Triangle Heads

'allo!

One of the billion projects I'm doing right now is called Recordings - I've posted about it before - a circular journal made out of an old LP with music-based spreads.  This week my song is Tessellate by Alt-J:

The song is haunting and beautiful and strangely erotic.  I absolutely love it.

The spread I made is not haunting, beautiful, or erotic, but WHATEVER.  FACES:

TWO of them!  Whee!

So that brings my count up to a whopping 3.  I am kicking so much ass. ;)

There's a video from The Water Bearer on wonderstrange if you want to check it out:  ClickyClicky.

There are closeups and more babbling about this spread also on wonderstrange.  There will be a video probably late tonight since I have to work and go to class in the meantime.  Real life, you suck.

I'm going to go tessellate.

29 Faces and some Soul Food Pimpage!

Greetings and salutations, money-maker-shakers!

I'm trying really hard to do 29 Faces this year.  I'm trying really hard to finish the 50 Canvases project that I left hanging last year.  I'm trying really hard to manage to stay at the art table for more than 5 minutes at a time, too, so we'll see how it goes.

All of that aside, here's my first face and first catch-up canvas:

I'm doing a series of Zodiac paintings, and this is The Water Bearer (aka Aquarius).  I decided to start all of the canvases the same way by gluing down some random papers then stenciling a heart with modeling paste.  I've been putting some extra modeling paste down for some awesome texture, too...

Since texture makes me so happy...

I will be teaching something like this for Soul Food, something with modeling paste and texture and crazy color.  Yay!

Speaking of Soul Food, it started yesterday!  I'm so excited about the opportunity to teach with such an amazing lineup of people, like Ayala, the innovator behind 29 Faces.  Her work is full of color and texture, and she offers mixed media workshops on her site.  Give her a click, you know you wanna.

Since I started the Recordings project (it's music-based art journaling), I've really started to acknowledge the effect that music has on me while I'm painting.  For example, I found myself painting along to the beat earlier today, and I'll catch myself zoning out during a part of a song that I really resonate with.  It's no wonder I don't get anything done. ;)

This is today's theme song:

Wearing Out my Gelli Plate

Okay, I'm not really wearing it out, but it would be smoking if it could!

Since Roni died, I've found myself lacking in the artistic mojo department - I'd like nothing better than to sit and art journal or something, but it's just not happening.  I've crocheted a bit and have updated my Etsy (with only about a quarter of my stuff, but, hey, progress), but, every time I've tried to do something creative, I've floundered.  Big time.

This seemed like the perfect time to do some Gelli prints!

I'm doing this out of order, but that's okay. ;)  I dug through my pile of cast-off prints and found these three:

They are not pretty prints.  They're mostly ghost prints and cleaning of the brayer or the stencils, but I figured it would be a good challenge to make them into something that I might actually use.

Several pulls, adjustments, and layers later, I have these:

Holy cow so much better!!  I absolutely love the one in the middle with the leaves, although I generally like the whole "cover most of it with paint" thing, so that's not much of a surprise.

After two days of pulling print after print after print, I feel a little more like my mojo is starting to come back, which is a relief.  I'm feeling a little artistically constipated.

Have some Gelli Print eye candy!

With every print I pulled, I cleaned off my brayer on a page in my art journal, and I am absolutely IN LOVE with how it looked by the end of it.

SO MUCH YUM.

Now I need to decide what to do with this enormous stack of prints..

New Artistcellar Stencils, Blog Hop, and GIVEAWAY!! WOO!!

HEY GUYS.

Today marks my final post as a design team member for Artistcellar and my very first post as part of a blog hop!  Confetti!  Tears!  Confetti!  Tears!

Those clever kids over there managed to snag an amazing papercutter, Béatrice Coron, as their newest signature artist.  She has done a couple of awesome TED talks, check them out here and here!  She is 12 kinds of adorable.

SO ARE THESE STENCILS!  OMG!

                         
They are, in order of appearance, Painter, Housework, Online, and Dancers.  So SO so cute.

I decided to go with a funky canvas and chose the Painter stencil.  I started by brayering black paint onto a 6 x 6 canvas panel:

I love how grungy that looks!  I laid down my stencil and carefully applied white acrylic paint with a makeup sponge:

And then, without moving the stencil, dabbed on some turquoise acrylic with the same sponge:

I removed the stencil and was left with this lovely bit of lovely:

I LOVE how shocked and/or awed the lady skeleton looks.  I sort of wanted to keep it like that, but then this would be a really short post, so I started filling in bones using the flat edge of a paintbrush:

I also gave them big heads.

I used acrylic paints to give them little skully heads and gave the guy a Dali mustache just because that is the kind of mustache I would have if I could grow a mustache. 

One of my favorite parts of Day of the Dead art is the flowers (sometimes I am SUCH A GIRL), so I gave her a flowery headdress and gave him a flowery boutonniere: 

I could not get over the idea that the lady skeleton was scandalized over whatever Dali Guy is painting, so I thought long and hard about what would scandalize a skeleton and came up with this:

If you can't make it out, it says, "his portraiture was scandalously fleshy" ... hahahahhahahaaaaaaa!

I finished it off by using Distress Stain to age the text a bit:

And there you go!

HEY SO NOW A GIVEAWAY!

You can win the full set of stencils by leaving a comment!  I will use random.org to pick a winner on October 1, 2014!  WOOT WOOT!!

For more chances to win, be sure to visit the other blogs on the hop!  VISIT THEM REGARDLESS because they are awesome, every last one of them!

September 20th – Lisa Cousineau, Artistcellar www.artistcellar.com/wp
September 21st – Jill K Berry – jillberrydesign.com/blog
September 22nd – Janet Ghio – www.janetsartplay.blogspot.com
September 23rd – Cheryl Sleboda – http://blog.muppin.com
September 24th – Sarah Trumpp – WHOA that's me!!!
September 25th – Diana Trout – www.dianatrout.typepad.com

Don't forget to leave a comment with a working email address to win!  GOOD LUCK!!

More challenges

I decided on a whim (as in AS I WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF A PROJECT) that I want to do the Summer of Color challenge.  Yeah, I know.  I haven't finished a single challenge I've started ALL YEAR.

This one, though, speaks to my inner Delirium.

Delirium from Sandman: Endless Nights

COLOR.  I love color.  And insanity.  But mostly COLOR.  So this one should be easy-peasy, right?  Well, we'll see.

I did a tutorial on making a book-canvas on wonderstrange along with a video demo for this painting if you want to head over there and check it out!

The color challenge this week is turquoise, yellow, and a splash of pink.  It's pretty yum.

In other news, I'm still in a weird sort of rut with my paintings and frustration with not being able to take them where I want them to go, but I keep plugging along.  Also, it's show season, which means sculpture, which means less painting, which means an endless ugly cycle of frustration.  Argh.

Deep breaths! Onward!!