If you're new to Art Journal Every Day, there is a short introduction here. All of the previous posts can be found archived here. There is a flickr group for sharing right here. Remember, it's just ten minutes of nourishing your creative self every day! No need to finish anything or even like it. If you've done some art journaling this week and you've blogged about it, or put it on flickr, please leave a link in the linky list at the end of this post. Thanks!
Today we have a guest post from Sharon Evans. I found her blog through the linky list and discovered that she was participating in a really interesting challenge called "29 Faces." I asked her to share a bit about the experience today. And, as a side note, if you're interested in faces, check out my DVD: All About Faces.
29 Faces Challenge
I love drawing, painting and doing journal
pages centered around faces. When Julie
asked me to do a guest post about the 29 Faces challenge, I was honoured, and
then I thought HELP!
However, I love challenges, I need challenges;
otherwise I tend to stay in the same place.
I have only been blogging since July last year and in that time my art
has come a long way. The encouragement
of other artists has a lot to do with it, but more so are the challenges that I
take part in. The 29 Faces Challenges hosted by Alaya of I love 2 paint
are wonderful.
I have always loved doing faces, but had no confidence. The
first one I did last September and I really did not know what I let myself in
for! I had total blockage, but decided
to do what some others were doing – copying portraits by artists that you
liked. It was a real learning
process. By the next challenge in
February, I was better prepared and set myself some goals. Such as getting on
top of acrylics, sketches of real people, getting the hang of journaling! I had never done any journaling till this
year.
Here are some of my efforts from the February
challenge.
One of the biggest challenges was the goal of
getting peoples likenesses. Whenever I try
to paint real people it comes out wrong.
So I decided to draw from some photos, and hey presto it worked 90 percent of the time. So the next step was
to try and paint them, well um, that will have to be my challenge for the next
29 faces in September! However, I have a
mild success if I keep the portrait sketchy.
The following steps are from a journal page I
did from a photo of my sister’s granddaughter Kendal.
The background was painted all over the page
with acrylics, and I painted the facial area with white gesso. I wanted to use watercolours and I find that
my journal paper soaks it up like blotting paper! Also I like how the watercolour slides about
on gesso.
I sketched in Kendal, and then started to make
marks on the background, with some homemade stamps.
I added some horses, as Kendal and her mother
are horse mad. Then I added the text which I painted in with gesso, and then
coloured with gouache. I like to keep some of the white showing as it helps the
text to stand out.
This is a fairly simple piece for me, as I usually
put more texture in my work. This one below, I did for the Fall, Fearless and
Fly challenge at Artists in Blogland.
I love texture, and like to create it with
lots of scribbling, dripping wool into paint and dropping it onto the page and lifting
it to see what mark it makes. I use a
white gel pen a lot and even a tippex pen.
Anything goes, even a comb!
It pays when doing daily challenges to be able
to ring the changes as it can all become a bit too much. I love using digital media, either drawing or
painting directly in a paint programme or scanning some art and manipulating it
with other artwork. Here are some examples
of digital journal pages:
With this one I scanned a background I had
painted in my journal, then in Photoshop merged a painting I had done in Corel
Painter. Then added more marks and the
text.
This page is entirely digital. The face was done in Painter, and the rest in
Photoshop.
This was from a drawing of a face that I did
with my left hand. I often do this when
I find that my drawings are starting to look alike! After scanning I coloured it in and scribbled
and made marks etc. in Photoshop. (I
have a tablet and pen that makes drawing and painting easy.)
There are a lot of challenges out there from
weekly ones with a prompt to daily one with a theme such as 29 faces. The important thing is to get out of your
comfort zone and challenge yourself. You
don’t know where it will lead, but for sure you will meet lots of likeminded
people and your art will benefit. Mine
did!
About Sharon:
I live in the Wairarapa region
of New Zealand, a rural area with easy access to Wellington, the capital, so
have best of both worlds.
However, I have spent much of
my life away from NZ, mostly in Europe.
I have itchy feet, but they seemed to have settled now. I have always been involved in art, as a
hobby or with jobs closely related, i.e. designing tapestries, working for a
greeting card company and so on. It was
only when I was involved in a serious car crash 12 years ago that left me
disabled, that I started to take my art seriously. I did a Diploma in Art & Design at a
local Polytechnic – three years of bliss!
However, I still shied away from calling myself an artist and went into
children illustration, mostly educational for schools etc. I got tired of that a couple of years ago,
not the illustration, but doing what others told you to do. Also my health deteriorated and I needed to
find work that I could do at home. So, I
decided to illustrate my own stories and design web sites for other artists (no
e-commerce sites please!) I have been slogging away at that. Middle of last year, I was designing a site
for a photographer I discovered the blogging world. Here, at long last I was able to explore my
artistic side and tentatively call myself an artist!
My blog is Art Inspires.
(Hopefully in the next few
weeks I will have my own website up and running. It will be www.sharonsillustrations.co.nz Please note it is not there yet. Try in a month. I will do a post on it on my blog when I have
uploaded it.)
Here is this week's linky list:
Thanks for stopping by!
Looking forward to seeing your website Sharon, your faces are inspired. Thanks Julie for hosting and as always you are an inspiration with your bold freedom. xox
Looking forward to seeing your website Sharon, your faces are inspired. Thanks Julie for hosting and as always you are an inspiration with your bold freedom. xox
Looking forward to seeing your website Sharon, your faces are inspired. Thanks Julie for hosting and as always you are an inspiration with your bold freedom. xox
Looking forward to seeing your website Sharon, your faces are inspired. Thanks Julie for hosting and as always you are an inspiration with your bold freedom. xox
Looking forward to seeing your website Sharon, your faces are inspired. Thanks Julie for hosting and as always you are an inspiration with your bold freedom. xox
Gorgeous faces and backgrounds Sharon. Glad to hear that you have found a niche for your artist talents.
Gorgeous faces and backgrounds Sharon. Glad to hear that you have found a niche for your artist talents.
Gorgeous faces and backgrounds Sharon. Glad to hear that you have found a niche for your artist talents.
Gorgeous faces and backgrounds Sharon. Glad to hear that you have found a niche for your artist talents.
Gorgeous faces and backgrounds Sharon. Glad to hear that you have found a niche for your artist talents.
Sharon thank you for sharing your wonderful art and your story about how you coped with illness and life changes and found yourself and art! That is very encouraging to me!!!! Thank you so much!!
Sharon thank you for sharing your wonderful art and your story about how you coped with illness and life changes and found yourself and art! That is very encouraging to me!!!! Thank you so much!!
Sharon thank you for sharing your wonderful art and your story about how you coped with illness and life changes and found yourself and art! That is very encouraging to me!!!! Thank you so much!!
Sharon thank you for sharing your wonderful art and your story about how you coped with illness and life changes and found yourself and art! That is very encouraging to me!!!! Thank you so much!!
Sharon thank you for sharing your wonderful art and your story about how you coped with illness and life changes and found yourself and art! That is very encouraging to me!!!! Thank you so much!!
What a great post Sahron! Your portraits are all beautiful-I especially love the one of Kendal. How wonderful that despite your health issues you have kept the tenacity to keep moving forward. I wish you all the best!
What a great post Sahron! Your portraits are all beautiful-I especially love the one of Kendal. How wonderful that despite your health issues you have kept the tenacity to keep moving forward. I wish you all the best!
What a great post Sahron! Your portraits are all beautiful-I especially love the one of Kendal. How wonderful that despite your health issues you have kept the tenacity to keep moving forward. I wish you all the best!
What a great post Sahron! Your portraits are all beautiful-I especially love the one of Kendal. How wonderful that despite your health issues you have kept the tenacity to keep moving forward. I wish you all the best!
What a great post Sahron! Your portraits are all beautiful-I especially love the one of Kendal. How wonderful that despite your health issues you have kept the tenacity to keep moving forward. I wish you all the best!
I like how water color slides on gesso too. I haven’t done that in a while. I think I will.
I like how water color slides on gesso too. I haven’t done that in a while. I think I will.
I like how water color slides on gesso too. I haven’t done that in a while. I think I will.
I like how water color slides on gesso too. I haven’t done that in a while. I think I will.
I like how water color slides on gesso too. I haven’t done that in a while. I think I will.
Wonderful, Sharon! Thank you for sharing your art and the story of how your art has emerged and evolved. Your journal pages are quite inspiring, with the depth achieved with somewhat monochromatic schemes. Lovely!
Wonderful, Sharon! Thank you for sharing your art and the story of how your art has emerged and evolved. Your journal pages are quite inspiring, with the depth achieved with somewhat monochromatic schemes. Lovely!
Wonderful, Sharon! Thank you for sharing your art and the story of how your art has emerged and evolved. Your journal pages are quite inspiring, with the depth achieved with somewhat monochromatic schemes. Lovely!
Wonderful, Sharon! Thank you for sharing your art and the story of how your art has emerged and evolved. Your journal pages are quite inspiring, with the depth achieved with somewhat monochromatic schemes. Lovely!
Wonderful, Sharon! Thank you for sharing your art and the story of how your art has emerged and evolved. Your journal pages are quite inspiring, with the depth achieved with somewhat monochromatic schemes. Lovely!
Sharon – so cool to see you here!! I LOVE the 29 faces challenge too – great way to stretch yourself. I really like how you incorporate digital into your art.
Sharon – so cool to see you here!! I LOVE the 29 faces challenge too – great way to stretch yourself. I really like how you incorporate digital into your art.
Sharon – so cool to see you here!! I LOVE the 29 faces challenge too – great way to stretch yourself. I really like how you incorporate digital into your art.
Sharon – so cool to see you here!! I LOVE the 29 faces challenge too – great way to stretch yourself. I really like how you incorporate digital into your art.
Sharon – so cool to see you here!! I LOVE the 29 faces challenge too – great way to stretch yourself. I really like how you incorporate digital into your art.
Such an interesting post. I can relate to the fact that blogging took my art to new places.
Such an interesting post. I can relate to the fact that blogging took my art to new places.
Such an interesting post. I can relate to the fact that blogging took my art to new places.
Such an interesting post. I can relate to the fact that blogging took my art to new places.
Such an interesting post. I can relate to the fact that blogging took my art to new places.
Absolutely fabulous interview with Sharon who I admire and find so inspirational!! Loved it thank you!!
Hugs Giggles
Absolutely fabulous interview with Sharon who I admire and find so inspirational!! Loved it thank you!!
Hugs Giggles
Absolutely fabulous interview with Sharon who I admire and find so inspirational!! Loved it thank you!!
Hugs Giggles
Absolutely fabulous interview with Sharon who I admire and find so inspirational!! Loved it thank you!!
Hugs Giggles
Absolutely fabulous interview with Sharon who I admire and find so inspirational!! Loved it thank you!!
Hugs Giggles
Thanks for your lovely comments.
Thanks for your lovely comments.
Thanks for your lovely comments.
Thanks for your lovely comments.
Thanks for your lovely comments.