Lucy’s coloring book

Color me brightly

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Artist, pattern designer and believer in healing powers of art making.
  • Week 4-10 May 2015

    Week 4-10 May 2015

    Oh, this was quite a sad week, because my computer got broken… I was in the middle of preparing a new video when it happened. So, no video. Also not to much art. I finished week 19 in Life Book 2015:

    Week 19 LB

    I am having a major problem with photos too, because I need to send them by email to myself and then upload them over my work computer. I have ordered a new hard drive for my Mac, but it will take time to arrive and also more time to get everything installed, so I will have to manage like this. And this is not fun 😦

    Enough complaining!

    I’ve been carving stamps this weekend, and it extended to this week too, of course, I am hooked. I carved them before too, but now I got so many ideas for new ones… It will stop too, because I will run out of rubber and it is not easy to find here, I have to order it from the UK, which means shipping costs, which altogether with buying this HD for my computer is not much fun… But then, let’s hope it will all be good and in 2-3 weeks I will have a brand new super fast computer with so much space for my videos and paintings  🙂

    So, no more photos for today. I will photograph the stamps I made and post them next week. I prepared some journal pages, as I was trying  my newly carved stamps on them. So looking forward to enriching them with some faces 🙂

     

  • Week 27 April – 3 May 2015

    Week 27 April – 3 May 2015

    I’ve had quite an arty week, which often happens when I work from home and do not have to waste time traveling to the office… I put a video of my new art journal creation process on YouTube, you can view it here:

    Probably it is not easy to follow the process on the video. That is why I plan to put instructions on my blog next time when I make another journal. Maybe someone will find it useful.

    Then, as you could see from the last post, if you read it, I decorated the front page of the journal, which I also recorded on the video and it can be watched here:

    And then, nothing could stop me from recording another video, this time of the inside of the front cover:

    I thought it’s a good idea to document the whole journaling process on this new journal, so I will be recording page by page as I go. It may be interesting to see in the end, who knows.

    Last week I also finally did one of the Life Book 2015 lessons, which was Week 17. It was very challenging, but I am very pleased with the result:

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    I am sorry now that I did not take photos of work in progress, because they would be really worth seeing. It started as a rather Neanderthal looking, with eyes high in her forehead, but I thought, ok, so what, she will just be who she is. Then, I just could not do it, so I took titanium buff acrylic pain and painted over her whole face. Then I started again. I used clear gesso over the acrylic and so I could draw on top of it. The materials here are charcoal and inktense blocks with some white acrylic, so obviously it would not be possible to use them over acrylic. This girl looked very angry to start with. I guess she was really pissed because I took me so long to make her. At the end she softened, probably happy to be, just as I am 🙂 And yes, her mouth was painted over with white acrylic at some point, and then gessoed over and then done again. Clear gesso became my best friend, I did not know it was so useful and so nice to draw on 🙂

    And finally for the last week, another entry in my new journal:

    IMG_0606The background done with distress ink and distress stains and a new stencil. Then a layer of clear gesso, and then the face over it done with charcoal, inktense blocks and a bit of white acrylic. I left it pretty sketchy. I was a quick art journal page after all. Of course, I filmed it and will post the video this or next week 🙂 And here are some details:

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  • Week 20-26 April 2015

    Week 20-26 April 2015

    Another busy week at work, which means not much art done. There is one art journal page, done with Gelatos, Neocolor IIs and Clarity stamp stamp:

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    The butterflies are die cuts of an old map of Greece from a road atlas, hence the quote. I used both positive and negative. It is kind of cool. I love those butterflies, will have to do more with them. Here is a closeup:

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    Then over the weekend I did this one more page in my art journal. I just started layering color without thinking, was working fast to see what comes out. I am pretty pleased with the result. I finished it in a half an hour or so. If I needed only half an hour per page, I could do a page a day, which would be cool…

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    Then I got an idea that it would be cool if I made my own art journal, so I took 7 pages from my mixed media block, used five for the inside folded in half, which gives me 20 pages. I sew them together and used the other two pages to make the covers. It worked. Now I have an art journal which is approximately A4 in size. Very nice size 🙂 What is best, I recorded the process in the video. I am still working on it, but it will be ready for the next week’s blog post.

    Next thing to do, of course was to start filling in my new journal. So, I started from the start, meaning the front cover. I recorded that one too, and will post it soon. Here are some photos:

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  • Week 13-19 April 2015

    Week 13-19 April 2015

    Spring is definitely here. It was such a nice warm weather this week. I did some gardening: planted some flowers and cleaned grass around my vegetable patch. I prepared wood bark to make the paths around, which I will do next week. I did a bit of art too 🙂 Here is a girl I coloured with color pencils, the first one is work in progress and the second one finished. It took a lot of time, even though the drawing is small. Blending color pencils is not easy, but the result is quite rewarding. I read about it in Jane Davenport’s book. You are supposed to lightly shade the face with colors you want and then to press hard over them with white or some other neutral color and they blend like magic 🙂 The background I did with the stamp which I carved recently and then some gesso and acrylic. I think it looks quite cool…

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    I think I got a bit tired of faces so I turned to my art journal and decided to do something simple. At the same time I wanted to try Twinkling H2Os which I bought in the UK the week before. I have to say that I am not very please with them. The colors are nice, but you need to use a lot to reach nice coverage, which means there is not much pigment inside. Probably I will not buy more of them and will stick to the cosmic shimmer, which are so superior. Anyway, here are the two pages I did in my journal. They are both made with the same stamp that I carved last week too.

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  • Week 6-12 April 2015

    Week 6-12 April 2015

    Oh time is flying! It’s already April and I am sitting only in a t-shirt. YAY! Finally, it’s warm. My lettuce and cabbages are getting eaten by slugs, which is not so yay, but more of a sigh… I was in Cambridge last week and visited two art & craft stores and got me some supplies :). This means I did not have to pay the shipping which saved me some 5-15£ or maybe more, who knows. My obsession with faces continues. I’ve resorted to charcoal and pencil while I was travelling. Here are two face done in Cambridge:

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    For this one the light was really terrible in my hotel room. I was drawing in bed and in the evening, while watching tv at the same time, so she turned out a little dark for my taste…

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    This one I did the last day before travelling back. She is less dark, but maybe needed a bit more work. Ah, well,… I really like her hairdo 🙂

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    This was done yesterday, with charcoal and soft pastel. I rather like the sketchy look.

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    This is something else I did yesterday. I used my new stencil for butterfly and modelling paste and coloured it with twinkling H2Os (my catch from the UK). Used also some NeocolorIIs on the background. Really just an experiment to try the stencil and the watercolors.

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    And finally this lady, also done yesterday. I tried to make her smile, but she just kept puckering on me… LOL! I suppose those lips need to me thinner to smile…

    Oh yes, my Beautiful Faces came on Friday. I am excitedly reading it and slowly trying some new techniques… Oh, happy…

  • Week 30 March – 5 April 2015

    Week 30 March – 5 April 2015

    Oh, this was a very art filled week. I was doing faces and a monthly journal page for March. I also recorded and posted two videos!

    This is the first face (actually face No.4) that I did not finish last week:

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    She has little ears 🙂 and her hair is a bit like mine… The background was done with masking fluid and watercolour.

    Then, I started last week using my new hot pressed paper block and I am enjoying it so much. The paper is great, smooth and can take layers and layers of color and other stuff. I am very happy with it. This is the second piece I did on that paper:

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    I did the face with watercolour and soft pastel, then glued down the napkin around the face and then covered it with some watercolor. The hair is done with scrap paper and glass beads. I thought some quilling elements could give nice texture and dimension to it. I also got a new border punch last week, so I used it for her… Ehm… Shirt 🙂

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    Afterwards, I was thinking maybe I should practice more shading on the face, so I looked around on the Internet for some inspiration. Actually what I used is an IG picture made by Juna Biagioni (she does beautiful faces), and looked at how she shaded her faces. This is the result:

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    There are two layers of watercolour on this one. Then the continuation is this:

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    Face finished with addition of more watercolour, graphite and soft pastel and napkin glued down around. Also, her hair is ready on the left hand side. And here is the finished product:

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    And the final face:

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    I recorded the process for this one. It can be seen here:

    And finally, my journal page for March:

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    I filmed that one too:

  • Week 23-29 March 2015

    Week 23-29 March 2015

    This week I really did not do much art, until the weekend. I wanted to continue with faces, but did not have time all week. Just on Friday i started face No. 4, the one with short hair, but I still haven’t finished it. Parallel to that I did one little piece, which I will call face No. 5, which I quite like:

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    I bought last week a block of Fabriano hot pressed paper to try, and I myst say I love it, It is smooth and beautiful to draw on and does not warp at all. It is little 5″x7″ or 12.5x18cm, but it makes it easy and fast to finish, so I guess I will switch to this for my faces, at least for the time being. I also bought some border punch (used for the border on the picture) and some paper flowers, obviously used for hear, and some napkins, which I covered by ink gold in the background, so you cannot see them 🙂 and some washi tape with roses – those you can see there in the bottom…

    Another piece I did yesterday is for Life Book 2015, lesson by Jane Davenport about inner and outer world:

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    My lady first looked as a body builder with huge upper arm, so I had to stick down some more napkins to trim it down a bit, that is why it lost some of the roundness. Ah, well… I did not see it before I finished the whole thing, but her arm was kind of wider than her waist. LOL! Anyway, this was pretty easy to do once I drew that body. I am quite pleased with it.

    At the same time, I was working on my face No. 4, but I haven’t managed to finish it for today. I will post it next week…

  • Week 16-22 March 2015

    Week 16-22 March 2015

    I did not feel like doing any Life Book 2015 related stuff this week, but I was rather excited by making a new journal in which I will practice painting faces. I have done three this week 🙂 and here they are:

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    Face No. 1 I used graphite pencils, watercolour crayons and gesso on her face and hair. The background has a bit of stencilling done with black modelling paste [cooool…!], over it I pasted some tissue that I used for cleaning brushes and then I used some acrylics and a stamp.

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    Face No. 2 I enjoyed – I discovered that I can use soft pastel on her face to achieve nice smooth blending. Here I used watercolour for the background and pasted butterflies that I cut out from a napkin and then went over it with white acrylics.

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    Face No. 3 I gave her tiny shy eyebrows, I was scared to do them more boldly, but I think they turned out nice, so on next face I might try to use a black pen for eyebrows. Background is done with watercolour and white parts were covered by masking fluid before painting. Her t-shirt I did with Inka Gold and stamped houses over it.

    The next one will have short hair and maybe even ears 🙂 I will start it today…

  • Week 9-15 March 2015

    Week 9-15 March 2015

    And here’s a post about last week, just to make sure that I don’t forget again 🙂

    I managed to finish one of the lessons on Life Book 2015 which I missed some weeks ago. It was about creating a dream catcher using paper doily and paper “feathers”. Here is how it looks:

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    I made the background first glueing a napkin and using pink and gold acrylics over it. I also used some glitter glue in copper color. Then I glued the paper doily and it got pretty lost, because it was thin and you could see the background through it. In order to bring it back to life, I went over it with the white acrylic, which helped. Then I made the feathers from paper and coloured them with gelatos. I went around with a pitt marker to make shadows. Here are some details:

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    The next thing I did over the weekend was a bonus lesson from Tamara representing my inner art guardian… It was a good chance to practice painting face again and I REALLY LOVED it. I did the drawing first and then painted the girl and after that the background. I am really pleased with the face, but the wing was a bit of a challenge really 🙂

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    I also carved my first stamp this weekend, but I forgot to take a photo. It was a nice experience and I will be doing more that’s sure. I just need to get hold of some Lino sheets…

  • Week 2-8 March 2015

    Week 2-8 March 2015

    Yes, I forgot to write the post for last week. I forgot even to put on my to-do list, which is obviously the reason I forgot it in the first place. Or the second place 🙂

    Whatever… I finished on Sunday the gold-leaf project for Life book 2015. It is here:

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    The original assignment was to make a boat on which we would use gold leaf. I was not inspired by that idea, so I thought to make these flowers, using the same pattern I used for the dandelions from the last week. Gold leafing was quite a pleasure, but I talked about it already last week.

    I also finished editing the video about my February Journal page, which can be seen here: