Tag Archives: Australia

Wanderlust 3 Flourish

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Flourish finishedHeal and Flourish.

This is my tribute and prayer for the Australian flora and fauna following the recent devastating bushfires. I followed the main steps of the Wanderlust 2020 online course, week 3 but ended up putting my own spin on it.

We were encouraged to draw our own profile to start…I gave myself a bit of a face and neck lift (cheaper and less painful than the real thing!!) The next step was to add some neutral coloured undercollage. I put a light layer of gesso over it.

Flourish 1

Next I added some colour. I really appreciated my transparent yellow iron Oxide paint because it’s TRANSPARENT so it didn’t cover the undercollage too much. Flourish 2

Next I had to paint the face…this was a bit nerve racking, especially trying to put shadows in the right place. afterwards it looked a bit less like me, but that’s OK. The next step in the class was to add inks to the hair in blobs and then draw some hair like strands with the ink. I only had one ink, in a sepia colour, so i used watery paint as well in the redder brown colour. Flourish 3I had decided by now that i wanted to use some Australian animals and plants for my collage elements on the hair. It was actually supposed to be about our relationship with self, and what we wanted to bring into our lives this year. I think. But I am upset by the plight of our native animals so that’s what I wanted to do…a prayer for them, for healing, and for Mother earth.

I printed and cut out some animals and birds, but when i tried placing them over the hair they became a bit lost in the busy background. As you can see here: Flourish 4For me this is the downfall of this particular lesson..I would never usually choose to place my collage elements on such a busy/messy background. What to do? A trick I’ve used before: sponging! I sponged a darker area and a lighter area as well, to place the collage on. Flourish 5

Flourish 6

As you can see, this improved things somewhat. The animals and birds stand out more, and you can still see the background peeping through a little bit. For finishing touches I added a stencil along the bottom, some penwork in black and white around the collage, a few white dots and some writing. Sending my love to all the creatures of Australia, heal and flourish, heal and flourish. Flourish finished

 

Make a Mess Magic

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I’ve been doing the 21 secrets Color Color Color (or, as we say in this country, Colour, colour colour) online course. The class that has grabbed me the most is the one by Hali Karla called Make a mess magic. Hali invites you to make a mess, applying paint in different ways with no idea where it is going, and then invites you to make Magic from it somehow. She suggests using 2 complementary colours and exploring the different colours of brown/neutral/grey that is made by mixing them together. In her demo she used Blue and orange but suggested we could also use red and green or  purple and yellow. I decided to make 3 different pages so I could try all 3 combinations.

Here is my red and green attempt. Which I HATED because the red bits looked like blood and gore. I can see that red paint used straight can pretty much look like you’ve smeared blood across your page. Or perhaps I’m being a bit sensitive?

red-and-green-messAnyway, I stared at it for a long time, I even smeared some gold paint on it hoping to redeem it. Eventually I decided that most of the red had to go, so I used the fern and plant masks that I had cut earlier in the year and masked around them with 2 shades of green, a dark and a light. The red was only poking through in small quantities , which was a vast improvement!

red-and-green-maskedIt made for quite a colourful busy background though and so I thought it needed something in black and white to stand out. Black and white, hmmm…? I know, magpies! If you don’t live in Australia you may not be familiar with magpies, but they are everywhere here. Everytime I go out for a walk I see lots of them, usually staring intently at me, sometimes swooping down to scare you away if they have babies in the trees (in springtime). They are very cheeky birds who will swoop in to steal your food if they can. My mother loved them and used to go out everyday holding out food and calling “maggie, maggie, maggie”.

red-and-green-finishedThey showed up quite well on this background, but I did have to paint a little bit of watered down white paint behind them to tone down the background. After I outlined them with some white and black pens, I asked them what they wanted to tell me. I thought it might be something timeless and enlightening, since they are quite magical birds, a bit similar to ravens, and they have an intelligent look in their eyes. But they started singing an old silly song from 1981 by Joe Dolce, “Shaddap a Your Face”. In case you don’t remember the song,  I include the lyrics of the chorus here for your edification, it was sung with an italian accent. :

 Mama used to say all-a time.What’s-a matter you? Hey! Gotta no respect.
What-a you t’ink you do? Why you look-a so sad?
It’s-a not so bad, it’s-a nice-a place.Ah, shaddap-a you face! I’ll include the Youtube clip below.

So my birds said to me: “what’s a matter you?  Why you look so sad? it’s a not so bad! it’s a nice place!”  Fortunately they didn’t go so far as to say “Shaddup a you face” but I could tell they were thinking it!

It seems a bit silly, but actually, this is quite a deep and timeless message for me. I have been feeling a bit …well, not exactly sad, but a bit FLAT and lacking in joy at times, which considering my life is actually wonderful and I live in the best and most beautiful place IN THE WORLD (and I’ve travelled a lot in the last 6 years which has only confirmed this opinion!) with a husband who is wonderful and supportive, my flatness is inexplicable and disappointing. So I need to hear the magpies’ message! What IS the matter with me? Why do I look so sad?? it’s a not so bad! It’s a nice-a place! So I’ll just Shaddap-a my face now. Thanks for visiting my blog!

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