King Neptune and his Love….

After a week of procrastination I dove into creating a page that had been stewing in the back of my mind for the past week. I am unsure if this is finished yet but I think it needs to sit a while before I do anymore..

I am not happy with King Neptune’s face – I redrew it and gessoed it out a dozen times so it will just have to stay as it is.

I used a HEAP of mediums and techniques to create this page. The background was created using Neocolor II’s – in LOVE with them right now. Watercolour and Prismacolor pencils, Tombow markers, Copics, Acrylic dabber paints, Gesso (clear and white) and Matt Medium. Techniques used included a tissue transfer technique that I learnt in an online class with Jane Davenport and Teesha Moore. I also hand-carved my own fish stamps as I needed to create the fish “shadows” but didn’t want to hand paint each and everyone of them.

The mermaid and Neptune are both my original art pieces – and since it is the very first time I have painted a male I am very happy with him (except the face – really need to work on male faces).

The sea life at the bottom is a mixture of my drawings and some clipart images.

Well that is about it…. what do you think?

Thanks for dropping by.

Hugs

Vicky

Stencil Making – Lessons Learnt from Attempt Number 1

Lesson Number 1: DO NOT attempt to cut (melt) plastic with a hot implement inside the house. Not only does the house stink for the rest of the day but the fumes probably aren’t good for your health!

Lesson Number 2: The heat that you need to effectively cut out your pattern without leaving ”burrs” is very close to the heat where the whole thing burns and becomes a yucky black mess.

Lesson Number 3: DO NOT attempt to cut the plastic inside – the fumes give you a REALLY bad headache….. OK – the same as Lesson Number 1 – but it really is worth noting     LOL

Second attempt at creating my own stencils will happen this weekend – and it will occur outside where the fumes won’t be quite so bad

So check back soon to see how the second stage of this experiment plays out.

Stencil Making Attempt # 1

After finding THE perfect stencil online – and then seeing the exorbitant price they wanted for it, I have had the bright idea to try and make my own stencils. I already have a stash of plastic binding covers so then all I needed was something to cut out the designs with. I didn’t like the idea of using a craft knife as it would take waaaaaay to long. I needed a simpler and faster way to do it. My brain started whirring …….. ah – plastic melts when heated. I wonder if there is a heated knife type thing that I could use? Off to the local hardware store after work I went…..

I found a heat tool that has attachments that look like knives and other wider gouging thingy’s. It looked like it just might do the job. And as it wasn’t all that expensive I didn’t mind paying the price. If it is a complete failure I will just put it in the shed with all of my husbands other tools that he doesn’t use – he won’t notice at all!

So now I am about to embark on the fun part of things – creating my design and then cutting it out – well at least I hope the cutting out part is fun. If it doesn’t work then I can see that it won’t really be fun at all.

Wish me luck.

Hugs

Vicky

Arting by the River

I took my art supplies and my two dogs down to the river today and spent a couple of hours arting. It was so relaxing that I can’t wait to do it again.

Here are a couple of pictures of the river here in my town.

     

and my boys…..

Whilst I was there a Rivermaid came to visit. She just popped out of my pencils…..
I scanned some beautiful Autumn leaves I found for the tail, hair and bikini top.

I am not sure if she is finished yet – but she is for today.

Thanks for dropping by.

Naughty Pixie

I have been totally occupied with Mermaid Circus over the last few weeks. However, for a change I went back to one of the books I am altering with art related to fairies, pixies, etc. Here is the latest page so far. The story will be of a Naughty Pixie stealing eggs from birds nests – just because she can.

The book I am altering is “The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady” by Edith Holden and the eggs and nest feature on one of the pages.

Mermaid Circus

This page was created using watercolours, collaged elements and Prismacolor pencils.

The scuba diver peering down from the top is a photo of my son taken during his Shark Dive at Bondi. The mermaid is a copy of one I created previously – I liked her so much I just had to use her again.

Thanks for dropping by

Vicky

My Mermaid Drawing Inspiration

I am so utterly pleased with my latest mermaid drawing (to be revealed in my next post).

In a Jane Davenport class I am taking (Supplies Me) She posed the statement “There once was a girl….” as a drawing challenge. Well that statement has inspired this mermaid drawing…..

I am so exceptionally pleased with this drawing for so many reasons…… The first one is that it is ALL from my imagination, and all drawn by ME!! WOO HOOO <please excuse me whilst I blow my own horn and celebrate with a glass of wine>

OK – why is this such a great moment for me….????? Well we need to go back quite a number of years. In fact back to when I was in Primary school.

I was a very ill child. I spent a lot of time at home doing what is now called “home schooling”. My Mum and Dad were amazing and helped me through my childhood illnesses to a point where I was not disadvantaged by my “sick days” and managed to keep up with everyone else. (actually in one year I had well over half the school day attendances marked as absent)!!! Given my high absentee ratio I should have felt disadvantaged – but due to my Mom’s diligence and my Dad’s support it never actually occurred to me that I should be deemed as disadvantaged.

I soon learnt that my Mum and Dad had their own areas of expertise and that helped me keep up with my education. I have to say my Mum and Dad were amazing people to be able to lead me through the early teenage years of education when I was too ill to go to school.

Having made it through the formal part of the education system, one of the surprising things found was that not only could I count on my Dad to help me work out my Maths homework (algebra) but he was also the one that inspired my art “dabbling’s” and has continued to do so all throughout my life. Hell not only was my Dad a mathematician but he was an amazingly talented artist that was as happy drawing the human body as he was a building something.

In writing this blog post I am starting to recall all the paintings he created beside me as I did the “Paint by numbers” thing…..    I wish I still had those paintings – they were painted not just by numbers but also with input from my Dad….. I can visualise one of them now….but before now I had totally forgotten my art…. my ability……and the confidence my Dad actually gave to me by way of his encouragement and tutoring.

It has only been in my very recent venture into art (the last 4 weeks) that I have recalled me Dads influence on my fashion design drawing. Only the other day I reremembered a book he bought me on drawing “female fashion art” and another one that covered eyes (but probably more). It was back in the 70s when he gave them to me…… I can remember a few of the illustrations but not the title or much else about them. BUT I do remember spending hours studying the drawings and trying to replicate them. How I wished I had kept these publications because for a while now I have wanted to refer to those illustrations for inspiration. I have searched the internet for the soft covered books (very large format from memory) but haven’t been able to find them.

So here we are at the end of my blog post. I feel it has been disjointed – but then my thought process for this piece of art and my thought process as the result of it HAVE been very disjointed.