Careful - Your face will freeze like that!

Did your mother ever tell you this?  Mine certainly did.  Kids love to make faces. Apparently some adults do as well with all the duck face selfies I see on the web.  Never got that, nor do I understand it, and I have a niece or two I think needs to hear that old axiom -- Careful, your face will freeze like that!  Most of the time, I feel good when I can make a 'good' face for a picture.  Must less making a ducky one!


And speaking of faces, drawing or painting faces is my bane.  So much trouble with perspective, spacing, shapes, roundness.  I want to draw whimsical faces. I want to draw faces that look real. I want to include faces in my art and in my art journals.  And the good Lord knows I keep practicing (they say it does make perfect, doesn't it?).  Well, I finally did it.  I drew a face that looks like a face. Not a circle. Not comic. A face. 

Art by Nika Rouss

And I credit inspiration from Nika Rouss at Nika in Wonderland for making me actually stop and think about the construction of a face.  It has never before occurred to me to draw half a face.  But Nika posted an absolutely stunning watercolor on her page here, (along with many others) and in my art journaling group, Artful Journeys  that for whatever reason, made my lightbulb go off.  I get so few of these moments, I had to act upon it immediately.  Isn't she just gorgeous?

When I can visually see something, I can pretty well draw it, or something reasonably close to it. But if I have to make something up from memory, well, the results can be pretty disappointing.  So I called up Nika's beautiful painting on my computer screen, I got out my large Dylusions journal and turned to a page with some leftover mop up paint.  I spritzed and sprayed some assorted Dylusions sprays on top of the acrylic paint, and put down a base layer of paint, then using my TCW Flower Frenzy stencil, added some of the stencil around the page as a base layer.
 
Anxious to get underway, I grabbed a sketch pencil and did a rough face outline and started on the eye.  Now I have practiced drawing eyes over and over and over.  I can always get the right side of the face pretty well, but the left side is always a bit wonky.  (My left side is completely challenged in every way, but that's a whole other story).  So this concept of a one-sided face really appealed to me.


When I got the basic shape of the face, the first layer of my TCW Flower Frenzy stencil was really speaking to me for her hair.  As I finished up the eye, with several erasures, and finally settled on a nose shape (real, lifelike noses still elude me), I grabbed up my stencil again and this time I used Polished Jade Dylusions sprays and extended her hair over both sides of the spread. I love how the color changes on the stencil when flipped over and on top of the alcohol ink as it progresses across the page.

I finished off her eye with Caran D'Ache NeoColor II and titanium white acrylic and the face with a Stabilo All pencil and a smidgeon of Cadmium Red Light and white acrylic.

I used some advertising words found in a magazine as the quote on the page, and outlined those as well with NeoColor II in black, dark blue and lime green.

The fun part about using the Stabilo All pencil was the ability to smudge and shade using my finger.  Granted, it is far from perfect, but for me, it IS perfect.  And the TCW Flower Frenzy Stencil was just the right size and flexible enough for me to bend and shape it around as her hair.  This is the closest to a real looking face I have ever drawn.  I will keep practicing, and one of these days I might actually draw an entire face.  But for now, I'm super happy with a one sided face.  I made progress, so practice does pay!

So go out there, practice drawing ordinary, everyday things. Sketch faces. Practice those noses, eyes and lips.  One day we'll all be drawing and painting fun and exciting faces. This day was my best yet.  Show me yours!

As always, keep it artful!

ARTY AUNTIE
~Betty

Artful Journeys - Week #33 "Bad Poetry"

What a week this has been.  I had a big spurt of creativity following a busy week with errands, grown up stuff and some real work.  It has been so hot here this past week, we are all suffering, and trying to hide out inside as much as we can. But thankfully, the last couple of days we have not broken 100 degrees F.  Our version of a cold front.  But I digress...

This week at Artful Journeys, our prompt for you is to create a spread using "Bad Poetry".  The concept of this prompt is to generally select a central image and then find random words or phrases (or let the image dictate your selection of words) in magazines, cut them out and include them on your spread.  You can go wild with this. It isn't supposed to make a whole lot of sense, but you would be amazed at how your mind works and puts words and phrases together that make sense on your spread.

My spread actually started with the cartoon image I had saved from a Geico advertisement. Then, while sifting through my box of clipped images, the clock showed up and I knew (why?) that this is what I wanted to work with.  I pulled out my box of found words, deciding on the above.

I worked really hard on this page.  I have always had trouble with the JAM philosophy (just add more) for fear of really messing up my hard work.  But this time, it created some magic for me!  Hooray!


I started the spread in my 9x12 Canson mixed media journal that I started at the beginning of the year and only has about 15 pages left before it is full!

I began by gluing down some dictionary pages that I tore all the margin edges off and fitted them to the page and affixed with gel medium.  I then tore some sheet music and placed them randomly across the page. Then, I added some random flower and leaf punch cuts on the page. The color didn't matter since I knew paint was going on top of them, and this would help to create texture on the page.

Next, I spritzed Dylusions Inks in Fresh Squeezed Orange and Funky Fuscia, followed by sealing with some hairspray, knowing I would be adding more wet media! (Dylusions Inks reactivate when wet).  I added some Bright Magenta & Spice Orange fluid acrylic on top of that with a baby wipe, and some Dylusions Acrylic in Sunshine Yellow with a credit card, blending as I went.

I was satisfied with the color of the background and moved on to stenciling.  The clock stencil is by Fab Stencils and it was applied with a watered down Titanium White acrylic with a cosmetic sponge, dipped and the dabbed off the excess onto my mop up paper.  I then added the square stencil, and added some black into the white to create a tonal gray and stenciled a little bit more for some darker contrast.

Now to play with my clippings.  I wanted that cartoon Muppet to be hanging off that clock, and that was a chore. I ended up having to work to fit him around that clock, glued him to the back and then affixed the whole thing to page with gel medium.  Sadly, I accidentally scraped across the clock and Muppet and distorted the image a little bit.  Words affixed to the page and outlined with a black china marker.

I am rather pleased with how it turned out.  The "poetry" is really bad, but somehow the whole thing works together.

Hopefully this gives you a little jolt of inspiration for your spread!

Have a great week!
Arty Auntie
~~Betty