In the Bag

Today I amused myself by making a spring bag.  This is from a 'Lazy Girl' pattern.  It was my first time trying the pattern and of course I made several mistakes, but the next one will be easy.  I didn't really like the way some of the seams were visible inside the bag, so I may have to rethink the instructions a little.  Still, it's very cheerful and I like the 6 pockets on the outside...

Taking Flight 4

The second winged lady is done... it's much better, although not great...still don't seem to have all the right stuff - and of course there's that little problem with the fact that I can't draw!!

Also, I'm getting my own ideas, and I want to try a couple of those

now, then I'll move on to the next project in Kelly Rae Robert's book.

Taking Flight 3

Well, I did as much as I can on my 2nd winged lady today... now I have to wait for the oil paint to dry.  I forgot to sand the face area again before putting on the oil paint, and I still don't see how to put it on smoothly. I have to run out and get some linseed oil to clean my hands and the brush I tried to smooth it with. I tried heating it with a hair dryer because I heard it had a wax component and thought it might melt smooth. Didn't really work...

So, tomorrow, I'll be able to add the face and the hair.  I need some kind of pen to write a 'message' on it.  I'm not really sure what that message is, but I'm leaning toward 'try', or some kind of quote related to 'try'. Anyway, I like this one much better.  The background papers were from a hymnal and an atlas. The paints are a more subtle (not primary) palette.  I used my cheap acrylics, because I had a better variety of colors.  I put something more interesting under the skirt - just words from Oprah magazine, but better.    I also had the charcoal pencil, which smeared nicely!

Taking Flight 2

I finished my 'winged lady' this morning per the instructions in Kelly Rae Robert's book Taking Flight. 

I like her.  I especially like the gray hair... all the ladies I make will have gray hair, an homage to all us grandma's that decide to get creative a little later in life. 

This was my first try with the Shiva Paintstix... I was very pleased with how easy it was to blend them with my finger, I only had three, so the face is painted on, which is different from the instructions, but I thought it came out well.  I'll get black and red paintstix before the next project.  It's a good thing the art store guy told me about the 'skin' on the paintstix,  I don't know how long I would have tried to use them as crayons without getting any paint on the paper.

I didn't have a 'Stabilo' black pencil or a graphite pencil, so the wings are lined in black paint instead of a more charcoal like line.. The yellow body is huge! don't know what I was thinking... also, if you are going to wipe away paint to see what's underneath, you should put something interesting underneath! (duh) what was I thinking? So I improvised... Also, if you are going to wipe off paint, use thinner paint!  I used really thick paint and had a heck of a time wiping it off.

I still don't really get the smeared paint background... maybe it also needs to be thinner? I don't know... I think it's ugly,.  My favorite part (surprisingly) is the head.  Oh well, next project...

Taking Flight

I finally got up the guts to buy Kelly Rae Robert's book 'Taking Flight'.  It was set to be my last art book... if it didn't get me going, I was going to give away all my art stuff (that I've never used) and quit kidding myself.  I don't understand why I have this 'art' voice screaming in my head anyway, I am seriously NOT artistic...although I am creative.. I like to play..
So back to the book.  I got the book and started reading it.  The rule was that if there were project instructions, I had to do the project before moving on. (sigh)  The first project is to make collage on hard book covers. So I ran out and got some stuff and started the project. 

The first part was to make 'letters' on cloth... the instructions said 1" x 4" which is pretty small - I don't think Kelly is using a 1" wide strip in the demonstration photos... anyway, I followed the directions and here are my letters. (whoops, the t is upside down)  I think they just look sloppy... there were no instructions for what to do with the back of the letters (which are plain white interfacing) so I painted them.

I know this is not going to be a great-looking project, I know I'm going to have to make a lot of ugly stuff before I figure out how to make better stuff, but making ugly stuff is not nearly as much fun as making cool stuff.  It's embarassing!

So, after cutting the covers off the a hardcover book, I was instruceted to collage papers onto the covers to make a base.  I also put just a little material on the covers, since I have quite a lot of fabric. Here are my 'base' covers.

The book covers were about 9" square. These are big pieces of paper, which made them hard to glue flat... I would probably use smaller pieces next time, but I was kind of looking at Kelly's project and she seemed to use at least one big piece as a background, but they get covered with paint and who knows what else anyway, so who knows what they will look like after the next step. 

So, I feel like I have made progress.  I've been lurking on other sites, and trying to figure out process, but have only tried a couple of 'paper paintings', nothing that actually involved painting over a collaged background.  So here goes.  Thanks Kelly Rae.  Check out her site and see her great stuff!