Blog hop love - Jane Davenport Signature Stencil Series :)

Hello friends! Wow, lately it's blog hop central over here! I love getting involved in testing out new products, giving out shout outs to awesome artists and shops and share with you how I create my art! :) (If you're a supplier of art supplies and ever want me to demo them for you or be part of a blog hop, do email me! (willowing AT gmail.com).

So without further ado! I was invited to be part of a blog hop to show off the fabulous new stencils produced by www.artistcellar.com. These specific stencils are the 'Artistcellar Signature Series" designed by Jane Davenport! Jane is a good friend of mine, a fabulous artist and also teaches on Life Book this year! Her lessons are SO super popular. :) Her lesson went up only 2 weeks ago. :) (Just a reminder that you can still sign up to Life Book - there is enough time to catch up!) 

Anyhoo, I personally love her art too and was delighted to hear that she had some stencils out. You get 4 of them in a pack and they feature faces and facial features in her style that you can use and play with in your art journal (or in a painting). The cool thing is that even though the designs are clearly and recognisably Jane's, when I started working over the stencils, I found the faces came out 'me' looking. :) So you can still make the faces really your own and not be too worried that the face is 'too someone else's style' if you know what I mean!? :) I did a little video of the process below.

BTW!

Artistcellar are giving a way 1 set of the stencils to one of you!

If you want a chance to win, leave a comment below telling me why you'd love to own a set of Jane stencils! 

(Give away will close on 14th March 2013 - Winner announced on 15th March 2013)

Here are the other artists taking part in the blog hop, do check out what they've done with the stencils! It's fun to see how everyone else is using them! :) 

Sunday 3/3 - Artistcellar (www.artistcellar.com/wp)
Monday 3/4 - Teesha Moore (www.teeshascircus.blogspot.com)
Tuesday 3/5 - Jeanette House (http://www.jeanettehouse.co.uk/blog/)
Wednesday 3/6 - Dawn Sokol (http://www.dblogala.com/)
Thursday 3/7 - Tamara Laporte (www.willowing.org/blog)
Friday 3/8 - Effy Wild (http://effywild.com)
Saturday 3/9 - Kass Hall (http://www.kasshall.com/)
Sunday 3/10 - Mindy Lacefield (http://www.timssally.com/)
Monday 3/11 - Jane Davenport (http://www.janedavenport.com/

And if you have the stencils and you're doing some art with them do leave a link to your blog post in the comments too! I've love to see how you use the stencils! :-)

Essence of Angel - Free Art Tutorial

Essence of Angel "Dance When You're Broken Open"
(Rumi) (Original SOLD) (Prints for Sale Here)  

Hello my creative comrades! I had a total art block for a while and was uhming and ah-ing over what to do. So one morning I was looking through my own flickr account and came across some of my 'paint over collage' paintings and felt inspired to do another painting like it! And I'm so happy that I did because this painting might well be one of my favourite ones of mine ever! I documented the process so you can try it too.
If you want more in depth guidance on how to create art like this; I run a mini workshop called: "Collage, Paint and Soul" which you can sign up to here (clicky clicky) if you want! :) 

But for now here are the progress shots with instructions of how I made 'Essence of Angel'. :) Hope you enjoy and if you create something in response, do link to your blog post in the comments, I'd love to see your work! :)

Step 1. Create a pleasing to you collage. I used a variety of scrapbooking papers/ book pages and magazine papers. Choose a face from a magazine over which you will paint another face later. 

Step 2. Use clear/ transparent gesso and go over your collage. Let dry. Once it's dry, paint over the face and add extra things like hair or crowns or whatever else to make the face your own.

Step 3. Continue building up the layers. Add colour with watersoluble paints/ crayons/ pencils to the background. I also brayered over the background and continued to build layers.

Step 4. Continue building up your layers and add interesting elements to the body element (or other depending on your design). I added a bird, a big hand, a house/ castle and some butterfly wings at the bottom of her body.

Step 5. Once you are happy with the entire piece, add quotes or lyrics that you love to the background. I used Rumi quotes. I also added little doodles like hearts, stars, moons, suns etc. :)

And here is the final painting (again, ha):

Hope you enjoyed seeing the progress shots and remember that if you want to get more in depth guidance on this technique, sign up to my mini course (super affordable) here:

1 Space on Collage, Paint & Soul

(self study group)

£14.99 GBP

Being Brave - A journal page healing technique.

Hello my amigos. It's been a while! Let me summarise the past couple of weeks in short; We moved to an awesome house out in the country side. I hired a fantastic assistant to take some of the pressure off good old me. My little art business is esploding and making people's lives happier. And the babies continue to be a handful! Life Book 2013 is thriving, people are buzzing with creativity and I'm bursting with new ideas for courses, projects, paintings and psssst; retreats! :D Life is awesome and I've also been down, struggling with my usual demons which I won't go into right now as it will take some time. :) 

Anyhoo, let me share with you what happened today, I was brave! I received an unpleasant email and felt really triggered. As much as I know and have the tools to process feelings healthily and properly, my default response to unpleasant feelings is to grab a bag of cookies. It requires energy, awakeness and courage (in my case) to take a moment, stand still, feel my feelings and then process them, instead of just defaulting to cookies. So that is what I did today (feel them, not default them, ha!). It's a much healthier way to deal with stuff this way. I always endeavour to use this method more than the cookie one (but often fail dismally, ahem, but nevermind, today I didn't which is what I'm focusing on! ;))

This is how I do it, hope it's helpful for you too!

STEP 1. First, sit down, notice your body, start internally naming how you are feeling eg: 'anxious, worried, sad' and/or 'a heavy feeling in my stomach' etc.

STEP 2. Take any kind of pen and your art journal. Start writing down the same feelings. Don't worry about making it legible, in fact, scribble and write your feelings over the other scribbles/ writings too, this way the writing becomes an interesting texture layer later. I forgot to take a pic of this stage, but under the gelli plate print layer you can see the writing: 

STEP 3. If you have a gelli plate (which are awesome) do a few prints over your writing. Draw patterns onto your gelli plate after you've added the paint, then print. 

STEP 4. With an old credit card apply some more bright colours in desired areas. 

STEP 5. I wanted to include a face. Drawing is a bit easier over gesso and I wanted a bit more white on my page, so I added some gesso with the same card to the page. 

STEP 6. I sketched my portrait. 

STEP 7. I added more details and built up the shading. 

STEP 8. With a white posca pen, I wrote down the needs underneath the feelings I was feeling earlier (ask yourself: 'why am I feeling this way?' In my case: I needed acceptance, love, care, compassion and ease). I scribbled the writing down deliberately so that the writing wasn't very legible. I like for the writing to be part of the texture and art rather than it being something to read. 

STEP 9. I added a photo of myself that conveyed the feelings/ mood I was in and collaged some papers under and around it. I also added some washi tape on the page (loooooove washi tape). 

STEP 10. Lastly, I doodled on and around the photo and added the word "compassion" several times on the photo. 

And done! Here are some more shots taken with the more professional camera: 

It was a a healing/ nurturing page to make. :) 

Hope you enjoyed this post! If you do something similar, leave a link to your blog post below! I'd love to see it! 

Mucho muffins. xox
Tam