Warmup lesson in Life Book 2016. It’s intuitive little painting which contains my word for 2016.
Acceptance of all things and people I cannot change or understand. Let’s see if it will bring peace.
Lucy’s coloring book
Color me brightly
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Inspired by #carveDecember on IG I decided to do monthly challenges this year. I like the feeling of being dedicated to one technique enough time to be able to learn what works and what doesn’t. So, some time ago I bought a Derwent Black Book and prepared a plan for monthly challenge. I am using white, metallic and shimmery pens to draw ornaments. It looks nice but doesn’t photograph too well.
My next idea is to try some embossing with the stamps I carved in December. I think I will go for it tomorrow.
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It’s a beautiful sunny day. But minus 6 outside. I went for a ride to Szentendre with a friend to look at some houses for sale. I am thinking of buying a house later this year. Maybe.
Anyway, this morning I finished the first lesson in this year’s Life Book. Here it is:
I decided this year that I will not watch videos because they take too much time and I have none left to actually do the art. Concerning that I have the BOD 2016 course this year, there will be no way to watch all the videos and do all lessons. And I plan to do more lessons this year. So, I am working small (approximately A5) and will rely much more on my interpretation of the lessons rather then following the step by step instructions. Let’s see how it goes…
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I have decided to bring this blog up to a new level this year by changing to a paid plan. This will also mean more frequent posts. I am also giving a try to the mobile WordPress application to see if that’s going to help with frequency of posts.
As a start for this year, of course, it’s the word of the year.
Acceptance. Of everything and everyone who is not in line with what I consider agreeable. I want to live and let live. I want to be at peace with everything that comes my way. Like it or not. I want peace inside and outside. I wish to stop reacting negatively and be content. With whatever comes my way.
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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,100 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 18 trips to carry that many people.
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Ok yes. Winter is approaching, darkness is here. I am depressed. My thoughts are heavy. My mood is bad. I am poisonous to the people around me. I am lonely. I don’t want company. I am tired. I have headaches almost every day. In spite of all that I make myself go out to the air (and sun, because days are actually warm and beautiful) every day for at least an hour. I think it helps. I make myself art journal every morning. No excuses. And it goes on like that. Christmas is approaching and I always liked everything around it. The lights, the fairs, the baking, the ornaments. This year I don’t seem to be in the right mood. But let’s not despair. It may still come.
I am documenting today the course work I did during October. It’s not much. I’ve done many journal pages, but not so much of course work. It somehow was more important to do the personal stuff. That will be another post, hopefully soon, because even writing this has been a tremendous effort. But I am doing it.
First there are three spreads done for Book of Days with Effy Wild. I really enjoyed that course and I am really satisfied with all the spreads I did there. They were not fast and easy. They needed lot of work, but it was well worth the effort and time.
And the next three are from Radiant Art Journals again with Effy Wild.This course however is taught by several teachers, and I must say that the first two lessons were real suffering and the third which I just started is even more suffering. They are simply not me and I cannot say that I enjoyed making them. Here is the first by guest teacher and then Effy’s version of that same lesson:
The overlapping faces felt scary and uncomfortable, and the three girls simply look soulless to me. I don’t know… Probably I need to get something of myself into them, to do my version of it. I did a bit with the overlapping faces but the whole concept somehow did not work for me.
The next lesson by guest teacher is below. Effy’s version of that I am still doing (that one is proving to be much more to my liking, so I am doing it with pleasure and will post it in one of next posts).
And that’s all. I am glad I managed the post, all things concerning 🙂 If you read it, I am grateful… Hope to be a better host next time…
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Since some time ago I developed the habit of art journaling every morning after getting up. I cannot say how happy it makes me and how I look forward to starting every new day.
In my last post I decided to depart from my habit of sharing what happened in the previous week at least from time to time and to devote a whole post to one topic. Today it will be my morning practice of art journaling.
I try to keep my spreads very intuitive, so I never start with a concrete idea on my mind, but rather just grab the color that catches my eye first and start covering the blank page. Then I use other colors, just as I feel like, some gesso, and then I write with a pencil on the wet paint and gesso, which gives beautiful texture to the page. Then I use stencils, stamps, markers, more pencils. Often I draw a face or two, sometimes just something abstract or a floral motive.
During the writing process usually a theme or main idea comes up, which I then use to either draw or write a message on the finished spread. Here are some recent entries in my journal:
I used Gelatos, gesso, stencil, chalk markers, pencils and acrylics. The main theme was my thinking about my journaling process and how it is important to listen to your inner voice in order to make the page really yours and not just a copy of someone else’s.
This one is also with the same general theme and same materials.
In this one, I used a hand carved stamp for the border and Sakura glaze pen for lettering.
This one is without the face and I felt quite upset for a reason, which is really visible in the way I journaled. It’s not the one I look at with pleasure, but it’s an important part of the process of working my feelings out and documenting what happens on the way.
Here I realized I am being too hard on myself, hence the message. I used cut outs of photo paper on which I tried alcohol inks over the stencilled floral motive in gel medium. It’s exciting to see how the ink flows in the paths that stencil makes. I love this one.
One morning I decided to cut out some new stencil with botanical motives and I used Neocolors activated with iridescent medium as a background and then stencilled over with the acrylic paint. Later on I wrote in the space between the shapes, but I did not take a photo of it.
And finally, this one was inspired by the quote prompt we got in a group with Effy Wild. Used my new stencil again, and another stencil, Gelatos, black pen, white pen, acrylic paints, and chalk markers.
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Again I missed to post last week. And almost missed it this week. There’s been so much going on at home and at work, so no wonder. It seems to get even busier now with Radiant II starting. There is such and overwhelming amount of video to watch that I think I am getting lost in it. Plus, Life Book 2016 is open for registration! I will wait until end of month to register though. I just paid for Radiant II.
So, I was busy doing my beautiful pieces for BOD. The first one being a faceless face with this great quote and I really like the colors:
The second one is the dark-skinned face. My first. I so much enjoyed creating it:
And the third one was all about learning to appreciate my inner artist and about never saying that I hate my work. She came out far from perfect so this was a great opportunity to practice loving her no matter what. I wrote my promise to her in her hair and then felt all teary and snivelling 🙂 Another discovery I made here is using iridescent medium to activate Neocolors, which made it all shimmery and girly.
I did several pages in my art journal and I am proud to say that for some months now I have been journaling regularly every morning and it feels great. I will leave those for my next post which will be all about “mornings in my art journal” and I feel may become a regular topic on my blog.
I also recorded a new video last week, which is again one of my morning journaling practice. I have to edit it yet, I hope it will also happen next week.
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Difficult week behind me. I had a migraine for two days and took loads of pain killers. Not happy about that at all. And it’s not only those two days with the actual pain, but also a day afterwards that I am not totally back to normal, like I have just come out of a big flue, feeling all weak and wobbly.
Anyway… It was not such bad time for art. I did this beautiful girl for Book of Days. I am very happy with how she turned out. Love her face tone and her lips 🙂
And then I realised that the Art Journal Summer School is over and I still have four lessons to finish. So I managed to do three of them this week. This one is inspired by Picasso. We were supposed to go to a museum and get inspired, but with the headache and lack of time, it was not possible, so I just googled around a bit and thought Picasso is just the right thing for me to try. It was strange to do, but the result is quite right. 🙂
And then this piece with Juna Biagioni. I’ve been for quite some time impressed with her way of doing faces, so this was a great opportunity to learn from her. I am not happy with this, unfortunately, I lost patience and did not quite finish her. I will have to try again. Juna is preparing her own course, which I will definitely take.
Finally, one more lesson from AJSS. This was nice and easy, but somehow got very emotional for me. I really love summer and now when I feel that autumn is approaching I feel truly sad. Just like her.
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So… This week I was finishing with emotional overload and everything settled down and is back to normal. I have made this emotional spread in my art journal:
I really love these two beings together and will probably do more of them soon. I also recorded a video of this page:
Next piece I did after watching Effy Wild’s post in Moon Journaling for August full moon:
It’s representing my hidden inner identity… That’s how it felt at that particular moment 🙂
And then just for fun I did the back cover page of my big art journal, which is almost complete, there are just two more pages to finish:
And one more spread in my art journal which was kind of fun to do:
I filmed that one on the video too:
And then, something new – I have joined Book of Days: Facing Forward with Effy Wild. It’s a six weeks face painting course and this is Week 0 lesson, which is supposed to be the front cover of the journal. For me, it is not, because I already made the cover to this journal before, but the journal was empty otherwise and contains beautiful Fabriano Artistico paper, so I thought it’s perfect for this class 🙂
Finally, I finished one more lesson from Art Journal Summer School. There are four more lessons to go. Actually the school finished, but I am a bit behind, so I have to put some effort into completing it, because I promised to myself that I will do all lessons in this school. And it would do no good not to keep a promise to myself, right?
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Lucy’s coloring book 