DLP 2015 Weeks 2 and 3

I returned last week from a wonderful mini vacation in South Florida (more on that another time), so had some Documented Life to catch up on. Week 2 (still dealing with the overall January theme of facing the blank page) was using gesso, with a prompt of "the beginning is always today."

The gesso I used is colored, from an Australian company, Derivan Matisse. The figure was done by scraping light olive green through a stencil. Once dry, I repositioned the stencil over top and used paint and two other stencils right over the gesso. By the way, they call it "background paint," but the small print clearly identifies it as gesso.

The other area I used this product was on the cornflowers (close-up below). This time, I applied terracotta on silhouette stamps. Caution: when you use gesso with your stencils and stamps, please wash it off immediately after use. Wet gesso comes off easily; dry, not so much.

Week 3 is all about the color wheel, and the prompt is a Georgia O'Keefe quote, which you will see clearly on my pages. First step, to get a whole bunch of color onto my pages. For this I used stencils, lots and lots of stencils. I just kept layering them, using colors, sometimes going dark over light, sometimes the other way around, which resulted in this riot of color.

Now comes the part where a little bravery (and faith in the technique) might help. I learned this in a workshop with Anne Bagby. After spending the better part of a day creating bold and beautiful designs, we used a mask and covered all but a part with dark paint. For this spread, I used clear embossing ink on some solid stamps, then heat set clear embossing powder. The embossed areas resist the next layer.....in this case, black paint. There is a lot of glare on the photo, so it looks grayish, but trust me, it is very very black. After the application, the paint wiped off the embossed areas easily with a barely damp paper towel.

Last step, adding the quote, which I did with some of my favorite pens for writing over dark paint: Sharpie poster paint water based paint markers, Molotow high-solid paint markers, and Posca paint markers.

I wish I could have taken a better picture, minus the glare (I tried many times), because the bright colors against the very dark background just pop so beautifully, but you get the idea.

As always, looking forward to the next challenge. Thank you, Art to the 5th ladies!

The Documented Life Project, 2015

Yes, I'm still alive. Now that we got that out of the way, I am looking forward to more art, possibly even more blogging, and in general, a more purposeful life in 2015. I'll let you know how that goes.

For 2015 the DLP group suggested using Dyan Reaveley's Dylusions journal (the large one). I have used it, like it a lot, so bought a new one and did the cover ages ago.

Stencils. Lots and lots of stencils. I only have about a million, so really should use them more often.

Each month has a theme, and each week, within that theme will be a technique and a prompt. I'm liking this process a lot. And it works well for beginners and old pros as well.

January theme: facing the blank page.

Week one technique: using book pages

Week one prompt: be your own goalkeeper

I tore up a variety of book pages for my collage and covered them with a wash of blue and green acrylics. Most everything else on the spread was done with stencils and masks. The joyful figure is a Sue Pelletiere stencil, and the sentiment is from a Jessica Sporn stencil. On the facing page, the words (my three words for the year) were traced from a Tim Holtz alphabet stencil and filled in with a black marker. The cornflowers are masks from a Michelle Ward stencil. I laid them over the painted page and then sprayed over everything with a darker blue spray. I still have one or two sprays that haven't completely clogged up, so I'm using them as fast as I can.