The Colourguru

a little birdsong

these are a couple of ATC's I made from scraps on my worktable, left overs from some Christmas treasures I am making, using music. WHEN I DO post them, you will have to be kind -it's my first attempt at soldering (oh, apart from a little go in Stephanie Lee's class last year) & they are a little 'rough' around the edges.  
Any who - back to the ATC's.......  A little while ago, my dear friend from Paper Traders, Connie Holso, RAKed me some watercoloured backgrounds, which are what I used as a base.  First I collaged on some scraps of music, I then used a palette of acrylics to create some foliage & flowers & in the wet paint, used some watercolour pencil to ‘drizzle’ some black line work in.  I added more paint to create ‘centres’ of flowers…..then added in the birds.  I poured over them with ‘self levelling medium’ (Golden) then (perhaps a BIT kitch) – added ‘frinkles/micro beads’ & a little german scrap

 

  

Washing off the Dust

Given that it's 'holidays' from collage at the moment, despite a 'truck load' of home work leading up to final assessment, I just HAD to let my hair down and do something just for fun!  It WAS only a LITTLE fun - this ATC was made for Paper Trader's monthly 'Winner Takes All' draw.  It ended up a little over worked, and the 'rub on' looks a little contrived, however, I had built up so many layers that I couldn't get anything to make marks on the surface (even 'Staz-On' paled to insignificance). 

Of course, there HAS been SERIOUS art work as well.  I have been working hard on my 'life drawings' at the moment putting a lot of time into drawing hands.  (which is also the subject of my oil paintings - can't WAIT 'til THAT trial is OVER!!!).  I am going to make a separate post for this because I want to create a 'catagory' for my life drawings, without people who'd like to see them having to 'wade' through lots of other stuff included in the same post.

It's a bit ironic that I am spending so much time drawing hands really, as movement in the joints of my right arm and hand is still a big health challenge and coitersone with a daily pain management drug regime is still my best friend!  In theory, my art course was supposed to relieve the stress that is apparently causing my 'joint' issues, in reality, I am not sure whether it is better or worse as the stress builds for assessment!   LOL!!!  I never have been very good at 'evaluations' - I find it hard to separate the 'assessment' from myself when the thing being 'assessed' has come from within me.  I guess it'll all that sensitive/creative type stuff.  Still - it's not my favourite thing and I cringe when people ask my opinion of their art, not sure if they really just want to be told - it's great (aka - you're ok) or here's how you can make it better (aka - let's work together to improve this).

If, as Picasso said 'The PURPOSE of Art is to wash the dust of daily life off our souls' in theory, the quality of the art doesn't matter.  It is THAT you do Art that does.  And so, I hold to the maxim I adopted about 18 months ago.  I am an artist - therefore I do art!  DAILY - it's what I do.

Here this is my art from the last week or so - tip in pages for Connie's journal.  BUT silly me, I had an old print out with the original configuration in landscape and it was revised to portrait, so I ended up doing them twice!  Once I realized my mistake (AFTER they were finished & I was posting them! LOL!!!) I initially thought I could 'cut them up' and make a 'joined' page out of pieces, adding appropriately to them - but that really didn't work out, so I only managed to save 2 of the 'mounted' picures.

a special day

Upholding established blog tradition - IT'S MY BIRTHDAY - & you get the present!  The person that leaves a comment that either includes my favourite number OR their comment is the one that IS my favourite number (ie 5th comment IF 5 was my fav. no!) will recieve a lovely surprise by snail mail.  It depends on how familiar you are with my artwork - with a bit of sluthing - you could probably work it out - cos it does re-occur in my artwork every now & then.(how wierd is it to have 'traditions' with something that is 5 minutes old!)

the very lovely Elizabeth has given me my first birthday gift of the day - an 'I love your blog' award. (I have already recieved lovely messages from the very special Sally & Jenene)  One of the great 'take aways' from Elizabeth's blog is this quote from Daisaku Ikeda

You must not for one instant give up the effort to build new lives for yourselves. Creativity means to push open the heavy, groaning doorway to life. This is not an easy struggle. Indeed, it may be the most difficult task in the world, for opening the door to your own life is, in the end, more difficult than opening the door to the mysteries of the universe.

OMG - how MUCH does this describe my effort to try & paint a face right!  'PUSH OPEN A HEAVY, GRO-ANING DOORWAY into life!'  Yesterday's face just about did me IN! 

With my art work - I often art into (or sometimes through the night - yeah, I'm not really into sleeping much - did you EVER wonder how I am so prolific????) - by the time I am ready for bed I am bleary eyed & don't usually trust my sense of reality at this point - so I have this test I call 'The Morning After' test.  I look at the work I have produced the 'night before' & sort of mentally critique it & pull it apart to see what I can do better........WELL ...........LOL!!  I was SO fixated on yesterday's NOSE (my emphasis for the day) that the eyes are crooked - the mouth is out of line - I think that I have LOST what I gained when I started about 7 weeks ago - A RULER!!!! LOL! 

SO - it's my birthday & I am giving myself permission NOT to make a birthday face - I have made some ATC's instead - it is SUCH a long time since I have made any at all & they were my first love, it was time to revisit!  At Paper Traders we have this 'monthly ATC lottery' which is really a lot of fun, but I have not been a regular contributor - but this month's 'pot' has some FABULOUS cards in it & I have to be in it to WIN!  So I have made a whole range of 'birdies', threatening that I am going to put the whole lot in to 'rig' the lottery!! (and YES - I DID get a new black stamp pad in my birthday box from Alpha Stamps - it's a Versa Fine archival Onyx Black - I love it - it's so crisp, but dense colour - mmmmm gooood)

Ladies of the Manor

These Ladies of the Manor are VERY IMPORTANT PEOPLE.  These are the first time that I have ever made inchies Aaa -nnnD IT is the first time I have ever put a crown on something!  If you'd told me a week ago I'd be making little girls with crowns on I would have laughed at you - but these 'inchies' had to have some sort of a twist, & a crown just worked. I have sprayed the crowns with teh VERY fabulous Moon Glow (see Product Info & Reviews if you don't know what this is) These are for a Paper Traders 'Twisted Inch' swap. So here they are - The Ladies of the Manor! (complete with Princess Crowns!)...oh and TRUE to Royal Protocol...... the flag is up, so the Lady is in Residence!

Playing in Fall Leaves

Playing in Fall Leaves is the title of this month's challenge in one of my online art groups.  This one is only open to people that are a part of this group, unlike the Gothic Arch Challenge, which is open to any one online that wants to participate.    Here is my little Paper Whimsy girl playing amongst the Autumn leave....as we know them here in Australia...........complete with her 'furbelows'.  A misspelling on my part to another group prompted me to look up the origins of a word I had always known, but had never really taken the time to understand.  It is mentioned in the words of a song from the musical play of Oliver Twist (a famiy fav. & one that I played a lead role in, 25 years ago!!)

fur·be·low (fûr b-l)

n. 1. A ruffle or flounce on a garment.2. A piece of showy ornamentation. tr.v. fur·be·lowed, fur·be·low·ing, fur·be·lows To decorate with a ruffle or flounce.

[Probably alteration of Provençal farbello, farbella, fringe, perhaps alteration of Italian faldella, pleat, diminutive of falda, flap, loose end, of Germanic origin; see pel-² in Indo-European roots.]

flounce, ruffle, frill adornment - a decoration of color or interest that is added to relieve plainness gauffer, goffer - an ornamental frill made by pressing pleats jabot - a ruffle on the front of a woman's blouse or a man's shirt  peplum - a flared ruffle attached to the waistline of a dress or jacket or blouse

Nancy, the lead female in the story leads a pretty grim life & eventually is killed at the hands of her brutal boyfriend.  In this scene she is 'taking the Mickey' out of those that are in more fortunate circumstances.

NANCY

: Though you sometimes do come by

   The occasional black eye,

   You can always cover one

   While he blacks the other one,

   But you don't dare cry.

   BET: No flounces, no feathers,

   No frills and furbelows.

   All winds and all weathers

   Ain't good for fancy clothes.

   

NANCY

:   These trappings,

   BET:   These tatters,

   BET and

NANCY

:  These we can just afford.

   

NANCY

:   What future?

   BET:   What matters:

   BET and

NANCY

: We've got our bed and board

 

This has prompted me to post a challenge.............we haven't had one in a while.............stay tuned for the next day or two while I think up something interesting....it will be all about FURBELOWS!!!

Nest Builder

This atc is the next one for my online workshop.  It is a combination of machine & hand stitching.  It represents a significant amount of work because of the detailing, some of which is lost in the final embellishing.  I started with a piece of raw (washed) calico which I had dyed blue (& have the hands to prove it!).  Then I used a piece of cotton lace, dipped in bleach & pressed it on the calico & brayered over it.  This bleached the lace pattern onto the dark fabric.  Unfortunately, I got a bit zealous with the zig zag & alot of this detailing is lost.  I used a zigzag stitch on my machine, first in grey (for the background) & creamy white for the 'nest' section.  After that, I hand stitched some shredded string on & did some random stitching with linen thread & used the same thread to sew on the buttons for eggs.  Next, I used 3mm silk ribbon & embroidered long & short, random blanket stitches.  I tried out a few ways to add a bird & resorted to paper in the end, but it probably isn't that suited to a fabric ATC.  Last of all, I added a little bullion stitch bee & some more shreaded string.  It was a bit of fun to do some free hand embriodery again.............it is literally years since I have done any, though I used to do it prolifically, & teach others as well.  A nice little project to break me in again!! LOL!!

ATC workshop - Resin finishes

Here are the next set of ATC's from my online workshop.  The first one, the Resin Fresco, is using a method I have used for years (being a stamper from way back)  You paint a base coat lightly, add some embossing fluid & Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel (UTEE), you melt that, then lightly brush over with paint or gesso. (I used black to give it a dramatic feel to match my Pre-Raphelite image).  I then worked over it with waxes (antiquing & verdigris) & some more Golden acrylics.  The middle one & the one on the right ARE pretty ordinary results.  The idea was to create a layer of UTEE  over the card, several times, then stamp into the warm resin.  The layer is supposed to be all over & gradully building in thickness.  Mine is all spotty with craters in it!!! LOL!!!  In other areas, it is soooooo runny where I tried to fill the craters!!!   The instructions called for a 'hot pot' to do this & melt the resin, I don't have one, & it's not really something that I think that I would use.......so I improvised........I usually use my soldering iron with a 'blow torch' attachment for embossing which works fine on small targeted areas, but I couldn't seem to get the whole card 'warm' at the same time, warm enough so that the stamp would make an impression.  (as it was about 1am in the morning when I was doing this.......I didn't want to trek out to the garage & try to find my latest heat gun that DH had 'commendeered' from my studio) NOTE TO SELF:  Attempt to borrow tools you don't have if you don't want to buy them, so that you can actually follow the instructions!   I  encountered the same problem Dimensional Resin.  It was meant to be 'encasing' something in the resin, however, again, I couldn't keep it all 'melty' enough to make it work.  They are still pleasing enough, but not a successful example of the lesson.

New ATC's

here are some more techniques from my online workshop using Bernie Berlin's ATC workshop book.   As I haven't been well, I had to work with what I had on hand, so my 'soft foam' was made from a meat tray, & it really wasn't as 'cutable' as soft foam...... hence my cotton reel is pretty 'crude'....... then we followed up with a lesson  on transfers, which I use pretty frequently, so I didn't put a whole lot of effort into creating something especially for this.  The next two ATC's were created with embossing powders.  The first one was created with a process of sticking down scraps, leaving some excess glue at the edges of the scraps, then sprinkling it with embossing powder & melting it on randomly.  The last one I especially liked the result of.  It was using a clear embossing to create a resist.  Firstly I painted a couple of colours randomly onto card.  Then stamped & embossed my image in clear, followed by a further light coat of paint.  I added an additional step of rubbing it with waxes.  I used antique gold & verdigris on this one.  This brings me up to date again which is a good feeling & there is a break in the class at the moment, so I have a chance to catch my breath.

Caught up with my lessons & feeling a little better tonight, I have been playing with my 84 lovely new Caran d'Arche crayons.  I painted the background with Golden fluid acrylics first, then I worked in layers & layers of all different sorts of colours.  The skeletal tree is a stamp from Stamper's Annoymous.

Online Workshop progress

This flu has really put a dampner on my creativity.........I am plodding along to catch up my online workshop  lessons.  This one was using string.  I was a bit off base from the original instructions, as I painted the string with gesso first, coloured it with crayons and THEN tied it on the card.  The original method was to tie the string on first & apply images later, however it restricted you somewhat to small images.  I had this whole 'heart strings' thing happening in my head, so it worked out better for me to do it this way.  The first pic is my image (from an old theatre program) on the background of paper with text.  I wrapped the string around a coathanger, & then painted it.  AND YES..........THAT is my BEAUTIFUL new Caran d Ache water soluable crayons, which I am looking forward to exploring some more when I feel a bit better.  The other ATC's for this lesson were using phone book pages as background (I didn't have one so I used a dictionary) and using tissue paper.  On my tissue paper collage I used vintage maps and a magazine ad, which I coloured up using my new crayons.

A first birthday discovery - Cake

I am back from my Sydney trip to Hillsong Conference & have not really had much inspiration to be creating for the last few days, busy with other things.  Sydney was lovely, and it was a bit of warmth which was good for me.  The venue at Homebush is fabulous, but wow....it is SO far from everything else you might want to do in Sydney.  We had a day & a half before the conference started to look around.........I visited with Judy from Red Velvet, discovered some gorgeous little shops & a fabulous 'flea market' in Rozelle, and went to the Sydney Markets.

I arrived back JUST in time for Princess 'L's first birthday party (pictured here, clapping as we sang to her).....below.....she is working out what to do with the yummy looking thing that has been poked in her face...........the last two pictures we staged, after she did that exact thing all by herself....which was hilliarious, then we tried to get her to do it again so we could capture it.  It was SOOOOOO funny.  Mmmmm.....I know what to do with cake Mummy!!!!

Like returning from any trip, there's the domestic joys of unpacking, cleaning & sorting....fun, fun, fun.......and now the dreaded lurgy has returned (as punishment for being away) I am WAY WAY behind with my online workshop, so now am trying to get to that.  These are my next series of background techniques.  The first one is made from blending 3 different magazine images by weaving strips together....below is the original two images & the background I painted just incase any of the background wasn't covered.  The next one is made by layering gesso over a magazine picture. & the third one is made over the 'chemical' print removal techniques I did a few weeks ago.  This one was made with windex.