Today is full of possibilities...

Welcome to my blog everyone and thank you for taking the time to come by. I hope July is going well for you....
I am going to share a little portrait with you that went through a few transformations along the way:

It was done as part of my Children of the Wild class with Kate Thomson and is based on the first full scale painting she guided us to do. The title of the class relates to the fact that all the paintings are based on children and their connection to animals, and this particular painting was based on a story around a girl with a birds nest on her head.
Here is the first stage, including the nest, the whole thing was taken from Kate's example.

Here is a close up of the nest, I left it quite loose and scribbly as I thought I would paint over it eventually anyway.:

This is Kate's painting that mine was based on, you can see I took a rather different interpretation, though I applied many of the same techniques.

Kate's picture is is on her Pinterest, so as it is public anyway, I think I can show it here too.

Anyway, I love Kate's original but as I am not really into the whole children with animals growing out of them thing, I decided to paint and draw over the bird's nest and add some further background elements, stamping and a sentiment,  to my version, so that is how I landed up here:

I now think I should have left alone with the sentiment, but there is always a next time, live and learn as they say....

Well that's it, thanks for your visit like always and hope you will find some time to do something creative today!

Until next time

xxxxx

Creating substrates and an experiment

Hello all and thanks for dropping in. I am still hugely enjoying doing an online class with Kate Thomson called Children of the Wild. In one of the many videos Kate shows how to make amazing mixed media backgrounds and I had great fun experimenting. Here is a little portrait I did on one of them.

The backgrounds are very textured, so doing the portrait straight on top, was not easy, I think a next time I would do that differently. But, - you live and learn. Below some further substrate examples:

Kate suggests to do these on old ledger paper, but I don't have any of that, so instead I used some 12 by 12 scrapbook papers with a ledger like background. As the techniques are part of the class, I can't really share them, but here are some more samples:

I used chalk paints mostly Decoart and Paper Artsy and played around with a muted colour palette which I think suite these techniques so well. Obviously stamps and stencils play a part as well.

Kate's site is called Fractured Angelics. I so love the "fractured" elements she uses in her work and shows examples of in her class.

Here is a smaller piece, started as a 12 by 12 and then cut into smaller parts. I incorporated more blue and quin. gold in these ones.

Here is another cut part of the same piece and my portrait was done on one of the other smaller pieces.

Here you can see just how much texture there was on the substrate, - kind of obvious it was going to be hard to draw straight onto that, but I just had to give it a go. I used pencil, stabilo All and tinted charcoal for the drawing.

This is probably my favourite bit of the piece, I love how the colours work against the stencilled bits.

Anyway, that's it for now, I'll experiment some more, so stay tuned :o).

Thanks for your visit like always and have fun with being creative!

xxx

Children of the Wild part two

The course I was telling you about in my previous post is all about children and their connection with animals using loads of cool mixed media techniques (the main reason why I decided to do this course).

In the lead up to the full project, there are several practice exercises, using different materials and techniques. Last time I chose to do a child's portrait to practice (I love drawing/painting children's faces), - I am pretty hopeless at doing animals, so in a way that was a cop out. So here are my next two studies/practice pieces, this time using a wild cat....

For this one I used Kate Thomson's sample painting and just drew along with her video.I used lead pencil, Stabilo All pencil, white acrylic, gesso, black India Ink, white soft  pastel crayon. We were meant to use a white oil bar, but I don't have those, so just using what I have.

Here a coloured version, for this one I used a reference photo, again I did not have half the stuff we were meant to use, so used what I had, pencil, Stabilo All, White acrylic and various soft pastels, a white gel pen and a black permanent pen.

It's really good practice to do the same animal in different ways, you get a much better feel for them.

Thank you for indulging me with my arty efforts, hope I am not boring you to tears. The link to the course can be found in my first post on this topic.

Nearly the weekend, I am feeling a bit desperate about the results of the referendum here in the UK, but democracy has ruled and now we will have to live with the results. Hope you have a good weekend!

xxxxx

Children of the Wild

Hello all, just a super quick post from me today as I wanted to share a first project that I did from a new online class I plan to really get into over the summer. The Class is called Children of the Wild, by Kate Thomson, hence the title of my post.

The class can be found on the Jeanne Oliver Ning site, - here is a link: http://jeanneoliver.ning.com/group/children-of-the-wild

I have only watched the first video, and this was just a little bit of fun play, using an inspiration photo she shared and just part of her very first technique. I did the little portrait on an old tag that was flying around.

I just used, gesso, a normal HB pencil, a Stabilo  All pencil and a mix of gesso and white acrylic paint. Kate uses way more products in her sample piece and I hope to get into that soon.

Well that's it, thanks for dropping in and see you next time!

xxxxx