Two Weeks Gone...

I'm so sorry. I have fallen quite short of my goal of posting weekly about my face painting progress. I was going to call it portraiture but who the eff am I kidding. I've made some progress in the last two weeks. As time has went on, I have learned that making one face a day is not really for me. I need time to think, layer, and erase mistakes - specifically with gesso which takes some time to dry. I also need a lot of practice attempts to get the skin tone right. I've learned a lot and am pretty happy with my later pieces. I PLAN on doing a post about the things I've learned during this challenge later on this week - since it actually ends tomorrow. Nevertheless - I thought I'd publish a quick post of what I've been doing over the last two weeks. I even have some process pictures for the more curious. So without further ado...first up is my tree of life project from Lifebook 2014.

She took a lot of tries. I had a lot of stops, starts, and restarts. I think it's because I overthought it and let some of the elements of the assignment overwhelm me - like the swing. The swing was definitely my nemesis. I learned one major thing - I love scrubbing paint into paper. There's something cathartic and haphazard about it that meets my need for chaos with the utmost respect for order - does that even make sense?

On to the next girl...I've been working on her for more than a week.

I was definitely inspired by the work of Tamara Laporte. I loved the idea of wind in the hair.

I call this the crazy muppet stage. I hate this stage.

She's definitely starting to take shape. I love her hair and dress. My plan was to put a stanza of one of my favorite poems in the open yellow portion of the page spread.

Started to add some texture to the background with some stencils and paint.

Had to redo the middle after a disastrous attempt to use my own handwriting. I really ended up liking the marble effect created with distress paints. Also - notice I got rid of the bird. I've started to work on the poem stanza and painstakingly added every letter of the stanza in tiny letters. It was a good lesson though. I'm not reading to try hand lettering on my pages - I know I'll get there...just not yet.

So that's it for now. I hope everyone is having a lovely Saturday. I plan on doing a round up post on Monday and finishing up this girl in the next 24 hours. I'm hopeful. Hope you're spending the day doing something you love. Until then...