With all my Heart

To my delight the Colour Me Positive prompt for this week was: "art feeds the soul". It was set by MaryBeth Shaw, the owner of Stencilgirl Products. The art challenge was to put a bird on your pages.

This gave me the opportunity to celebrate the fact that I saw Vincent van Gogh's painting The Starry Night with my own eyes during our visit to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) while in New York.

The background  of the spread was painted to reflect the sky in his painting. I then added text about art with a variety of rubber stamps. I had my own photograph of the painting printed and then distressed the edges and roughed up the picture to that it merged in better on the page, and could take some paint.

More details of other Van Gogh paintings were added on the left hand page. They are from the bottom to the top: The Yellow House, Cafe-Terrace at Night, and one of his sunflower paintings. Everything was integrated by stencilling with the smallest stencil from the July 2014 Stencilgirl Club.

For the birds I wanted to add crows as Vincent featured them often in his paintings but the best I could come up with were a black raven (sitting on the right) and three black swallows (all from Alpha Stamps). A bit of artistic licence is allowed!

Finally I wanted to add Vincent himself to the equation and I found a postage stamp with one of his self-portraits. I also borrowed his own words for the quotation I used that reads: "I am seeking. I am striving. I am in it with all my heart".  Who could ask for more? I try and follow his example.