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.

Gut Art Round #5

I'm not able to join in this round, but if anyone is looking for an online multi-media class that is really motivating and fun, this is the one to take. (I'm not even getting any kickbacks for this! I just think Mystele is great!) Taking a couple of Mystele's classes finally got me painting again. Check out the info below.

A Little Bit of Bravery

Well, I decided I'd show a little bit of bravery, and let you see the "gut art" painting I'm working on for Mystele's Gut Art class I'm taking at Little Glimpses Studio on Ning. I'm going to become a real multi-media artist if it kills me!

Here is my painting after I put everything together as the base layer:

This is what it looks like right now. I know it looks like somebody, um, well, maybe threw-up, but we are suppose to work on our paintings in "layers" and from the gut.

 

Yes, I know it's strange, but I've had a strange gut for years! But hey, I like outsider art. I've felt like an outsider for most of my life. Anyway, I will post an update as I keep working on it.

Finished?

I didn't let my inner critic beat me down. I finished my painting. It is the weirdest thing I've ever done, but I love it! I was thinking of adding a zetti character stamp, but I don't know if that would be over kill. Anyways, if you don't think this is wonderfully insane, don't tell me, because I can hardly beat my inner critic down as it is. I take Mystele's classes, because they help me to do that. At least with this painting I feel like a true multi-media artist. Yay!

From Coffee Grounds Painting Grows

Well, you'll have to read my post below before this will make any sense. This is the progress I've made so far with my coffee ground paper towels. It's kind of like a pile of red throw-up at this point. I'm talking about me being in the picture. Then there's the painting itself. Egads! What in the world will that evolve into? I guess time will tell. That's what happens when you paint from the gut.