This old heart of mine

I was so excited when I was asked to host at Take A Word this week, that I immediately started the concept drawing (such a child).  I hope you get some inspiration from the piece.

Heart in my art

Starting out with 300gsm water colour paper and using a fan brush I applied light strokes of white gesso.  Once dried I made three very weak washes using distress ink re-inkers in Milled Lavender, Tattered Rose and Old Paper. I applied a tiny bit of Old Paper, and then much more of the lavender and rose.  (The gesso acts as a resist).  Once dry, I applied some glass bead medium in patches over the gesso.  While the medium was drying, I cut a heart from rusty metal (it's real metal and real rust) and, cut the heart in two.  Using a Crop-A-Dile I punched the holes and applied large grommets.
Next came some 'industrial' stamping with Black StayzOn, the stamps are all circuit boards and warning signs.  Then I laced the two sections of the heart with some soft apricot ribbon finished with a bow.

 Several more layers of the weak distress wash, each one dried before applying the next, then a drop of  undiluted re-inker over the beads.  Next came some stamping with swirls using London Fog Archival Ink and then Golden Iridescent Bronze was dry brushed over the beads.
The words were printed on my computer and edged with Tattered Rose and the small hearts were painted with Golden Iridescent Bronze and punched with a small heart punch.
Finally, I dusted the edge of the whole piece with Pumice Stone distress ink.
Thanks so much for looking and your comments.

Time for a cuppa?

The challenge at Sunday Postcard Art this week is Coffee Time chosen by Marie. All week I have been thinking about the topic and yesterday I had decided I wasn't going to put an entry in.  Then I woke up in the middle of last night with a clear vision of how the finished piece should look.
It hasn't turned out exactly as I wanted, but pretty close and I learnt lessons on the way, bonus!

The vision was for an old 1950's cafe sign that has been left to weather and been damaged, the hands have fallen from the clock and rust is taking over.  The process for this was difficult for me, and it took several attempts and it's still not a perfected technique.

Hmmm, what time does the clock say?

Starting out with 300gsm paper I applied 3 coats of Deco Art Butter.  While the paint was drying I found the coffee cup image on the net and the clock face on the Andy Skinner dropbox.    I arranged the elements in Photo-shop and then (filled with fear and trepidation) I put the painted paper into my printer!!!!!

 I sprayed the whole of the card with hairspray to try to avoid any damage to the piece during the next phase. I painted rust elements around the outside and some chips of rust over the centre panel.  Then I added some small crackle medium in various places. Over the top of all I painted a very weak wash of Quinacrodine Gold and then immediately laid a paper tower over to absorb the excess. Unfortunately the crackle medium seems to have reacted with something??  (don't know what) and when I applied the final paint wash, the crackle medium turned brown.  There is a bit of photo manipulation on the dark patches to soften the edges, but otherwise this is exactly as it was scanned.

This was so much fun to create, I have a feeling I will do more of them.

Tryptic of art

Take a Word Monday has challenged us to use 'wrinkles' in our art.
I have chosen to do a digital piece today that shows the work of 3 different artists from three different schools and ages.

The first artistic element:

The background of the piece was painted by my daughter as part of her final year exams and is a Maori flax kit, green lipped mussels, a bone fishing hook and twine. It is is painted in acrylics on thick board and I have always loved this piece.  She had it framed for me as a gift and it's with me now in the UK.

The second artistic element:

Overlaying the background is one of New Zealands most famous artists: C. F. Goldie (1870 - 1947), who is renowned for painting photo-realistic images of the Maori dignitaries he met.  He was born and educated in Auckland.  The lady in this painting is Kapi Kapi who was an Arawa chieftainess who died in 1902 aged 102.  She is wearing a traditional Maori cloak and a tiki around her neck, probably made of green stone. (Jade)

When is a tattoo not a tattoo?  When it's a moko.

The third artistic element:

The moko (Maori tattoo) displayed on the lips and chin of Kapi Kapi.  The moko was not simply a tattoo, there was much tapu and ritual accorded to the process.  It was also not just ink pierced into the skin, the tool used was an uhi, which was more of a small chisel and the healed moko had a distinct texture.
The ritual was slightly different between women and men but for the women a song would be sung called a whakawai taanga ngutu.  This was to help them to remain stout-hearted and endure the pain of the uhi.

Fancy Free

Today's Three Muses Challenge was to create a journal style page with a favourite quote.
I haven't done anything in this journal for a while now and once I got started I really enjoyed it.  I can't say the quotes are particular favourites, but I had fun doing it :)

Underwear for the great outdoors - I feel so free :)

I started out by putting a layer of relatively smooth gesso on both pages and once that was dry I began painting with various shades or Americana Paints, Lemonade, Mint Julep, Spa Blue, Indian Turquoise and Butter (the colour not the dairy product).
Next came various layers of stamping using Ranger archival inks in various colours.  Once all was dry I applied some stencils and then sprayed with Dylusions Ink in Fresh Lime (yummy)
I found the wonderful ladies on Freubels free digi images site.  I printed them on cardstock, cut them out and glued them to the pages.
Over the top of all that, I stamped again with butterflies in various colours of inks.  I stamped two butterflies on plain white paper, coloured with Promarkers and glued them to the ladies heads.

The final step was to stamp the border around the page using Stayz On ink - my 'go to' black ink.

I've been so busy with work lately and also busy taking a slight detour with my art!!  I'm planning to do more assemblage and have been spending spare time creating a techniques sampler I will use on those pieces I'm going to create.

I've also been creating some backgrounds and working on swaps I'm registered for.  I'll post a blog about them soon.

Sepia tones for modern days

Haere mai  
The challenge at Three Muses this week is to produce something in Sepia.  I did do a collage but I didn't care for it much so went looking for another subject.  Without further ado, I give you my entry to this weeks challenge...  The view from the top of the Paekakariki Hill, New Zealand.

Look out at the top of the Paekakariki Hill outside Wellington

I have lived most of my life in New Zealand and whilst I was looking through photo's it occurred to me that many photo's of NZ could easily look to be legitimately taken in sepia! (Sorry to my Kiwi friends :)  This is a photo that I took from the top of the hill on 27th December 2008.  Captain Slow and I had just spent Christmas with his parents at Eketahuna and we drove over for a day trip to Wellington.

On route, somewhere north of Taihape (famous for it's giant gumboot!), I took this photo too.

I actually did do some photoshop things to them.  Converted to Black and white, added noise, adjusted levels and even my arch nemesis - added text!

Thanks for looking and Haere ra.

Art means what?

When I saw the Take A Word challenge this week I thought it would be easy to do, but it's not proved to be the case.  What does art mean to me....
Without telling you my life story or rambling on for days, all I can tell you is that 'art' in some form or other has been an incredibly important part of my life, always.
There are two major milestones in my artistic endeavours, the first is below:

Acrylic on Canvas - Symbolism

This is a painting I completed in 2003 and marked a change from small almost introverted pieces to large, displayed pieces.  This piece is the largest I have ever done it's 100cm x 78cm and it hangs in my dining room.
The second milestone was when I started this blog and actually shared my art.
I would love to say there is massive meaning behind the piece but in truth, there isn't.  I cant even remember where the idea or ideas came from. This is the first time I didn't use a ruler or masking tape on a painting with my aim being to create something organic and primal.
I can't begin to describe what art is to me, so I will let my piece explain it :)

Elegant or completely mad?

The theme at Sunday Postcard Art this week is Winter Elegance.  Whilst looking for inspiration I came across a French fashion advertisement from the 1920's showing a woman in a very fine winter coat.  Without thinking any more about it I decided that I would paint it.

Stop following me you creep! 

The more I sketched and painted the more ridiculous the image became.  What on earth was being depicted here?  They are supposed to be selling coats and dresses!  Instead they have a rather elegant lady in high heels perilously close to the edge of a drop, while a man in a car looks on horrified.  Love it :)

It is painted on heavy duty card stock using Golden Fluid paints in a lose style.  I finished off some pieces with inktensils and coloured pencils.  I really should have put more work into the detail, but I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.

New Year Circles

The theme at Thee Muses this week is circles.  I've been busy playing with techniques but wanted to do something for the last challenge.  So I made an 'out of this world' piece.

Happy New Year

I think it looks like the craters of the moon, hence the 'out of the world' reference.  It began as white card stock with a thick layer of gesso applied.  Into this I pressed various circular objects, bottle tops, pencil ends, paint brush ends etc.  Once dried I painted the whole piece black and then covered that with a blue / green gold.  Next came many, many layers in ever lightening shades of viridian paint using a dry brush technique, until the final layer was just zinc white (almost translucent).  In all I believe there to be approximately 25 - 30 layers.
I really wanted to use this piece for something so decided to take a photo into photoshop and add a seasonal greeting.  This is where the hard work began!

Becoming more and more frustrated that I couldn't make the words appear as I wanted I threw a hissy fit.  Captain Slow to the rescue....  he took the file and manipulated it as I wanted it and then gave it back to me (so technially, this isn't all my own work).

This piece now feels more like leather than paper but I don't know if it's due to the gesso, the paint or both.

Thank you everyone, for taking the time to look at my work this year and for leaving such wonderful and encouraging words.  I wish you all the very best for the new year and hope that it brings you everything that you would wish for yourself.