Well.....sort of a new painting. It all started out with one of the papers that I painted. I liked it so well that I decided to mount the whole thing onto a canvas and go from there, but things weren't going well, and the new painting is underneath this one, which I would call a new collage--
Let me tell you the story of how this Gypsy came about. Like I said it all began with this painted paper--
Very cool--don't you think? Well, I put it on my canvas and started adding more details to it, and I was liking it even more. So I decided to make a new face for it. She was coming out very well too.....and then I started painting her, and I started not to like her....but she was okay. But the more I kept trying to "fix" her, the meaner looking she got....so I said...forget this! and I just reached for a pretty scrapbook paper and covered her and my original painted paper ALL UP!!
So then I figured I could try some techniques that I've been wanting to do. The first one I did was the gel transfer of a face that I had done in my Moleskine journal last year. I knew eventually I would want to do something with her. And last year in my workshop with Sharon (BTW, this is an on going workshop--Faces--All Norah's--GREAT class!), I learned how to transfer inkjet copies with gel medium, and ever since then I wanted to try doing it to one of my faces. I just printed her out in black and white, did the transfer, and it worked!
All I did, was redefine her features and hair, and let the scrapbook paper take care of the rest of her face. So where did all of this distressed shabby texturing come from--this came as a result of all my other techniques that I tried to do and failed at. Everytime it didn't work out, I would just say--the heck with this, and then I would cover it up, and then I'd say--ooh, I kind of like this. This kept happening--over and over--until I ended up with all of these layers and textures. If I was trying to go for this look, I probably couldn't have done it, and I Love it!!
This is a good lesson for me--not to give up!
So if you want to find out more about her, you can find her in my Etsy Shop.
And this week was the final lesson for the Strathmore workshop (boy that 4 weeks went by fast!). This was the fun part--the doodling--whatever came to mind. Pam suggested using paint pens. And this is how I started out--with my Sharpie paint pens (black and white), but the lines were looking a little too clean for me, so I decided to get out my favorite doodling tools--my brush tip pitt pens. I probably have every color known to man. I like these because they don't dry instantly, and I can smudge them with my finger. And when you do this, they dry more translucent, so the background comes through. Here's my finished page--
Yesterday, I was planning on finishing both of my pages. I didn't realize that one page with just the finishing touches would take me 2 hours! It felt like 2 minutes. I realize now that this is my favorite part of journaling--the process--not even realizing how long you've been sitting and just playing--very therapeutic! So now I get to do the page next to it! And I learned another little technique that I know that I'll use again. I painted with the white paint pen, and then when it was still wet, I wiped a little around with a baby wipe--really liked that!
And this is for all of you Idol fans. What do you think of the new judges? They're much more gentler with their constructive criticism, don't you think? Randy is now the mean one. It seems that this year, the show is focusing on the better singers as opposed to the bad ones...so far. I really like Steven Tyler's fun personality, but I miss sassy Simon.
