Lucy’s coloring book

Color me brightly

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Artist, pattern designer and believer in healing powers of art making.
  • Weeks 17-30 August 2015

    Weeks 17-30 August 2015

    Obviously, I have forgotten to write a blog post last week 😦

    I remembered on Sunday, and I thought I would do it then. So it’s Wednesday and I obviously took my time again, so I may as well do the two together 🙂

    My last week was extremely busy and emotional, and no wonder I forgot about blogging. I had two visits to the dentist and no visit to Art Store…. And then I met a friend whom I haven’t seen in eight years and that triggered lots of not so nice memories and loads of emotions I needed to work through. But I am happy to report that all is fine and, with a little help of my art making I feel wonderful again.

    So, let me give you photos from last two weeks. The first is this one which I did in my small journal. I used some oil based printing paint (white you see on the borders). I was very excited about that because I wanted so much to use white color for stamping and wanted it to be real paint and not ink pad. It kind of works, but it takes ages to dry (3-4 days) which is not acceptable amount of time if you are stamping into your art journal… Seriously…

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    Then I did some stamp carving. I am very excited about the result:

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    This was done on the front cover of my new big journal with beautiful Fabriano hot pressed watercolour paper. Yum! I started colouring it, then it did not really work, so I keep playing and layering and this is how it ended:

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    After lots of layers, I stamped again on top, but this time with the white acrylic paint mixed with some retardant medium. It serves to slow down the drying of acrylic paint, so that you can keep stamping repeatedly for some  15-20 minutes. Just what I needed. Good bye oil paint! Perfect!

    The next thing I did was a rather quick painting of Minerva (goddess of wisdom) for Life Book 2015 class. I felt really inspired to do it, so it was happy easy and quick painting:

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    After that, I did two pieces for Art Journal Summer School:

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    This one with collage birds, which was not really exciting, you can see… I simply do not like doing birds…

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    And this one which was really cute and I love it and I will probably do more. It’s quickly done, but somehow looks really funny. I decided to add a little story, somehow felt that it must be their story 🙂

    And then, as I said, I met that friend of mine and was filled with emotions to bursting so the following two pages were therapeutic and are extremely precious to me:

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    Yes, there is a spelling mistake. Like many other people, I suddenly lose the skill of spelling correctly when writing slowly… 🙂

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    This one is my most loved page in my journal until now…

    Again, I am amazed at how art making helps with de-stressing and putting things in perspective. I have no idea what happens in the process, but it works. Just listening to your intuition and letting go, without aim and without a precise idea of what you want to create. It’s meditative and it’s healing and it’s so rewarding… Long live art journaling! 🙂

  • Week 10-16 August 2015

    Week 10-16 August 2015

    The week started badly with a migraine headache from Saturday to Monday. On Tuesday I was just about getting over it and I had to go to the dentist. The dentist visit was hard enough, so I absolutely had to reward myself with a visit to the Art Shop nearby (this makes visits to dentist almost to look forward to…). Er… No! Anyway…

    I bought those marvellous Sennelier oil pastels two weeks ago and I tried them in my journal:

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    The pastels are great, creamy and they layer so nicely. Amazing. I used a bit of gesso and a toothpick for doodles. When I finished, I realised that I absolutely have to seal it, because it would stick to the previous page. So, as I did not have any oil pastel fixative, I used acrylic varnish. Ugh! It leaked through the paper to the other side and smeared the pastel. It kinda worked for sealing, but was very messy. Then when it dried, it was sticky, so I had to put some talcum powder over it and then it finally was ok. I read on the internet that Sennelier has a spray for sealing the oil pastel, but some users reported that it actually did not work for them. So I decided to save myself from spending money on something that may not work and stick to the varnish, preferably water based.

    So you can imagine my pleasant surprise when I saw this in the Art Store:

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    It’s actually paper for oil pastel plus transparent glossy sheets between them, which makes sealing totally unnecessary, unless you want to tear sheets out of the block, which I usually don’t do. So, happily, I tried it out:

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    Amazing! The paper gets some getting used to, actually I realized that I could not smear the thin layer of pastel at all on it unless I put a layer of gesso first. I use gesso anyway, so it did not take long to figure it out. This is obviously unfinished and I haven’t worked on it since, as I started some other projects. But it was a pleasant activity, to be continued…

    And one of the other projects is another flowery doodly spread in my art journal:

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    I had to place glass on my desk to protect it from paint. Unfortunately I had a painful realisation that the desktop is not smooth, but kind of rough and perfect for getting paint into the ridges and never getting it out. Hence the reflection on the photo… I used an unusual color combination, but it worked and I really enjoyed this. Here is a detail:

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  • Week 3-9 August 2015

    Week 3-9 August 2015

    Yet another artful week :). I was mostly involved with the AJSS. This is a lesson about flower doodles. I had a background that was already started and I did not know how to continue, so I thought this was just the right thing. But then I started adding colors to flowers and the color scheme was all wrong, so I had to repaint them several times, until I got finally to the point where colors looked at peace with each other. People in the group quite liked it, I must say. People like lots of color 🙂

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    This next piece is another lesson, which was, of course, about lettering and choosing a summer message. I was not very inventive with the message, but I though Summer stay forever would do :). I made it over pages where I tested some hand-made stamps, which contributed to texture. I quite enjoyed this.

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    And finally the last page I did for the school, which was all about doodling again, but this time the challenge was to do some field journaling. I collected lots of leaves on my morning walks and sketched them in a journal (which was promoted to “my field journal”) and then I copied this particular leaf on this page and voila! The writing is supposed to describe what I am grateful for at that moment. I made it more general (because I did not feel so grateful at the moment to fill the whole page), so I wrote things that I am grateful for in the summer 🙂 I really loved this exercise, and I think I will do more, in my field journal, of course.

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    And then I missed doing a face painting 🙂 and I thought why not pull out my watercolour box and play a bit. This is the result:

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    And then on Friday I went to the art store and found these beauties:

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    So, I said, what the hell, I am having them… All I can say now is that they are AMAZING. More details next time 🙂

  • Week 27 July – 2 August 2015

    Week 27 July – 2 August 2015

    This week I decided that it’s time to finish two mandalas which I started some time ago. Here they are:

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    Then, it was quite a stressful week and I had to do some things that I really did not want to do, which left me quite exhausted and disturbed. I finished them and all is fine again and I am happy that I dealt with them. 🙂 So, i had to do some journaling to help me deal with those. Actually, I do not know if it helps really, but at least I do discharge some of the anxiety caused by thinking about things I do not want to do… In any case, no matter what is the underlying principle, it makes me feel better. Here is the journal page done in distress last week:

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    Finally, there was a bonus lesson in Lifebook 2015 this week, which means a short video and easy task. This time it was making your hamsa hand. I guess it just kind of rounded up this stressful week for me, as it is supposed to be a protection symbol. Here it is:

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  • Week 20-26 July 2015

    Week 20-26 July 2015

    I’ve had quite a busy week, artwise. Before I went on holiday I bought some alcohol inks to play with. I did not take them with me to holiday, because I had other plans. So I was so excited when I came back and saw them waiting for me at my desk. There was a little problem though: paper. In order to flow properly, they need glossy, non-absorbent surface, and of course, I did not have any. Why would I have glossy paper, when I use watercolor and acrylic?! So… I opened my journal and covered a page with gel medium… And it worked! I made these two:

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    It was quite ok, but the ink would not really flow, I had to blow it around, so no control whatsoever. Of course, I had to do something, and something meant going to the art shop for something glossy :). All I could find was glossy cardstock, so I bought several sheets, which were kind of A5 format. I wanted bigger, but I was not that lucky.

    This is the next one I did:

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    So, the difference is obviously quite remarkable. It is flowing, very much flowing… Beautiful 🙂 No need to blow…

    I was very happy with all that, so I recorded a video;

    Next I finished a piece for Art Journal Summer School which was about creating animals from wash tape:

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    And then a lesson for Life Book 2015, which was about intuitive layering:

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    And to end with, I made another entry into my art journal about elephants and whales being killed by people… It’s what the writing is about which is probable not possible to read… I was triggered by the elephant stencil I received from ClarityStamp and a post about whales being killed in some traditional event on Faroe Islands. Anyway… It turned out nice and I really love it. Plus it looks quite cool on my new black desk 😉

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  • Week 13-19 July 2015

    Week 13-19 July 2015

    This was one hell of a week. At least temperature wise. I was in Croatia at the seaside and it was not pleasant. Apart from swimming and soaking in the sea, everything else was just too much effort. Nights were the worst: trying to sleep and not being able to because sheets are too hot and the air does not move. Consequently, not much art was done. Just two pieces from Art Journal Summer School:

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    A collage describing a day of my holiday, actually the travel day. I met a friend in Split and we went to a cake place to have coffee (I had water, of course). I collected some promotional cards there and used them for my collage. Not really my piece of cake to document my life in such a way, but it was easy enough to do in that heat..

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    And this is another lesson. It was about using stencils and layering with stencils. I made some notes about my holiday the heat and mosquitos. 🙂

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    And finally, a lesson from Life Book 2015. This was so much fun to do. The face started as a collage from a magazine and I painted over it to make it my own. I really enjoyed that one. I started it before going on holiday and it was almost done, just some final touches were missing, so  I just finished it there.

    On Saturday we headed back and this was what my car thermometer measured somewhere on Croatian highway:

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  • Week 6-12 June 2015

    Week 6-12 June 2015

    This week I started Art Journal Summer School. It’s quite nice, the lessons are short and simple, easy to do in this hot weather. Here are my things from Week 1:

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    A quick summer girl from lesson by Iris from Iris Impressions.

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    And two playful lessons by Marieke.

    I have been working on a new lesson from Life Book 2015 and a new mandala, but haven’t finished any of those yet. It’s been incredibly hot lately, so I do not feel like doing anything really… Dreaming of a long cooling rain…

  • Week 29 June – 5 July 2015

    Week 29 June – 5 July 2015

    It was a happy week. I am saying that because even though it was my “go to office” week when I usually don’t manage much of my art, I anyway did find time to create. That makes me very happy. The first thing I did is this little art journal entry:

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    I used gelatos for background and then drew the face over with Derwent drawing pencils and gesso. The pink and gold (which seems green on the shells and face are done with color pencils. Finally, the stamp is from ClarityStamp. It was done quickly, but I am really happy with how the face turned out.

    On the opposite page of my journal, while waiting for paint to dry on the face, I did this mandala drawing with color pencils. Oh, it was such a bliss to do mandala again. I have no idea why I stopped drawing them. It’s pure happiness. I used black and white pens for doodles and borders after I finished with color pencils.

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    And then, jus because it made me so happy, I drew another one. The same process as above…

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  • 22-28 June 2015

    22-28 June 2015

    Hello World!

    I am not going to let this week slip by without the blog post, eve though I have a lot of work and keep postponing the blogging. So, here it comes.

    Last week was really productive, I recorded two more videos. One is a black and white face done with charcoal and gesso on a colorful background:

    The other one is a two page spread in my art journal, done with acrylics, a photo of my older artwork, modelling paste, hand made stencil…. There is a face also, actually a moon face, done quickly, but it turned out rather nice.

    Here’s the closeup of the moon face 🙂

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  • 11 May – 21 June 2015

    11 May – 21 June 2015

    Ok, this was a major issue with my computer, so i stopped all activities on my social media, except Instagram. Since last week everything is back to normal. I have got a new hard drive and I have managed to save all my photos an videos, so it’s all nice again.

    I guess I cannot possibly post all the work I have done during this period, so let’s just start with the latest.

    I have made a new art journal:

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    Here it is, on top of my old one. I have to say that this is so far the most successful binding I did 🙂 I am really rather proud of myself. I already started using it, however I am not posting anything from it yet. What I am going to show here is the front cover which I made over the weekend:

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    I so much like all the contrast of that page. Black and white are striking and all the bright colors are even brighter. I did hesitate a bit with the cover, because I did not have a good idea what to do, but then we got this lesson on Lifebook 2015 about how to make stencils, or better to say masks. I did my own stencils before, and I was planning to do some masks too, so this lesson came at the right time.

    This is the piece I did for Lifebook 2015 for the lesson about stencils:

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    I enjoyed that one and I think there is long time ahead filled with cutting and masking and adding black and white doodles 🙂

    The next piece is another lesson from Lifebook 2015 – Male Angel. Mine does not look too much like an angel. I was supposed to give it a wing, but it seems to me that I am not very much an angel person, and the idea of a male angel is even less appealing, so no wings for him. I like him anyway.

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    And finally, I have uploaded the video I prepared long ago, but it stayed imprisoned on my corrupted external drive. Here it is: