Artist Study Journal 2

Run with WovesAnother page in my” Inspired by Brett Whiteley” journal for the online course with Kelly Kilmer. For this page I started with Whiteley’s painting of Patrick White sitting in his office or studio.  My idea was to cut out Patrick White, replace him with the woman and stick him on the right hand side of the page separately. He looked a bit grumpy though so in the end I didn’t use him. I had some images from a Womankind magazine article about Women who run with the Wolves, one of my favourite books, and one I draw on quite a lot for stories and quotes in my Heroine’s journey course. After I stuck  down the image with the wolves the meaning of the page started to become apparent, ie am I a bit of a fraud quoting from this book when I am not particularly “wild” and spend a lot of time in my studio, not out on the wild!?

I extended the image of the painting of the studio with ultramarine paint mixed with white and on the other page I mixed Ultramarine with yellow,  yellow ochre and a smidgen of burnt sienna to get various shades of browns and greens, soft foresty colours like the ones in the lovely woman with wolves painting (which was painted by Catrin Welz-Stein). Then I used a new stencil from Stencil Girl, (that i was dying to use) of the branches. The right page was looking very mystic forest but the left page was too blue and stark white so i washed over the studio and the woman’s outfit with transparent yellow ochre paint to tie it in with the right hand page. A wolf and a bird found their way on to the page and they both had something to say to me! I added a Whiteley style swirl (in Olive green posca pen) and some writing and the page was finished pretty fast. You can probably read the writing if you click on the images to enlarge them. Thank you for visiting my blog.

Run with 1Run with 2

 

 

 

 

 

I will also include here the Whiteley portrait of Patrick White. You can see I used the background.

Patrick White

Artist study journal

Last month I enrolled in an online art journaling course with Kelly Kilmer, in which we choose an artist for inspiration and use some aspects of their work in our journal. This could be by collaging some pieces of their paintings, copying some of their shapes or design elements, using their colour palettes….or all of these methods. Kelly inspired us by showing how she had made beautiful art journals inspired by Georgia O’Keefe and Frida Kahlo.

I chose Brett Whiteley as my artist because 1. He is Australian 2. I love his paintings of Sydney harbour which are special to me as Sydney was my home town until I was 26. 3. I think he was an incredible artist.

We were supposed to make an art journal from scratch using stitching  and bookmaking techniques but I knew that would be time consuming and difficult so basically I decided I couldn’t be bothered. Instead I cut some 300gsm hot pressed (ie smooth) watercolour paper into 2 strips and make a concertina (accordion) journal…easy peasy! I coated the whole thing with gesso both sides, then decided it needed 2 stiff ends, so my dear husband offered to cut and sand 2 pieces of wood for me which i glued on either end. It looked and felt fantastic and I couldn’t wait to get started in it.

Wood journal 3The first decision I made was that I would mostly stick to the colours that Brett Whiteley used in his paintings. I read that he LOVED ultramarine blue so I started with a double page spread that was a homage to his Sydney harbour paintings. The second decision was that I would include a focal image of a woman cut from a magazine like Kelly Kilmer does on most of her pages. This figure would represent me, or some aspect of me perhaps. The 3rd decision was that I would make the page, then ask it what it had to tell me, or what it was about as I got near to finishing it, much like i do with making SoulCollage cards. That would help me to decide what to write on the page.

Wood journalI thought I might use stencils on some pages, but not all and that I would sometimes  try to actually paint some things myself rather than just rely on collage.

Brett 1ABW 2BW 1 fullBW concertinaI started with a good coat of ultramarine paint and copied the balcony of wrought iron from Whiteley’s painting called “the Balcony” with a white Posca pen. I used his self portrait in the mirror but replaced his face with a photo of my face. We both have curly blond hair so actually it doesn’t look very different!! Then I wanted to have a go at actually painting something in his style so I copied a yellow palm tree from one of his paintings and I was pretty proud of how it turned out. I also copied the way he drew/painted the Sydney harbour bridge in one corner.

The seagull is cut from one of his paintings and so is the opera house which i turned into a hat for the woman. She is thinking about what she loves about Sydney harbour, and the writing I ended up doing is about my relationship to Sydney and what i loved about it. I finished off the page with some Whiteley-esque flying birds, some little white boats and the sort of swirl shape he uses a lot.  I forgot to mention that I used a Stencil girl stencil called “Rock Pools” on either side in shades of turquoise and gold. Sydney has lots of fabulous rock pools that I loved as a child. All in all I’m quite pleased with my first page.

Here are the Whiteley paintings I was inspired by: Sydney harbour to the Spirit of Bill W Balcony DesignL27-SMH

BW Self Portrait in the studioBW cover

Next I painted the wooden cover with 2 coats of gesso, then some yellow and yellow ochre tones. I used a woman with curly Whiteley ish hair and she is holding a section of one of my favourite of his ocean paintings, “Thebes Revenge”. Then i bravely painted a reversed version of his painting called “Study for kingfisher” down the right hand side. here is the original:

BW Study for KingfisherI can see the value of copying paintings by master painters, I already feel that I have learnt quite a lot copying Brett’s work.

Now I am on holidays in New Zealand and spent some time yesterday doing some art journaling with my sister. we have a wonderful view from our house exchange place in Alexandra. I have been working on another Brett Whiteley spread. IMG_3972This is also inspired by his ocean paintings. I collaged his wave and seagull painting on the top left of my double page and then extrapolated from there across the page in blue and green paint. I collaged some of “Thebes revenge” painting over the dress of the woman, and also gave her a hat from it, she looks like a kind of ocean goddess emerging. She actually turned out a bit wrinkled when i glued her down, but I decided that was Ok, I’m turning out a bit wrinkly too as the years go on!! The other figure sitting on the bottom of the sea with her arms raised told me she is making waves. Wave Maker finished

I had the sunflower and the 3 fishes images in my stash and they made their way onto the page too. The Yellow in the sunflower needed balancing so I added some yellow to the fishes gills. I copied the wave forms from this painting of Whiteley’s called “Stanner’s dream”:

BW Stanners dreamThis is what i wrote on the page “I am one who stirs the waters, who makes waves in your life. I am the unrest. I am the wind that pushes you forward when you are becalmed in the stale and the too familiar. I am the WAVE MAKER”

And the fish also wanted to speak. They said “Go forward, there is more! Oh keep squeezing drops of the sun” (they were quoting Hafiz here of course).

thebe-s-revenge-1982“Thebes Revenge” by Brett Whiteley

This has been a long post, thank you for visiting my blog.