Life Book 2012 Class - Week 40

Our instructions for this week's class were about creating a collage using sewing, paper and material, and adding in any other accessories as we wanted. (buttons, glitter, etc.) We were suppose to celebrate where we are now or how we are feeling as compared to what we've been through during the past year. Yikes! What does someone do with that? My collage, as usual, ended up pretty crazy. But I'm happy with it, because it's all mixed-media instead of anything digital.

Since I spent the first half of the year watching my mother die slowly, and much of the year battling the same old depression and anxiety issues, the words came to my mind "still here." Being here still is definitely something to celebrate.

I had to do hand stitches, and some aren't showing up in the scan, but this ended up being a fun project to do. The moose (big and tiny), tree and small leaves on the left are actually buttons I sewed on. Being out in nature makes me happy, so I was trying to add those elements to it. Anyway, it is what it is! :O)

Life Book 2012 Class - Week 38

The artist who provided instructional videos for us this week was Connie Hozvicka. She calls her style of painting "fearless painting." I really liked her videos, because by painting "fearlessly," it's easier to shove that inner critic aside, and just go with the flow. The painting below is what I ended up with. It's wild and crazy, but I seem to be drawn to this type of painting. I hope you enjoy it!

Life Book 2012 Classes - Mandala

For week 35 of the Life Book 2012 classes, we were given instructions on how to make a mandala. I did mine while I was up north at our daughters. My mandala turned out kind of like a combination mandala/dream catcher. I couldn't resist the duck feathers I kept finding around their small pond, and kept stuffing them in my pocket. Once I drew and painted the mandala, I felt like I needed to add the feathers to it. You can't tell from the photo, but I used metallic paint, and the background is actually solid white. It's a beautiful contrast in person, especially with the white duck feathers. I'm glad, though, that I didn't decide to go with using the small, round goat droppings I kept seeing anywhere. That might have been a little too much mixed-media. :O)

Life Book Class 2012 - Secret Person

After weeks of battling my inner critic, I finally worked on the project for Week 30. We were suppose to come up with a picture of a helpful critic (secret person) we could turn to to shut up our bad inner critic. I didn't paint the face like in the instructions, but drew it on drawing paper, and then put it on top of the collaged background I had created. The background didn't photograph well at all, as I used some silver paper along with others with silver writing. The background kind of faded out in the photo. Anyway, it was another case of just draw, don't try to make it perfect, and just take whatever comes out. At least it looks like a person. I'm very happy to have finally done another project. I beat down my inner critic one more time! I wish that thing would just go away!

My trip to our daughter's was postponed until tomorrow, Sunday, but I hardly touched the computer this past week anyway. Our two year old grandson, unbeknown to us, swallowed 3 small, round batteries. No one knew until one showed up in his diaper. That necessitated a trip to the emergency room as we had no idea if he had swallowed more or what. They did x-rays, and determined that two more were in his intestines. That was okay, as it meant they had passed through his stomach and shouldn't get stuck anywhere. However, I was the one who lifted him unto the x-ray table, and while doing so, one of us moved the wrong way. I wrenched my back. Corben just turns 2 tomorrow, but he's as big as some 4 year-olds. It doesn't pay to get old! I've been in pain all week, and living on Ibuprofen. I didn't even do one digital collage.

To make a long story short (woops, too late for that), it will be another week now before I will be able to visit your blogs. Don't give up on me. I haven't kicked the bucket yet.

Life Book Lesson

I worked on one of the Life Book lessons I hadn't done yet. Tam made a couple of videos showing how to make backgrounds and then doing scrapbook like layouts over them. Since I did the funeral program for my mother, I thought doing this lesson with parts of the program might be a nice way to save it. It felt good to be putting paint on paper and not worrying how it was going to turn out.

Hopefully I will get back to visiting everyone's blogs on a regular basis soon. I still don't feel a whole lot of cheerfulness yet, but I'll get back there.

Life Book Week 23

I'm still plugging along trying to do the Life Book lessons in the year long course Tam from Willowing and Friends is offering. June is about honoring our future and using animal imagery to do so. Tam demonstrated how to paint a fun, colorful butterfly and how to use a stencil to create a border around it. I just didn't feel like working on a butterfly even though I love them. I don't feel like "fun" right now with having to visit the nursing home every day now that my parents are there. Actually, I skipped today to finish working on this project. I needed the break.

Anyway, I ended up creating "hybrid art" instead of drawing everything. Hybrid art is combining digital and painting and mixed media all together. I couldn't find any modeling paste to use with the stencil, so my border didn't come out as well as I would have liked. At least I have another page to add to my Life Book at the end of the year when we bind all of the pages together. (I'm not sure why the border is showing up reddish in the photo, because it is actually a gold color. I only used the built-in camera on my computer, though, so I guess I can't expect the colors to be perfect.) It is definitely fun, though, to be creating some physical art instead of all digital art.

Living in the Present

This month in the year-long Life Book class being hosted by Tam at Willowing, we are working on living in the present. She had us create a calendar where we could write down just a couple of thoughts about each day in May. This isn't going to be a very fun month for my family, so I created a crazy looking calendar to make the month look a little more joyous. If my mother should happen to die this month, at least I can write it on a happy looking calendar.

Life Book Class Eight - Play!

This week's class is being taught by Mystele who teaches classes on her own Ning site, too. http://littleglimpsesstudio.ning.com/ I've taken a couple of classes from her before, and love what she does. Her style is "gut" art. In this week's videos, she is calling it "pulled" art. She had us start out by writing words, phrases, or whatever we were thinking on a blank page of water color paper. Then she had us paint and collage over it. The whole idea is not to begin with a preconceived idea of what you are going to paint. Once you have created the background, you keep looking at it until you find some object, person, symbol or whatever, and you start the painting and play by going with that. Mystele's paintings are very folk-artsy, and always colorful and a lot of fun to look at. As usual, my painting ended up pretty wild, but it definitely fits with what I wrote underneath it all. These Life Book assignments are also meant to be a type of journaling. Everything is done on 9 x 12 heavy water color paper. We are going to bind them all into a book at the end of the year. Wow! I'm going to have one crazy book! It will all be real mixed-media, too. That's very exciting to me since I've done so much digital art over the past years.

Life Book Class Continues

This project turned out rather funny, but I actually like what I ended up with. It made me laugh, and I'm finally learning it's okay to laugh at our own work. The end result isn't the healing part; it's the process that counts. I'm still learning how to work with mixed-media. The assignment was to put a "transfer" of a picture of ourselves on a piece of watercolor paper, paint over it adding some craziness to it, and then copy a list of words we were given. I've tried transfers before, and have never gotten them to work. But to my great surprise, this one actually worked! I wanted to stop right there. I was so excited! But I went ahead and followed the assignment. (I'm going to do another transfer and do something leaving the transfer as is.) Here is the result. Live long and prosper!

Life Book Class Drawing Assignment Two

I've been working on another assignment for the online "Life Book" class I'm taking at http://willowing.ning.com/. We're working on a piece of art that shows each person's personality has both light and dark attributes. Interesting. Maybe I don't have a split personality after all! (Just kidding.) Here's what I have done so far. I'm loving this class, because everything we do is hand drawn. It's a true multimedia experience!

I have to go to the store and buy ink so I can finish the project. We learned a technique where you drop ink into shaving cream, swirl the ink around, and then press the picture into the shaving cream. It leaves a marbled look on the paper once you wipe the shaving cream off. I will be doing that to the two blank corners. What a great project!

First Assignment In Life Book Multimedia Course

This is the year I've determined to find more joy by getting more involved in creating physical, multimedia art. I wrote in an earlier post that I joined the year-long online course being given by Tam at Willowing and Friends. The course is called Life Book - an honoring and celebration of you. I've been working on the first assignment. It isn't completely done yet according to all of the instructions, but this may be all I can do for the first assignment. My inner critic is running rampant! I felt paralyzed to even start the assignment, but somehow my determination to do it won through. I am very happy that I did what I was able to do. It involved using water color crayons, acrylic paint, pencil and a little help with words typed on my computer. I had to take the picture of the assignment using the built-in camera on my iMac, so it's a little bit chopped off, but that's alright. Phew. I'm on my way!

Life Book with Tam (Willowing) and Other Guest Teachers

I just enrolled in a year-long course for 2012. It sounds fantastic! Well, I know it will be fantastic. Every artist needs to be in at least one inspiring group. You ought to check it out, too!

This is an unpaid, non-partisan post.  :o)  Click here, though, if you want to check it out: http://www.willowing.org