Friday Round Up

29 Faces gals

Face 12

This is Annie; she is the vulnerable little girl within all of us.  Annie looks at life with a question – Am I good enough?  We might be sure of ourselves on the outside and perhaps fool ourselves that we are staunch.  However life curve balls show us that our armour is full of cracks.  Well, that is true of me!!

Face 13

This is Rachael; she hides behind her glasses.  She gives the impression that she is hard and doesn’t care.  However, her glasses hide the ready tears and sadness at the world’s tragedies. 

Last week several people asked about my techniques and whether I use the computer.  Rather than answer individually I decided to show a step by step of one of my faces.

Face 14

I always start any painting with pastel, whether it be acrylic, gouache or whatever.  They are usually gestural if they are to be whimsical as above or more realistic if representational.

Today, I was planning to use mainly acrylics, so I did a wash of gesso and drew into the wet gesso with pastels.  I do that to create a good surface and to create textures – use it fairly thick.

Then I start to use the acrylics, decide what colours I am going to use.  It is still gestural at this stage, I am trying to get the picture to speak to me.  When I start I never have a clear idea what I am going to do.  Then I start to add textures with crumpled tissue (I find that the tissue from old dressmaking patterns is wonderful as it doesn’t dissolve like new tissue paper.  I pick them up from op shops for 50cents).  I use whatever comes to hand, nothing is safe from my paint stained hand!  

Today, I used the kitchen scrubbing brush  to add splodges.  I would have had a photo, but my camera decided it need new batteries and being totally disorganised my spare ones need charging too.  

So this photo is what I did while they were recharging.  The picture on the left I did with pastels, sometimes the urge to carry on with pastel overtakes and then I just use some water colour to finish off.  

At this stage the girl finally started to talk to me.

This is as far as I got today.  I don’t think she is finished yet, her face needs some work.  

When I upload my pictures to the computer I use the computer to crop.  Sometimes I rotate the crop to give an interesting angle. And if I am going to add words I use the text tools as my writing is crap, see the header above!

Even though she needs more work she is talking to me and her name is Mel.  She likes to look at you with those blue as blue eyes and stares into your soul.  You always feel that you can’t hide from her.  She is a wise soul!

Face 15

This is Cindy; she looks at the world with wide eyed wonder.  She is very trusting and believes everything she is told.  In this picture she has just been told about the big bad wolf in the woods!! After doing the pastel I used splodges from the tissue ball with acrylic and stencilled with toile.  (I will show some of my handmade stencils next week).  She is not finished yet.

Mix it Monthly – Trees

Earlier in the week I decided to get out my Sennelier Inks, they are a shellac based ink and create wonderful transparencies and have a gunky feel!  I brought them about 3 years ago and only used them once!  Which is silly as they give a wonderful rich feel to your work.

This has an abstract feel because I got carried away with creating textures.  I started out as a painting of a bush area at a nearby nature reserve.

This is a painting of a Silver Fern the national symbol of NZ.  It is a tree Fern and in certain light the underneath of the leaves seems to be silver.  I just love them.  Sorry Connie I just cannot get my head around the colour scheme this month. But I am working on it!

Art Journal Journey – Living beings

I am cheating here a bit as this colour pencil work I did some years ago, I don’t think I have shown it before.

I once had a tin with a pussy lying on some William Morris material.  One day I decided to try my hand at doing a similar drawing. 

 There was a reason.  When Zana, one of my cats had kittens I kept two of them, Jasper and Lucy.  However, I found having 4 cats too much.  So I decided to find another home for him when he was about 4 months with another family a few streets away.   He settled in well. But at about 6 months he kept on coming back every week day at 10 am on the dot and going at 4 pm, obviously his new owners were out at work and he remembered where there was a nice bed. 

Eventually it stopped.  Except for a period of two weeks when he came for the day for 2 weeks. During these two weeks I did this picture that was 6 years ago.  Well imagine my surprise on Tuesday, there was a meow that was not from my three, I went to the back and there sat Jasper.  He walked in bold as brass, went up to Bro and rubbed his face against his, he went up to Zana, she hissed! Lucy just sat there with eyes wide as saucers.  Then he hopped up on the sofa and had a sleep for 2 hours and disappeared.  I phoned his owners and they were amazed as I!  Wonder when I will see him again?  In another six years?  I wonder if he has been around here at night as I have a cat flap.

Well that’s it for today  Have a great week, I will probably have some for gals for 29 faces on Sunday or Monday.

I am also linking up with

Paint Party Friday hosted by Eva and Kirstin.

Art Journal Journey hosted by Valerie and Susi

Mix It Monthly hosted by Connie