Moving Forward

The latest prompt on Colour Me Positive is: forward, and the art challenge to not be afraid to make a mistake. I went looking through my quotation collection and came up with: "If you can't fly, then run. If you can't run, then walk. If you can't walk, then crawl. But whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward". 

That decided me on the imagery to use on the pages. I knew I had the image of a crawling man (by William Blake) in my collection and he formed the base of the colour scheme for the background which was done with acrylic paint and a Balzer Design stencil (from The Crafter's Workshop). I also stamped on text from the Life Consists stamp by Hampton Art Stamps.  I added the spiral like shapes to imitate tropical looking vegetation. These rubber stamps are from the Doodled Delight set by Dylusions. I coloured them in with a pink large brush pen (Faber Castell).

You will have seen the dancing figure (to represent the "run" part of the quotation) before. She came originally from an advert in a magazine and I have played with her quite a bit. This time she was cut from a previously gelli plate printed paper. The bird was added on the left to represent the "fly" element.

I added the green sun on the right for no other reason than that I found this circular piece of fabric (left over from a quilt) laying on my work desk and it seemed to fit the spread so well that it had to become part of it.

The quotation was printed onto pinkish transparent paper using the computer.

In hindsight I would have liked to use paper that was more pink and less transparent so I suppose that would be a bit of a mistake as per our art challenge. In reality I seem to have lost my fear of making mistakes over the years. They happen in every piece of art as well as in real life and usually there is a way to fix them. If there isn't, then so be it. You simply have to live with them and try to at least not make the same mistake again. However it's guaranteed you will make new ones!

A Rainbow of Chaos

We had reached the end of April last Saturday, and this is the final spread for the April theme of Reaching for Rainbows on The Documented Life Project 2016, which is just as well as I was rapidly reaching the end of my rainbow quotations and images. Our art challenge for this week was to use a colour you don't normally reach for. 

In my case that is brown but I couldn't just have a brown spread so I added dark violet as well as gold and turquoise to the mix. I'm working in the 8 x 8" square Dylusions art journal and after gessoing the pages I made the background using those colours as well as the large stencils from the July 2014 and April 2016 Stencilgirl Club. I had already found the quotation I wanted to use and made sure the background looked just a tad chaotic. I added rubber stamping using the EEA01 stamp designed by Everything-Art and produced by PaperArtsy in the shape of the black circles which were put on top of the circular bit of stencilling in white

I added the figure because he toned in so well with the pages and looked suitably confused. He was cut from an old art book. He originates from Luca Signorelli's painting Sermons and Deeds from the AntiChrist (1499-1504).

The rainbow came from this year's Flow Magazine calendar and I made it a bit brighter with watercolour pens. Once on the page the white stood out too much so I antiqued it using gold embossing paste and I also added that on other bits of the pages. Copper sparkles were dropped on top.

The quotation I found came from Paul Cezanne, and it reads: "We live in a rainbow of chaos".  It is as true for the times we live in as it was in his day.

The final touch was the French  postage stamp, chosen both for its nationality and the colours.

Just Create

The theme and challenges for The Documented Life Project 2015 are set on Saturdays and as last Saturday was the final day of October we are continuing with the October theme of translucent papers. The art challenge this week is: Teabags, dryer sheets, fibrous papers, and the journalling prompt: Just Created. I used fibrous papers (not having any of the other two options) and found a fibrous paper bag in which my Tibetan prayer flags had been wrapped as well as some other fibrous papers. The light blue bits have vanished on the finished pages, at least on the pictures (the texture is still there but not visible) but you can detect the darker turquoise paper I also used. As for the journalling prompt I dropped the D from the end and used the words as a personal encouragement. 

Stencils from the Stencilgirl Club June 2015 were used in the background as well as  the Entangling Threads one of which you can see a lot more on the finished spread. Because the fibrous paper bag I used (see above) featured a Buddhist temple I started looking for a focal point to match it and found it in the form of a meditating figure from a magazine. I used her to cut out a similar figure from a gelli plate printed paper as you can see below. 

 Rubber stamping was done with a variety of stamps, including the one about Creativity which reads:

Creativity is an endless journey where

we should always take the scenic route.

It comes from the Tim Holtz Collection. The CREATE words were stencilled on using the Now is the Time stencil  from Stencilgirl designed by Carolyn Dube and I then utilized her Vintage Typewriter Alphabet stencil  to add CREATE on top of the meditating figure. 

I did a lot of outlining using markers in a variety of colours as well as water soluble oil pastels and of course postage stamps! In an ideal world I would have liked to have 3 of the Czechoslovakia stamp but alas that wasn't to be. Instead they were balanced by the Spanish stamp on the right hand side, chosen merely for the colour.

The page has lots of sparkle but you will have to take my word for that as it isn't visible on the pictures.