor II watercolor crayons.

Here is Jolene working hard on her poppies page.

Here I am working on the finishing touches in my journal

Here is just a couple of the many mono prints we made.

These are the 2 pages I finished.  The backgrounds were made with spray ink and stencils.

I loved this image of and older woman with beautiful grey hair.  I added words an ideas that I want to cultivate my entire life.

Getting together with other artists to make art is so fun and rewarding.  Do you have art friends you meet with regularly?

Paint Party Friday - Sketches

I've continued to do faces everyday.  I seem to be sketching this week. These are the three latest ones. Two of these sketches are ones I initially started and abandoned.  I just got my eraser out and started over again.  The second time they seemed to work out better. So my advice is to pull out that abandoned art and give it another chance.




















Sketch no. 10 for the month so far.

This was from an add for paint chips. The woman's mouth was more open but I could not make it look right so I adjusted it a little.

Here I am attempting a pose and remembering my mother.  My perspective is off on the table but that is not a strong point for me, so I am not surprised at that.

Although there is not any paint involved here I am still linking to Paint Party Friday. Have a great day!

Oh something more to add and their is paint involved.  I am in April Cole's group on Facebook and we are doing paper dolls. Not my usual thing but I remembered I had a paper doll template from Misty Mawn's book Unfurling. So I thought I would play along.

So I made a copy of it by printing on watercolor paper. This is the original doll.

Then I made some clothes for it. This dress is made from a mono print I made on my gelli plate. I just loved the print, in fact I would love to have this dress.  I love all the mix of colors.

This one is made from embossed wallpaper that I also printed on my gelli plate. A little ribbon added and a button and I think its a cute outfit. I tried making shoes but they would not stay on the doll so I just painted her feet with a brush marker.

Time Spent in the Art Journal

I finished up some journal pages in the last couple days.

This was a greeting card from my cousin. I keep most things like that and eventually they end up in my journals.

I started with leftover paint on a page and kept building old papers and images.

Here I took one of my faces and added a spray ink background page.  I use her dress to journal on.  She was drawn on a page from an old book,

This page I've done over a few time.  I had the background done but I didn't like it so I added gelatos to the page.  Then I took a stencil I cut years ago and used a foam makeup sponge and black stamping ink to get the color down.

In this face I combined to images to make a third.  This is the first time I tried that and I liked the process.  The drawing really does become unique that way.