Summer of Colour week 3 and the Free Art Friday machine rolls on.....

So our colourful summer continues :)  This week's :palette in the Summer of Colo(u)r is Lavender & Grey, with a Smudge, Splash or Pop of Plum:

It's a lovely colour scheme but a bit out of my comfort zone, that's always a good thing though.

Jay had a really good idea for this one, to do a boxer's face in greyscale, and use the purples for bruising and a big black eye, but I couldn't find a reference photo that I thought I could do justice to, so I reverted to the relative safety of "pretty girl"

So here's what I ended up doing:

(the colour-perfect frame was a Poundland find!)

She is based upon this gorgeous photo reference from Paint My Photo, photographer is Alex Lee Johnson :

I love that swipe of blue paint in the original photo but I'm not sure if I prefer my painting with or without it (here's without):

But it's too late now anyway, she's been swiped :D

I'll be donating the finished, framed piece to Free Art Friday Swindon   (if you have time, please click through and check out our photo album 'Art for the big launch drop' - around 150 arty items have already been submitted, it's an amazing selection, I've been overwhelmed with everyone's generosity!!)

Also in the Free Art Friday pot are a few more of my little Day of the Dead canvasses - since last weekend I've tried out a couple more designs of those:

That's me done for this week - see you back here for week 4 of Summer of Colour!

Summer of Colour week 2 and some more Free Art Friday goodies....

So it is week two for the Summer of Colo(u)r - and the colour scheme we've been given to work with this time is dark teal and coral with a pop of white...

I thought this would be a good excuse to practice my portraits, and went hunting for a reference photo on the excellent site Paint My Photo that would work well with the colour scheme (thanks to Carmen for tipping me off about this site!)

I found this piccie that looked perfect .... the photographer is Alex Lee Johnson

And I did my best to bring her to life, mixed media stylee (acrylics and oil pastels on a collaged base)

I am donating the finished painting to the Free Art Friday Swindon cause, I hope whoever finds her, likes her!



And talking of Free Art Friday, I was playing around the other day and made a little sugar skull canvas on a matching spray painted easel - it's tiny, the canvas is only 2" square:

I wasn't sure if it would work for Free Art Friday or if it was too small, but I asked my peeps on Facebook and they reckoned these would go down well (even if the finders will need to be extra eagle eyed!) - so I made a couple more :)

That's all for now, see you next week for week 3 of SoC!

a Circle Journal catch up - Free Art Friday - and more Lost Dogs

Phew - I've been busy recently, here's a little round up

First of all, two entries in the fabric circle journal I'm taking part in over at UKScrappers - there's only one more after this month, pity, I've really enjoyed it:

This one's theme was vintage fashion.  Not my usual kind of thing, but that's what I enjoy about circle journals, they sometimes push me kicking and screaming out of my comfort zone!

I was originally going to use an image transfer technique for the focal image, but, well, this is how it turned out!  Oops!

So I painted her instead, and she turned out pretty cute.  In fact I think I would have left the piece like this if I was keeping it for myself....

...with no further embellishment than the frayed edges on the fabric.  But it wouldn't have been enough for the circle journal requirements, there needed to be at least a little bit of needlework in there, so I added some lace and ribbon and other frou frou in line with the theme :)

Next up, this month's theme was Wings, and I was torn between an angel, a death's head moth, or Icarus.  As you can see, Icky won out in the end:

Again a combination of a painting (acrylics) and embroidery on fabric, which I've done a few of now and I'm enjoying the combo.

This is also my entry for Summer of Color 2014, week one.  The colour palette we were given this week was aqua blue, and yellow, with a pop of hot pink.

Not sure if you can spot the hot pink, so here's a close up - it's the thread around the wings:

Now moving on to another circle journal - the Stay-At-Home CJ over at Collabor-ART ended this month - and sadly so did the site itself, I've decided to wind it down as it has gone deathly quiet there over the last year as we've all moved onto other creative endeavours.

I'll be sorry to see it go, but at least it bowed out with a really great project - the S@H CJ has really been a lot of fun!

Here's my final entry - the theme was cogs, wheels and rust:

It's a bit busy!  It looks better in real life really due to the metallic embossing powder behind the heart and the patina in it....  you'll just have to take my word for that :)

And here are all my pages together for the full 9 months of the project....

....no idea what I'm going to do with them now .... maybe I will donate some to....

Free Art Friday

how's that for a seamless link?

Because I have somehow found myself "volunteered" to organise Swindon's very own chapter of Free Art Friday ..... how did that happen???

All the details about our launch event and how things will shake out in the long term, are on the Facebook page : http://www.facebook.com/FreeArtFridaySwindon - please do check it out, I'm currently in crazy recruitment mode trying to persuade all my creative friends to join in :)

I've also been making lots of work myself to contribute to the big launch event - including 6 more "Lost Dogs":

And, for the kiddies to find, some stencilled My Little Ponies:

There's a ton more in the pipeline too, I'm hoping to contribute 20 or 30 more items to the cause - either for the Swindon drop itself or to swap with other artists and Free Art Friday chapters....so I'll continue to be busy busy busy!!!

Wouldn't have it any other way, though :)