A mix and cuttings

That is what this is, a painting taken apart on the computer and put together with the unsuccessful parts taken out. Plus that it has a piece of fabric scanned in first and shows through the painting with help of print shop.

No time to paint today, I do hope to tomorrow, however quilting has to come to the front of my thoughts now as the day in April comes closer when I talk to 180 women about art quilting.

However, I can't drop it because some friends I care about a lot would like a face painting start so they can do faces and I am thrilled to do that.

Finding Faces

We are suppose to creat a background and find a face, well it is difficult sort of when you want to find what isn't there. I didn't want to do profile, but the eye was there and the nose, no lips but a chin and odd sort of neck. Head was there but not the bun, shoulders were there in the swoops of paint as were the odd wings. I had used a fly swatter to create the squares you see, used it as a stencil and I did that before finding the face. I did have to add some to second wing. It was all there, almost, and yet it came out looking like a lot of the faces I paint. It seems a bit forced, however not. When it seems contrived or forced, the magic is missing.

I don't know who she is

It doesn't matter, actually she is on a little pillow I have and I did a painting simular. She could be just a child playing, and that is what I will think today. The reason is, the house and the person don't really fit together, I just did what I felt like doing yesterday, and I will again today I think. It was a self imposed practice of a face where you see an angle of nose differently and still have it line up with lips. Not sure it appears natural it is a thing to practice. I was glad that I could wash off the crackle effect on the face and the house. It made the house to dark and I can't say for sure what it did for the face. The napkin flower had to be applied twice, the first one got lost in the dark, so some white gesso under the second and better result.

Two fixes and Kissing a Frog

I have a good friend who always states that if you eat your toad first thing in the morning then the hardest part of the day is done. Of course this means if you have something to do that you dislike get it done first and then the rest of the day is a snap. Kissing a frog is not as hard, and it accomplished a profile painting in our class. This is an older woman but they kiss frogs also, prince or no prince she is giving it a try. I give her credit.

My woman with a hat needed the hat larger so the edge didn't go right down the middle of the painting, yes I knew this but had just ignored my inner voice to make a change.

The face with the red hair needed a forhead change and I did some slightly and a lip tuck, so minor I don't know if you can notice.

Profile

Such a pout on this girl, and it could be because of her eye. I can't decide if I should move it down, the design in her hair is a transfer, that is a paper image glued on and the paper rubbed off and just the black ink left. You have seen it in the background houses on previous paintings.

I have been painting my background with a palette knife because I like the hit and miss blotches of paint.

I hope to do another profile today, one shouldn't be tired from painting, I am a little. If I get going it will pass. I will go downstairs and do cat chores and look at my prepared canvas and feel the energy. Cat chores consist of new water, food and checking the litter. This is for one cat. Snow shoveling may be part of the day also.

Color and Beauty

I love hats, and I even like this painting, tomorrow I have to move on to profile, you can laugh then because the eye will be off.

I was having thoughts today of a landscape , I did some rubbings on a piece of wood that had no bark, it looked like leafless trees and in the horizontal position it looked like water, then I could do a ink jet transfer of a building amd some other things I can think of.

Thanks for coming by.

Women of color, class work

A true challenge of layering colors, having the face right as possible and of course there are the same problems I always have, proper placement of the features. We have 71 people in All Nora's Art and they are working hard, everyday new paintings and frustrations of getting it right. Everyone gets comments and help. Every aspect of the class is fun. May as well have fun while getting it right and pretty.

Having it right and being pretty, we do this everyday, the house, the cooking, our clothes for us and family. Jobs are always about getting it right, and production. I am not about production tho it may seem that way. It is just winter I do like to get out some everyday, there is plenty to see if you look. But there is a lot of time in a day,well not always enough. The deer have been pawing in the strawberries. So in deep snow, wading out there to put something that stinks like a coyote. Just another example of trying to get it right and have beautiful berries in June.

A Young Face

It is Friday, and you think yes, but I thought it was Thursday all day and by 3:00 in the afternoon was so disappointed that it was Friday. I thought I had another day.

We have assignments, I am behind, a profile of a face and a dark skin face to paint. Both will be hard. Then I feel the urge to do somethings that are a little abstract, with odd sort of design, which I have done before, but enjoy a lot as I don't have to have things so right, with proper features. I like it all no real preference.

I hope your finding things to do that you love. Spring is showing a tiny bit, the Starlings have started to get a yellow beak which is a sign of spring.

A good fixit

I have confirmation, I did a good fix on this painting, I was just to class and got the news, and it made me feel quite fantastic, I sound like Susan Boyle back stage after her first performance.

I love to watch that.

If you look below and than comapre you will see that what appeared to me to be short of a horse face is more person looking. I kept wanting to ask, why such a long face?

Class Work

I am sitting here thinking, should I post these, I might make changes, especially in the one with the head scarf. I may change the eyes and make them lower, (a risk) I may have some of her hair show on the right side. There is just something sort of wrong, despite working really hard on this piece, cutting the napkin and pleating it in places. My ink jet gel transfer turned out good. I took it from a picture, and the ironwork is called fretwork, which is a learned thing for me.

Warm enough today to wash all the road salt off the car, and get the oil changed. I thought it was rather poor customer service to have a huge puddle right as one drives out of the carwash.

You had to go through it to get into the street.

If I make those changes I will show you, not tonight tho.

Thank you for your visits and the emails of your visits.

How We look At Things

Thinking of the things we see and what we think are the most beautiful is really different for people. If you grew up in the country you might thik those scenes are the most beautiful, or jut the opposite if you grew up in the city. I can see the beauty in both, I prefer the country.

Even doing all this art work I think that it is a good thing we don't all like the same artist or their work. Trying to find your own style making your own way with all the mediums is rewarding, even as much as we admire another we must find our own way.

I think of our families, and our children , we give them the basics and they find their own way with some of the tools we instilled, they work hard, find their place, and it doesn't look the same as our way, even if they used some of the same tools, tools of mind, ethics, desire.

We all know I didn't see this one photo all these ways, but tools made even the altered images somewhat the same.

Photos and paintings

It is fun to experiment with ones own photos and paintings, my husband and I joke about what you can see in the trees, he sees more images of things imagined than I do, which I find rather creative. In fact he looked at my photo altering and said he liked it. I think imagination is a fun part of our lives. I did a lot of make believe when I was a kid and had an imaginary friend, her name was Dirtea, I feel a blush coming on and a silly smile.

A few weeks ago I took photos of a beautiful morning frost, and today I did a face with papers, colored pencil, a transfer of the house, and some stamping, and some paint.

More class work

We have had video on working with art that has not turned out the way we would like, I have some trouble with hair on the top of the head, it always looks ratted, remember ratting your hair to make it puffy and have body? What a person did was backcomb the hair into this hive of criss-crossed hair. Don't forget the spray to keep it that way. I almost typed Spry, that was a

shortning for baking and frying. Spray or Spry it could be a sticky mess.

I did have this sort of thing going on in the painting, so I used some designed paper, napkin designs, a transfer all at the wrong time in the sequence of proper desgin of the piece. But I feel it is OK and I rather like it. I can't spend 8 hours working on something off and on and not show it. I had fun, learned someting, especially get things right in the beginning.

Scrolls and Twists

I have always liked them, artist, Mucha did beautiful work and had a lot of them in his work,

He did a lot of work painting faces in the art Nouveau style, with much flamboyant twists.

He died in 1939. Beautiful work. He would of been an artist in advertising today, except we never that same kind of beauty in posters, the idea of beauty has changed. Like everything times and appeal are different.

This does not compare to his work, I just thought of him when painting.

I like odd design around the head and am never satisfied with the hair I paint and the direction that it flows to compliment a face. I used a stamp on the parts of the napkin I tore away. This settles into the painting nicely so it becomes rather seamless in appearance when I apply the matte medium to the paper. I also stamped with paint all over the whole background with the same design before I started. It would be OK to have the design show through on the face more if the face had been an older person. Somehow she got young. The dragon fly is also a stamp that has paint on it.

Your visits are so appreciated, thank you

New Face

You are probably sick of these faces, well if you knew that until a year ago I hadn't done a face, that might help understanding. And the mixed media is so new to me yet and so many ways to go with it. I like this face.

So maybe tomorrow I will do some photos, or something different, a whole body with a face, I have a sketch that I did for that and wanting to do a painting of it. I also have two quilts designed that need sewing.

It was the most lovely day for a walk today, no wind warmish sun, toward evening sort of a pink and blue day. We have gained about an hour of light in our days.

Faces, faces

Why are we so intriqued by the face, and women's faces more than men's it seems. When I look at vintage photos from history, or family you see more mens photos. I am certainly captured by the desire to do a good woman's face. Workings are all over the house, little scetch books I made from manilla paper have them, the grocery list has one, they are piling up behind me as I scan and size them for postings. Even as much as the face I like the enchancements that go around the face in the background as they tell the story. Your own story of course.

One thinks of artistic ability, it is as much about desire to do as it is about natural born talent.

This is just my opinion of course, but I think if you really want to do something artisic you can it is deeper than just skill. Like other things in life there is always someone better and that even is a matter of opinion.

These are the most recent, and things are looking somewhat the same, but this is practice week in our class so that is what it is practice.

Working, working

Been busy with Nora's Class, and I forgot how to paint a face even with great instruction and reminders. But, you know, trying really hard makes things not right sometimes. Everyone is doing beautiful work in the class and new work goes up all the time. It is great fun and it is a class not a sale so things can be not quite right. I have to work on eyes, they are so important in a face. Smaller eyes tomorrow. I always think of something I read in a magazine about faces, and the Author said you don't want your face to have walleyes, I smile as I think of it because I have some of those.

Despite all I have said that is negative about what I am doing, I don't really feel that way there is a lot to like and what I have learned is a lot , it is simular thinking at the end of the day to be happy with what you did get done not what is left to do.

There will be more

Joy

I am late today, I started this painting yesterday, I wanted to paint a dark red dress and I wanted a child. I find a line type drawing in a clip art, and thought I can do something with this.

I got the child part done. that was after using a gel medium to put tiny little pieces of newspaper all over the canvas and rubbing paint into the work. Then nothing would work, no colors of napkins were right nothing, I then decided to use a technique of transfer inages learned from nora for the background house, it is not a glued on house it is a transfer. then added some foilage. and the bird from napkins, and stencil little pink flowers from a paper doily. a butterfly. If you enlarge the image by clicking you can see the tiny patchwork of the news paper. I am 90% satisfied.

I did get time to shovel snow, do laundry, cook, but mainly do artful things.

More Lavender

When I go tidy up the studio this morning before I start, I think I will put all the lavender/mauve/purple/ paints way to the back of the arrangement. I never say it is my favorite color, yet at the garden center, shirts, and in painting I tend to choose those colors.

The latest Somerset Studio magazine also showed quite a lot of these colors, Aubergine. When one uses that word it sounds a lot more beautiful and purple. Eggplant sounds nice also. I have one more prepared canvas with lavender, I will probably do that today and maybe add some red. See if I can get a different look.

On the left of this painting I used a mirror cut out of a decorating mgazine and stamped the image of the birds on the mirror, I also colored the mirror with colored pencils. There is stamped tissue paper in the background and a napkin used. I was inspired by lilacs yeserday by a artist using them in her work. I see now that I could breakup the lines on my words with a tiny leaf.

Poe's Wife??

No I guess not, but my husband asked if that was Poe's wife when he saw the painting. This painting has several layers of paint in the back ground, A painted surface with gesso, then a layer of stamped white paint, another layer of paint with more color and scraped and smeared with a palette knife. The flowers are newspaper, and actually more of the paper should of been left to show, the words, "Time To Consider" from an old book. The crow was stamped on the white

papers taken off a napkin so it could be more visible, the reason I say this is because a stamp does not work well on a rough surface, it even wants to resist watercolor paper that is rough. This also allows some transparent effect of color showing through the stamp. I Also used some pastels in her hair and white pen around the flowers.

I gathered my wits, those I could find, and tried to put every ounce of information I have seen and heard into this face. Some words that our teacher, Nora said about faces and a story kept resinating in my head, she said the artist does not just want a mug shot. we want a story. Good words for me to think about as I work on these faces.

Thank you viewers for coming by, your comments are a great boost. Have a creative day.

The Cat Food Bag

Months ago I saw this picture on a cat food product, I bought it just for for the great picture.

We have a cat but he didn't eat this kind of chow. The food did get used as winter got colder a stray cat moved into the unused barn.

I used a valentine napkin, a floral napkin, security envelopes, stamping on tissue paper that I also tore for background. The little uneven squares of envelope were only used around the border, along with the tissue paper. I was at first quite disappointed with this, I thought there should be color behind the white tissue, I think that part is fine now. I work not to have hard, straight lines in a collage, I like a blending better where the viewer can't really see where one thing ends and another begins, that is one reason to have some color behind the white tissue, I may rework this a little, I am leaning towards not. I thought the green was not quite right in the bag also, so colored up her dress a little and did some stamping with paint, writing with a white pen. So at this point it is what it is. Oh yes, the bag paper was too thick so I printed off a copy of the picture, this means I could take a different track and do another.

New Doors Open

That is what has happened lately, so much fun to meet bloggers coming by, also visiting your blog with wonderful art to see. Thank you also to friends and family that come for a visit to see what I have been doing.

I paid close attention to what Nora was saying about rubbing some paint into the patchwork background, this is the inside of security envelopes, I can see it nicely around the woman.

I always think I am paying attention to instructions written or spoken, but I think in haste I miss things often. I notice adults do it as often as children.

Part of the background is also a large paisley stamp I have that I stamped unto tissue paper.

I find that shallow stamps need to be used more like a rubbing plate than a stamp. This one has very shallow design, I purchased it before I knew much about stamping at all. Sometimes stamping on a layer of towel will give you a more definite design also. There are parts from 4 different napkins on this piece, plus paper cutout.