29 Faces Art Challenge

I've not had much time to blog the last few days.  Here are the latest faces for the challenge.  

Day 9 a fun doodle 

Day 10 acrylic paints and coloured pencils.

Day 11 inktense blocks

Day 12 was a rough day

Day 13 Derwent sketching graphite and acrylic

Find out more on the 29 Faces Art Challenge blog.

What's On Your Work Desk? Wednesday 292

It's Wednesday already I can't believe how quickly this week is going by.  I'm sure January is supposed to be a long month and the weeks drag by.  Oh well never mind here we are for another WOYWW #292.  Pop over to the Stamping Ground and I'm sure Julia will tell you all about it.  

So what's on my desk this wet and cold Wednesday?  This is how I left my desk last night.  You can see the 2 eye studies I did in pan water colours (Daler Rowney) for the 30 paintings in 30 Days challenge hosted by Leslie at Slices of Life.  One of my goals for 2015 is to become friends with pan and tube water colours and also to study the facial features to help improve my face drawings. 

Here are a close up of the eyes.  As you can see this eye is far too wide.

This one is much better and more in proportion.  I worked out that the white parts of the eye were approx half the width of the iris.  Of course I'm well aware that everyone has different size eyes.  

Thank you for visiting and leaving the comments each one is read and replied to.

Anita

Day 4 & 5 or 30 Paintings in 30 Days January 2015

I didn't get time to make anything for day 4 as we had visitors and by the time they went it was late and it had gone dark.  Therefore I made 2 paintings today.  Well one is a mixed media painting in my altered book and the other is a study of an eye in watercolours - Daler Rowney pan set.  One of my goals for 2015 is to master pan and tube watercolours.

Mixed media painting in my altered book

Watercolour eye study

There's a whole host of artists taking part in this challenge from all over the globe check them out here on the Slices of Life blog.

Travelling Journal - Live Your Dream

Here is another travelling journal which I have added my art to.  This little lady is hand drawn into the journal page and painted with water colour pencils, water soluble wax crayons a little bit of acrylic paint.  I've added some rubber stamped elements to the page to add some texture and interest to the background.  I like her dreamy look and the words "Live Your Dream" seemed appropriate.  I haven't drawn a face in ages so I'm really pleased with the way she's come out.  I'm also not very good with water colours due to the nature of them. 

Anita

#blogtoberfest14 day 30

Abstract Art From Photographs

I'm a week behind with the Summer of Colour 4 a colour challenge at Twinkle Twinkle Like a Star.  This post is for week 3. 

The colours for week 3 were Lavender, Grey and a dash of Plum.  For a change I thought I would try water colour pencils on a 6 x 6 inch wrapped canvas a change to my usual mixed media paper.  I found it interesting to work with not sure I'd use water colour pencils again but it was a good experience.  The image I've used is from Paint My Photo a site which allows you to use the photographs as reference for your artwork without worrying about copyright issues if you want to sell your work.  The image I used was of a Halgon lamp and laminator which had been photographed and adjusted - you can see the details here of how this was done.

This is the image I used by Barbara Tester 

and this is my interpretation.

Day 4 of the 30 paintings in 30 days

So today is day 4 of the 30 paintings in 30 days and I'm already behind with my blog posts.  I'm slowly getting back into some kind of routine.  I have made the paintings for each day but as it got dark early I wasn't able to take any pictures until today.  Also it was the first week back at work.  Thursday was my first day back after nearly 2 1/2 weeks.  Yesterday I took my niece out and had a great time - we went to see WANTED Robin Hood at the Lowry theater Salford.  It was an alternative play to the original - most enjoyable.  

Here are my paintings for days 2,3 and 4.

Day 2 and 3 -these are similar to day one - I needed to make a set of these for trading.  They are Artist Trading Cards 2.5 x 3.5 inches in size.

Day 4 - Faber Castell polychromo pencils, acrylic, white and black pen, rubber stamped words - water colour paper. 15x11 cms

If you fancy joining in the fun or just want to see what others are creating then pop on over to Slices of Life blog.

Anita

Don't Forget Me......

...............is a card made using my original artwork printed onto matt photo paper.  I've added digital elements to it using a free online software called picmonkey.  It's really easy to use and has some neat features.  To the original art I added some rubber stamping to the background and the main body of the artwork was hand-drawn and painted using watercolours.  It's now available to buy in my Etsy shop for £2.50 +£1.00 postage.  The card is blank for your own message.

Don't forget me 

Art Every Day and Gritty Jane's 40 Portraits

I've not really kept up with posting everyday for this challenge because I've been busy with a couple of commissions.  I have been creating every day and I'm including the commissions as part of this - I can't show you them as they are for presents.  I can however show you a couple of drawings I've done in the last few days.  They're what is described as whimsical and they are part of another challenge on facebook called "Gritty Jane's 40 Portrait Challenge". Fortunately there is no time limit on this one so no pressure to produce something everyday.  You'd think I had enough to do coming up to Christmas - but hey I like a challenge and I've met some amazing artists on my "challenge" journey.

#1/40

This one is in my altered book.  I gessoed the page but I found that watercolour and gesso do not like each other.  

#2/40

This one is on water colour paper and is painted with inktense pencils and neo colours.  The white highlights are acrylic and I've added some stamped images to fill in the background.

Fancy a challenge? Here are the links to both pages - 

Art Everyday Month -blog

Gritty Jane's 40 Portrait - facebook

Anita

29 Faces Art Challenge.

September is nearly upon us and I've been thinking of challenging myself into doing something for the month.  I came upon this site a few weeks ago but had completely forgotten about it plus when I first read the challenge I thought "no way am I going to be able to do this as I'm not very good at drawing faces".  

Funny how these things happen isn't it?  Because just this morning I posted on my facebook page that I should challenge myself in September and this afternoon one of my art friends posted on facebook if anyone was going to join the challenge.  So that was that sorted :)  

So the challenge itself is to draw a face each day for 29 days.  It was started last February which happened to be a leap year.  I've only just come across the article so won't go into it but why don't you pop over and have a read its very interesting 29 Faces Art Challenge.  As you can see from these Artist Trading Cards and Inches my face drawing skills definitely need to be improved.  

So who's going to join in the fun?

Balanced Heart Project

I seemed to have lost the will to write any blog posts since March.  I guess sometimes you just have to leave things alone and not get too stressed.  This doesn't mean that I've not been creative.  I have carried on with a couple of art projects and handmade card orders.   

Jewellery making has been put on hold since April/May after an accident at work which caused an inflamed tendon and using any of my tools is very painful.  The ultra-sound hasn't helped so I am now waiting on having a cortisone injection which I am NOT looking forward to as I don't like needles.

Anyway like I said earlier I have been creating artwork and since May I have been involved in a project that has been started by my friend Ang West over on The Balanced Heart Project .  Every month myself and 4 other artists create 2 pieces of artwork which incorporates "hearts" as the main feature.  The inspiration for this Project, is Ang's little boy, Andrew who passed away on 22nd of October 2001-please pop over to the blog for the full details.  My involvement came about after Ang posted on facebook asking for artist to collaborate in a heart project.  At the time I didn't know what it was about only that "hearts" were involved and as I have a rather lovely collection of "heart Art" I thought this would be a great way of collecting more original artwork.  It was only after hearing Ang's story that I remembered how art and the support from my artist friends had helped me through a very dark time a few years ago and I wanted even more to "help" Ang with her healing.  I am honoured to be part of this project and hope that my "hearts" help her in her journey.


Here are the hearts I sent to Ang for May and June.

 

Hearts for May

Airdry clay hearts for June

These are the hearts I have received from Ang -

 To see all the hearts that have been created for May and June by all the artist involved please pop on over to The Balanced Heart Project blog.  You can also read Ang's full story there.

  

I hope to be back on a regular basis with more updates of the last few months.  


Thank you for visiting and please do leave your comments - they are really appreciated.


Anita

You Lift Me Up

Just a quick post today showing one of my cards with a sassy corset.  The corset is a rubber stamp design by Pink Cat Studio - Lingerie set.  I've painted it with my favourite Derwent Inktense watercolour pencils and added some jewels to the front.  The tiny flower stamp is also part of the set and makes for a great border and as we all know you can never have enough bling I've added the tiniest of gems to the centres.  I like this set of stamps as they are sassy and quirky and make me smile.

Heart Tree

Yesterday I posted these fabric Artist Trading Cards -which I am happy to say are on their way to new homes.

Before I started on the fabric cards I wanted to try out the "heart tree" on card to see if how it would look and work.  I'm happy to say that it did because trees and hearts are 2 of my favourite things to draw (if you can call it drawing) and here it is - 

Its drawn on Watercolour paper with faber-castell pitt pen and coloured with my favourite Derwent Inktense watercolour pencils and finished off with white gel pen.