Geisha

I have been wanting to try to paint a Geisha for a while now and thought I just try one in my big Dylusions Art Journal.

Deco Art Products Used:
Americana Arylics in: Colonial Green, True Red, Grey Sky, Moon Yellow, Asphaltum, Soft Heather, Wild Orchid, Spiced Pumpkin, Warm White, Lamp Black.
Americana Multi Surface in Lemon Zest.
Deco Art Media  U;tra matte varsnish and gesso
Dazzling Metallics in Medieval Gold

I made the background first, using stencils, rubber stamps and an old credit card, next I sketched the face sing a charcoal pencil.

I used gesso to create a white surface over the background so it would be easier to paint.

Next I used the charcoal pencil again to sketch the face and clothes back in

Then I started painting in the colors and the shades

 next was the hair and eyes

 Gave the eyes color and added details on her clothes.

 Painted the quote trying to get a Japanese like script.

Finished by giving her eyeashes ad eye brows.

I always protect my painting with a layer of ultra matte varnish , even if they are in a journal.

31 days of Halloween ; day 4

Welcome to day 4 of the 31 days of Halloween

I am trying to learn how to paint (no I don't have classes I just see what happens lol) and for Halloween you just have to have pumpkins.

So I experimented in my Art Journal :-)

Products used: Deco Art Media Gesso White, Matte Medium. Americana Acrylic paint in Snow White, Ultramarine Blue, Antique Mauve, Jack 'o'lantern orange, Lemon Yellow. Deco Art Glass paint marker in black.
Derwent Intense pencils, Crazy cat stamp by Ranger. Moon stamp by Stampinback.  HB pencil .

I made some pic along the way :-) .. I used my small Dylussions Journal and gessoed the pages first. When gesso was dry I used a bby wipe to paint the page Atique Mauve, going from dark on the edges to light in the middle.

Next I drew the shape of the pumpkins using the HB pencil and use gesso to make theinside of the pumpkins white (just paint over the pencil lines, but make sure they stay a bit visable so you can use them as guidance).

Paint the pumpkins Lemon Yellow (yah I know.....they are pumpkins), when yellow is dry add Jack O Lantern Orange :-)  to create shades. (what I did was paint orange over the yellow and removed the orange using a baby wipe on the spots the highlights would be (Is that still painting?? LOL)

Next I used Derwent inktense pencils (make sure the paint is dry) and use orange brown and dark red to draw the lines in the pumpkin. used a waterbrush to fade them a bit and get the color out.

Because I knew what quote I wanted to use I wanted the pumpkins to glow, I used yellow intense pencil to get a glowing effect around the pumpkins.
And used dark grey to get somesort of shade underneath the pumkins.

because of the quote I had to have a black cat, I used a Tim Holtz crazy cat rubber stamp for that, Stamped it on cardstock and coloured it using the Derwent Inktense pencils and cut it out (cut the whiskers of, I solved that by stamping the image directly to the page and glueing the image I cut out over the stamped image, so the whiskers show, see next pic)

Now I needed a moon and I also used a rubber stamp for that,  stamped on cardstock, coloured using inktense pencils and used a circle punch to cut the moon out (my circle punch was a little bit bigger than the stamp but that did not matter).

I wanted the back ground to be a night sky and used blue, yellow and antique mauve to make it look this way. The yellow glow from the moon to the pumpkins is done by Inktense pencils in yellows and orange, use waterbrush  to blend the colours of the pencils and get the colour out.

Fianally I used a piece of paper roughly cut in the shape of the sillhouette of the pumpkins and the cat to cover them and covered the moon with a punched out circle of scrappaper.

Took white paint and added a bit water, dipped a tooth brush in and made the splatter to make it look like you can see the galaxy.  I figuered the glow from the moon would reflect on the ground so used some yellow and antique mauve there too.

Hope you like the result.

But there is also a page from the junk journal off course :-)  see below

this page of the junkjournal is made of Halloween paper (lol I found a little piece in my stash so it had to be in here)  I made a pocket and stamped the word spooky on it, in the pocket is a to do list. underneath the do do list is a stamped skullie

next page has a photo of a skeleton and some spideys on it

and here are the pages inside the book

I will enter the following challenges

http://dreamindarkness.blogspot.nl/2016/10/october-1-challenge-post-31-days-of.html

Show the world your sparkle

This is the first time I worked in my big Dylusions Journal , the size was a bit daunting because I am used to workning in the small journal :-).  So I just started and kept working on it till I liked the result

Deco Art Products used :  Americana Decoupage matte, Americana Acrylics in: Sweet Mint, Electric Pink, Sea Breeze, Baby Pink, Tangerine, Lamp black, Snow white, True Red and Coral Shell. Americana Multi Surface in Lemn Zest. Deco Art Media Matte Varnish. Glass paint marker in black.
The stencil is by Pronty (fasce A4), I also used som home made stencils, made using die cuts from Sizzix

I started with some decoupage papers, tore them apart and glued pieces on the page using the decou page, The decoupage paper had butterflies and some text on it and I wanted it to get more into the background, so I added paint using a sponge and used some stencils, before I used the face stencil 

and then it loolked like this, I liked the crisp black stencilling of the face but I did not like the pattern of the decoupage papers showing through that much. So I used Coral Shel americana acrylic as a skin colour to paint the face. That helped camouflage the butterflies but now it needed some more colour on the eyes and the hair.

I ended up doing a bid of a Warhol look, using bright colors, I used the face stencil again forto get the hair color in the same spot as the black, and next painted the eyeshadow and the lips and the eye it self.

Painting made the black stencilling look a bit messy (it 's kinda hard to paint inside the lines lol)

so when all color was added I used the stencil and black Americana acrylic paint agian to freshen up the outlines of the face.

Then it looked like this

I liked the look of the faces but it needed something more, and I just couldn't think off what to add, because the page allready was pretty busy. I  added a layer of matte varnish so the painting would be protected

In my journals I like to use quotes, but I just couldn't find one that seemed suitable for this page. Meanwhile the journal was lying in my craftroom and I started some other projects, because I was just stuck.

Then I found the quotes/words I wanted to use and handwrote it on the page, I used a white glass marker (those are supposed to be used on glass, duh!!...but they work great on acrylic paint as well)

Anyway it just did not look good, it looked messy and the idea to write the word sparkle in glitter glue turned out horrible.

So back to the drawing board lol, how to fix this???

The fix was easy, I used got some designer paper and cut it into strips that were just big enough to cover my handwriting and used alphabet stamps and some handwriting (this time all in black ink to get some unity) and I just left the pink handwriting at the bottom of the page as it was.

This is the end result and I am quite happy with it :-)