Femininity.

I created a painting last night... as I painted it  I got lost in thought. I was painting by white xmas string lights, alone in my living room, late into the night. I was frustrated and I restarted the painting a handful of times, covering my work with new colors and shapes while it was all still wet probably why I went to bed with such an ugly set of colors. As the girl formed my thoughts drifted to my body, and my femininity, and my "power" as a woman and how easily that power was taken from me as a girl. I often think of my body in a sort of abstract sense.. or at least not as an object or a way of representing who I am. It's just a vessel I walk around in. I often find myself perplexed with the overwhelming insecurity of others in regards to how people see them, or judge their appearance. I think somewhere in my life I disconnected with my body, at least it's aesthetic appeal. I more want to blend physically, and to not stand out. It's probably rooted from the odd shame I had pushed on me because I hit puberty before I had the maturity or understanding of modesty and sexuality in general. Or because before I was even a teenager I was shown that just by having a body, and breasts, and wearing any sort of clothing, I was somehow enticing men to assault or harass me. And society tells you its your fault, even if you are 10, or 65. Sometimes I feel like my art is a subconscious attempt to reconnect with my innocent femininity, the part of my life that was stolen from me without me ever realizing it. To feel love and empowerment from my womanhood... when I had my son I learned to appreciate my powerful body, though my pregnancy changed my body immensely and I was more attractive in society's eyes anyway, before I had him.... I love myself much more now.. anyway.. I think for me this art actually means something deeper. Both the shame and empowerment of the feminine form.

Thanks for looking.

Inspired.

This Year, I decided I wanted to focus simultaneously  on "beginnings" and on finishing, or at least following through. The idea of learning new things and working on mastering/practicing the things I know. Expressing emotion through skill, gaining understanding of my own creative limits. Renewal, the cyclic nature of the creative process, etc. My stepson suggested I used the symbol Ouroboros for my fous, at first I wasn't convinced and then I read this ....

"often taken to symbolize introspection, the eternal return or cyclicality,^[4] especially in the sense of something constantly re-creating itself. It also represents the infinite cycle of nature's endless creation and destruction, life and death and despair"

Which to me, sounds like the process of art itself. There are also some cycles in my life I'd like to both finish and begin, some emotional patterns that I'd like to shed away and some things I would like to come into fruition so I can move on to other cycles and goals. 

Aaanyway, my first goal of the year was to find a way to express my art in a more free sense. Expression in a raw way, led by my heart rather than my brain. Well, my natural process is half and half, but I wanted more soul and rawness. And honestly, just something differeng. So I came across Mindy Lacefield's class randomly on Facebook, I saw it was discounted and I've been struggling to find a class that I'd like... I've never done an online course. I love Mindy's style but I've never painted like that, the description of painting from the soul was so alluring, so without further research I asked Rob to buy it for me. It was afterwards that I read the description  and I panicked, omg, I can't do this! Working big, using an easel, acrylic paint! Ah! Anyway, I'm thankful I didn't read the description because my self doubt would have held me back and I'm thankful to this class for giving me a new perspective! I went on a creation frenzy and painted 5 paintings for the first class, here they are. 

I'm really happy with the expressive quality of them, along with the hint of a more Jennie style. Jennie-ish, it's in there somewhere, lol. Anyway you can check out Mindy's class here

 https://www.etsy.com/listing/495843309/let-the-paint-speak-online-class


Happy new year! Let me know if you have a word or focus of the new year! 

Art journal collection

So, I recently finished an art journal! I love/hate finishing journals, I love that feeling of success and completion, but then I miss the journal, I miss that familiarity, the paper I've gotten so used to, the pages I've gotten accustomed to flipping by. I've made journals out of books, composition notebooks, I've done watercolor in sketchbooks with thin paper that doesn't absorb right, I've used a variety of mixed media journals,some handmade watercolor journals. I love the Strathmore  mixed media paper but somehow my most loved journals are the difficult ones, the ones I have to adjust to, to step away from my beloved watercolor (with tons of layering and wash after wash after wash) ...they stretch my skills and abilities and teach me new ways of using things I already love. Aannyway! to celebrate my finished journal I looked through my previously completed journals, and the half filled ones I go back to from time to time. I have a journal with half started image transfers, and several with filled gessoed pages waiting on some acrylic or oil pastel or whatever mixed media I decide to do. I took some pictures to share some pages from each journal with you guys!

This one is soo old, showcasing my love for neon gelly roll pens.

Watercolor and collage

This was a fun image transfer project, I love my image transfer journal so much! sweet freedom. 

This is mixed media in my image transfer book. 

All my books 

There you go! what do you do with your old journals? I am thinking I need my own artsy bookshelf to showcase them on. 

Mixed media art process photos, The girl with rainbow freckles.

So the other day I was sitting around in the middle of a huge spurt of creative energy, and I thought I wonder if you can make splatter, painterly style rainbow freckles. Now in your head I imagined taking a larger brush with a rainbow of paint and splattering it all at once. This wouldn't work, I didn't try.so for fear of failure buto also because my favorite place to experiment is in my journal, I got my journal out and made up a face and tried it out. I have no idea how the girl in my journal ended up so.... red. I intended to create a rather dull greyish face and add the rainbow of freckles as contrast. But honestly, I'm awful at keeping things neutral. The spray of colors turned out.... ok? But not what I wanted, so I added some neon pen freckles to brighten her up.

This is my journal page practice! 

Today I made it my mission to recreate her, in small form, for my wall or to sell on etsy possibly with the other 6 by 6 paintings I'm doing. I have never recreated anything before, I'm not a planner, I tend to work intuitively, and it's hard! So I opened up my journal and set the first one next to me. I opened up my photo inspiration board on pinterest and found a face I liked and I got to work. I started out again trying to make a grey face, which didn't work in the end. In this face I only used three paints. A premixed red that had a couple different tones, paynes grey and black. I used a rainbow of color for the splatters and a red, grey and black colored pencil for details, white pen and green for her eyes. That's it!

First is the outline. All my paintings look like this right away, I don't add eye details until later 

Then I add some color. Before I added that red it was all paynes grey, I just couldn't still with it! I should have taken one more picture between this one and the next.

Next I added her hair. Usually hair is after skin for me but I didn't want to overdue the red on her face. I add shadows and lips and struggle with white space.

Eye details, I added the freckles, adding all the black lines at this point. 

And adding white!it's simple but it takes so many layers of watercolor! Here I add all the colored pencil, shade extra with red and grey pencils, I look back at the picture to see if anything looks wonky, try to straighten things up. 

Aren't the freckles cute? 

It's been awhile! Art Journal Fun!

I have been neglecting my poor ole blog! Lots of things have happened. I moved, I opened an etsy shop! I stopped running the art group :/ I developed a sort of style, inspired by tons of artists and creative technique. I found my favorite supplies to use (watercolors, yummy) I still work every day on progressing my style and also my ability, practicing features and composition and pattern and detail. I still have so far to go! I've been enjoying destroying a small sketchbook with watercolor and pen and other fun stuff. It hates the watercolor, it doesn't absorb right, it kills the paper, but for some reason I really love it. Here are a few examples, I'm enjoying testing out new supplies and techniques in my journal, I should really invest in a nice watercolor art journal but ehh, I will just beat this one up for a while longer.
 


Anyway,  am thinking of doing some art challenges but I want to know where to find them! Let me know if you have any warm up art exercises, fun techniques to try, art challenges to partake in!

Art "Recipe" Challenge!

So, I was sitting around not making art. It sucks, not making art. It really sucks. I was trying to think of a way to involve myself in the group I started, loved, and used to enjoy so much, but have lost touch with, without taking on commitments I couldn't keep. I have made like 4 pieces of art in.. months. Maybe something every month. So I was cruising around pinterest and I saw someone who does "art recipes" ...I think she does tutorials, I didn't really look at the process so much, I just saw the photos of supplies and the end result, and I thought this would be a cool way to challenge myself and the group, and participate in a way that was both self satisfying and interactive. I got some volunteers and we came up with recipe for all of us to follow, in different ways.

The Challenge.
Create a piece of art using (only) Paint (one kind of your choice), Collage Materials, Pen, Washi Tape, and Gesso. And (optional) use a warm toned palate (red, orange, yellow, pink)

My Take.

Materials..

I used an Elle Magazine for my collage materials, I got some adds out of it, cut some flowers, used a girls face for an image transfer, I also used a bird stamp I got from a girl from the group, she sent them to me on deli paper. I used three kinds of washi. One skull, one flower and some pointing fingers. For my paint I picked three colors from QOR high chroma watercolor set I have, Gold Green, Quinacridone Magenta and Transparent Pyrrole Orange. I couldn't find my Gesso so I just used some white acrylic paint. I used some gelly roll pens and my favorite black and white pens, and one paint marker that was kind of a cheat. 

My project.

I am upset that I didn't save any of the process photos. This started as an orange and pink watercolor background. I went over the area where I wanted her face to be with the white acrylic (gesso replacement) before putting it down. I transferred her face. It came off really well, so I just made my lines, I changed her eye shape a little and she wasn't really in this position, she had a lot of hair (it was a hair add) I didn't add much paint to her face, I added a little pink to her cheeks and her lips, the green to her eyes. I was going to give her sugar skull makeup, her eyes were so perfect for it.. but it just took it's own life. I darkened the background with the magenta and orange watercolors, I can't believe how deeply colored it is, its such an awesome color. Then I had to deal with her hair. I made up an imaginary shape and couldn't decide what to do with it. I added the bird for contrast and then afterwords I gave her a flower crown. That's it! I can't wait to see what you can do with these materials! Have fun. 

Oh, by the way, if you share on social media, we are going to use the hashtags #freereignart and #aehml if you want to use them, you are welcome to! It might be fun to see everyone's art that way. You can post your art challenge projects in the group, feel free to write a blog post so we can share your post on our pinterest board. And share with us on instagram or whatever you use :P 

A strange view of "Old Hollywood"

I made this art for a swap for my facebook group. I did not entirely intend to sign up for this swap, I spent a long time avoiding getting started. I kept thinking I would do an image transfer and intensify the contrast with paint or whatever and keep it at that. But it was boring to me so I avoided it, and avoided it, and avoided it and.. you get the point.

So, the Documented Life Project is a group on facebook. They do weekly prompts. I will be completely honest and say I am not keeping up with them, but occasionally the prompts will inspire something else, something completely different, and I use them to "begin" projects.

So, here I was. Tonight, sitting. I had been browsing through the DLP feed, looking at a lot of splattery-drippy art. I had printed out some old hollywood actresses, I decided to just go for it. I started to spatter and flick and drip watercolor, I smeared some inktense across the wet drips and extra water, I used some gelatos, the background was fun. Once the background was done, dryish, I decided to try my first inkjet printed image transfer. Here was the result. 

At this point, it looks good. Its not dramatic enough for me, so, I attempt to play up the contrast, and add extra drippy splatterness. 

almost there! Added pen, added black watercolor to her body area, it went crazy! The paper was left after the image transfer it soaked 

I don't know why I felt like it had to have purple... but I so did. I could not stop myself. Anyway, I hope my partner will enjoy my strange interpretation of the "Old Hollywood" theme. I had fun making it.