Happiness Showed Up Today

It has been awhile since I last did one of the Life Book 2015 classes. Too busy gallivanting around exhibitions and enjoying the big outdoors but I knew from the start that I would enjoy doing Robin-Marie Smith's class this week. She is one of the organizers of The Documented Life Project and I have also done many of her own online classes and they never disappoint. In fact I think her classes are a shining example of online teaching at its best. I should also be honest and say that I'm a bit stuck with my textile work at the moment and this was a great diversionary activity. I still feel like I'm doing something useful, just not what I should be doing. It's when I start to take to dusting that I will know I'm in serious creative trouble!

As this is a class I won't tell you anything about the process apart from the fact that it involved many, many layers. I worked on a 9 x 12" paper and used a flower stamp (from Stampington) as we had to find a stamp to use that started with the first letter of our own name. In my case that's an F and very suitably that meant I could use one of my many flower stamps! You can see it in detail on the bottom picture.

I also used a wide variety of stencils, including many from Stencilgirl, including the one featuring the large flowers. I applied Radiant Gel in green for them. Sadly you can't see the dimension or the shine on the pictures.

Roben-Marie showed us how to make a pocket with a tag to journal on, but I choose to do my journalling directly on the page and I used part of the lyrics from the song Happiness by Beth Nielsen Chapman. I love the lyrics of this song which includes the following words:

"The past is gone and all for naught,

the future cannot be controlled

and the only moment we can hold

is this one going by."

Something else showed up today and it is a British Telecom engineer although I don't think he will contribute anything to my happiness seeing that the first words he spoke were about our distance from the exchange. I have the feeling we are reaching the end of the line in all senses of the words,  and that we will have to seriously consider what to do next. The satellite broadband works well but is limited, It might well be that upgrading that to a higher usage has to be the way to go. BT is apparently completely unwilling to invest in the infrastructure of their many rural lines enough to provide us, country dwellers, a reasonable broadband connection through the phone. I'm not ready to give up the fight just yet though. 

Leaves Page

Continuing to play catch-up (just as well as the weather is awful),  this is the 3rd page (9 x 12") I made as a result of Flora Bowley's class on Life Book 2015.   While some classes like this one catch my attention and make me want to do more of them, others are a bit too prescriptive for me, and that's fine. I'm still hugely enjoying the classes I do do and get some handy tips and techniques from the ones for which I only watch the videos or read the PDFs. Maybe one day in the future I may do them too and the Life Book classes can all be downloaded and kept, which facilitates that possibility.

Flora's class is my favourite thus far and I can see myself going back to her Intuitive Painting technique many times. You can see my two previous pages done after watching her class video here and here. I made all three pages in one sitting in my painting shed. Working on 3 at the same time meant I could keep going while pages dried. And as a result the pages are closely related to each other. 

Circles

It's evidence of how much I enjoyed Flora Bowley's class on Life Book 2015 this week that I did not one but 3 pages and I'm definitely going to do some more in the near future. As I explained in my earlier post about her class, she calls her process Brave Intuitive Painting and it means starting to paint without any pre-conceived ideas about the outcome of the process. In this piece circles emerged eventually (as they tend to do a lot in my work).

While photographing this page and specially when taking pictures of the details I once again thought about how this might work on fabric and in fact a flash of inspiration came my way to tell me what I wanted to do with it.

I'll let it stew for a bit and if I still think I will work I will be getting on with getting this printed out onto fabric yardage. Exciting stuff! And I'm grateful that that spark came to light as inspiration and joy have not been around a lot lately.

 

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The Eyes of the Night

It has been awhile since I last shared a Life Book 2015 lesson with you but here is one I enjoyed doing very much today. It's the lesson by Flora Bowley, called "Letting go" and it's all about Brave Intuitive Painting where you start a piece without any idea of what it's going to look like when done. In fact, this is how I do most of my sketchbook work so it was always going to be a fun lesson. I made 2 other pages (all sized 9 x 12") today in a vain attempt to keep on going while the other pages dried. The Scottish summer weather put a stop to that as it was damp and cold so in the end I still had to use a heat gun on the pages in order to keep up my momentum.

 I had the sense to keep my little camera close by to take pictures of the various stages of the pages and took a picture whenever I had to use the heat gun.

There was a lot of mark making and covering up the various layers just letting small details peek through. I can no longer remember just how many layers I added but am guessing at around 15. The following 2 pictures are details of the finished page which you can see at the very top of this blog post. Sorry about the curling of the paper (which is why the text is looking a bit strange) but I'll sort that out with some heavy books overnight.

 I love the details even better than the whole page and of course I can use these pictures to print  on fabric and start stitching if the fancy takes me.

Sweet Delight Page

You might have noticed that I haven't uploaded any Life Book 2015 projects recently and I must honestly admit that I haven't done the classes for some weeks. I have downloaded them and saved them to the hard drive but I have been much more in the mood to do my own thing. I have come to realize that just like I don't enjoy making quilts from other people's patterns (and I have never even tried) I don't like to make art on prescription. Getting a prompt such as on the Documented Life Project I do like, as it sets my mind off on unexpected paths but having to follow in someone's footsteps is a completely different and to me not so great experience.

Nevertheless I don't regret signing up for the Life Book 2015 class. In fact the above is a valuable discovery that will very much determine what online classes I will take in future. And I am getting a lot of technique based info from the classes this year. I feel drawn to those classes that leave you very much free to do what you want with them. Which is why I did do Lynzee Lynx's class last week, called "Stencilling What You Love.

It won't come as a surprise to regular readers of this blog that I LOVE stencils so the title alone was enough to draw me in. I won't describe how this page was made for copyright reasons but we had to make our own stencils and I drew out the spirals and also a collection of triangles. I was just about to start cutting them out when I realized that I have a machine that does the cutting much better, so my stencils were made using the Brother Scan'nCut. Cardstock was used to make the stencils as I can see I might want those spirals again in future.

You will see there are words in the background about which I won't say anything but the title Sweet Delight came to mind as the page was coming to a finish so I added them as shown. They come from a poem I just love by William Blake called To See A World. It's a long poem but the words I used come towards the end where it says:

Every Night and every Morn

Some to Misery are Born.

Some are Born to sweet delight

Every Morn and every Night

Some are Born to Endless Night

Some are Born to sweet delight

Feel the Moment

Feel the Moment was the title of this week's Life Book 2015 class by Jenny Wentworth in which we painted a face. It's a bit unnerving to see what emerged from my efforts. To say she looks severe is a bit of an understatement. But she appeared from under my hands almost as if I had no control over what she looked liked. She simply wanted to be there. Sometimes that happens in art. You produce a piece be it a painting, art journalling page or textile hanging and it is more than you thought it would be. It came from you but there is also something extra there that you were entirely unaware of. Something from deep inside, from regions where I only very occasionally visit. She is such a one. 

I pretty much followed the lesson for the techniques I used but added stamping to the background and then seemingly at random found an old postage stamp in the courtyard where I was painting, probably a left over from my efforts to organize my stamp collection a bit. It was meant to be so I added it to the page at bottom left.  It toned in perfectly with my feelings at the time.

I also added the written text: "We only have this moment". As I have mentioned before there is always meaning to my art journalling, very often much more meaning than the eye can see. I know what it is and that is enough. I don't often feel the need to spell it all out and I'm also careful about not invading my own privacy, let alone anyone else's. I like sharing the art but not my emotions. They are for my eyes only, and her's, of course.

I liked her better before I added her hair but of course it was too late to take a picture at that stage so here is an approximation. I felt I learned so much from this class and expect I will try more portraits in future in the hope a friendlier face will come to light.

For reasons about which I will enlighten you soon, it's so ironic that she looks so troubled because the person who brought her to life is having a super fantastic, wonderful and amazing day! One phone call was all it took to chase those dark clouds away!

The Little Things

I've called this piece The Little Things because that was the title for this week's Life Book 2015 class. The lesson was by Tamara Laporte, the organizer of Life Book. Part of the reason why I am doing the Life Book classes this year was to learn to draw faces although I'm not as keen on very sweet ones as Tam is. But there was no need to worry. Most of mine turn out quite mean and moody! Just hope there is no subliminal message there!.

Underneath all the painting there are written words, now no longer visible, about the little things in life I most appreciate. They are now virtually invisible but I know they are there. I like such hidden art journalling because it offers the opportunity to write what you want to without taking into consideration that people can read it.

I kept on adding things to this page (sized 9 x 12") so it's just as well to upload it now and I can put it away without further fussing with the details. And as per usual this is a paid-for class that is under copyright so no information about how exactly it was done, but the face, needless to say, was never meant to be realistic. Wish I had that kind of hair though!

Field Journalling Page

 The Life Book 2015 lesson for this week was by Alisa Burke and it was all about field journalling. Alas, the weather both yesterday and today were about as unsuitable for field journalling as was possible (rain, snow, wind, hail, you name it and we had it!), but fortunately I already had a large collection of feathers in the studio as I'm in inveterate collector and both birds and chickens in our garden provide me with plenty of them. So they were the models for the page. No mention of techniques as this is a paid-for class but I did vary it slightly by using watercolours with sparkle (sadly not visible on the picture).

The stamping with a vintage French text stamp was also my idea as well as adding that gorgeous butterfly postage stamp. I feel a visit to the postage stamp shop in Edinburgh coming up as I'm running out of those wonderful butterfly ones from the Republic of Guinea. I probably won't find the exact same ones again but there will be other treasures, I just know it!

 I also need to be on the lookout for new permanent markers. I used a black Scarlet Lime one but sadly they are no longer being made so the hunt for an alternative is on.

She Shareth her Joys

This week's class for Life Book 2015 was by Juliette Crane and was titled: Painting from the Heart. I thoroughly enjoyed it and specially the first part of her video which demonstrated how with a few simple marks you could make a character come to life.

I followed along with her and then started to invent some characters of my own of which the one above was my favourite. She sort of encapsulates some greyhound traits such as the ears and the tail but unlike the greyhound also has wings. Juliette then went on to paint an owl but I used my little character. I also loved painting with my fingers as the class suggested but then again this is something I do quite a lot already, specially if there are no brushes nearby. After all our hands are our tools!

 So the entire background is hand painted and I also used quite a bit of glitter dropped into the wet paint which sadly is lost on camera. The texture you see is from bleeding tissue paper as well as scratching into the wet paint with the back of a brush.

I wish in hindsight that I had tilted the face a bit more like in my original drawing but it is what it is and I had a joyful time making this page, which is what it is all about as far as I'm concerned. I love looking at all the pages I have already made for the Life Book 2015 classes and that will all be put together into one large book at the end of the year.

Trouble Page

I rather rushed our latest Life Book 2015 class and I really should have looked at all the videos before starting work as I would have preferred to use all vintage papers, rather than contemporary bits and pieces from magazines. But it is what it is and in the end not much of the original collaged background is visible so no worries. This lesson was by Jane Davenport and is called "Drawing on the Inner and Outer World". As per usual, this is a paid for online class so I won't be giving away any information about techniques and the like, due to copyright restrictions. 

It must be said that my inner world looks rather riotous and colourful (which is perhaps only too true a reflection!) and this poor woman's arm is rather foreshortened, but then the rest of her body is hardly realistic so I'm letting that go too.

It wasn't till I was finished that I noticed the word Trouble above her forehead but it suits her well, as well as reflecting the conditions that prevailed while making this page. I would like to think that I could have done this rather better but I know my inner world well enough to realize that it is highly unlikely that I will produce an improved version any time soon. So here she is: a bundle of trouble.

Layers of Your Heart

Our latest lesson for Life Book 2015 was called Layers of the Heart and it's by the organizer of Life Book herself: Tamara Laporte. It involved making 7 separate hearts and decorating them in various ways, putting them together using a brad so that they can fan out together.

And then to make a page with a pocket to fit them in. You can see my hearts spread out above. I added beloved quotations on most of my hearts as a way to have them all in one place. All the pages we are making for Life Book 2015 will be put together into one Life Book at the end of the year.

The heart top right was entirely decotated with washi tape, and what you can see here was originally the back of the heart, while the front was simply straight lines of washi tape. But when it was done I loved the back a lot better so it was promoted!

I used my own handwriting on all the hearts as well as on the pocket as I need to get over my aversion of doing so. Like most people I'm not mad about how my handwriting looks but I'm working on it. I used another quotation at the top of the pocket. It's a Zen saying and reads: " If you do the work that you do from a loving heart, then you will always be able to make something beautiful".

Jar of Favourites

I'm keeping up to date with Life Book 2015 as I've just finished our lesson for this week which was by Lynn Whipple and called: "Jar of Special Favorites". I stuck pretty close to the lesson so no instructions here. You can still sign up for Life Book 2015 yourself if you are interested. All videos from that can be downloaded and saved so you can start at any time.

I had been looking through the pages I have done so far and one very noticeable thing was that almost  all the pages feature my favourite warm colours (surprise, surprise!) so for this one I started with the cool ones. But then couldn't resist making the surrounding area pink!

We were told to write words representing our favourite things in the jar and I really went to town with that, using a variety of markers in black, white, gold, blue and green as well as pink.

Sadly no deep blue sea for me today but somewhere in the jar it also says "snow" and that we do have! About 1 inch fell overnight but I suspect it will be gone by the end of the day as it is quite mild. "Studio" is also one of my jar words and today will be spend in there! I am on the cusp of finishing a quilt but am giving myself a break from it to gain some distance in order to tell if it is truly done before I put a sleeve on it. That means I can play today! Vintage books, paints, markers, washi tape etc., here I come!

Strength Page

I was going to apologize once again for featuring art here and then I realized just how silly that is. I'm an artist and art is what I do, day in day out, for almost 8 hours a day (and yes, sometimes for far longer). So it is hardly surprising that I have a lot of art to show you, specially as this is hardly the time for gardening visits. Hence no more excuses ever for showing you lots of it.

Specially since this year I have given myself the freedom to do a lot of on-line classes. One of these is the year long Life Book 2015 class and this is the result of one of the classes. I say result but must admit that I veered wildly off course with this page (the original class features a boat!). It was by Mati Rose McDonough (you can see her book in the Now Reading column in the sidebar at the moment) and she was teaching us about gold foiling. And I definitely did that!

I took  my lead from the layering theme of The Documented Life Project. Layering, it turns out, is very much my thing and I love doing it. I started off like the class told me with one layer of paint (orange in my case) and added another (pink for me) layer on top. But after that I let go of the class instructions and added lots of other layers, such as glueing on bits of a paper napkin (with roses), stencilling with a variety of circular stencils, stamping (a map of Paris) in the background,  ink dribbling, etc. etc. Maybe one of these days I might do some step by step photography of this process if I can find the courage to have my camera anywhere near such frenetic painting activities.

Once I was happy with the result I added the gold foiling in spiral shapes as you can see, and then outlined the various shapes with markers and pens, and also used water soluble oil pastels.

The final step was to add the word STRENGTH at the left and the Strength quotation (a stamp from Donna Downey). It reads: "Strenght doesn't come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldn't do". It seemed to resonate with my word of this year which is: Courage.

I have already done the next class for Life Book so you will be seeing that one soon too, and it's something completely different. Watch this space!