The Masters Project: Month 3

Since it's You Suck Monday and we were both feeling it, Kelly and I decided to harass our friend Ajae (because we can) into journaling. Ajae makes wonderful art, but she is often disappointed by how long it takes her to finish a piece. I've been trying to get her into journaling and The Masters Project seemed like the perfect way!

This month we're doing Donna Downey. We're going to watch some Inspiration Wednesday videos and follow along, but since Ajae's never seen Donna (she's probably watching her right now, I convinced her life would never be the same) I just sent her some pics of Donna's work and we got started.My background is yellow (hansa yellow to be exact) but it looks white in the picture - stupid iPhone camera. The pink is a really fun airbrush paint!

I wanted another color, but didn't necessarily want it dripping back into the pink, so I dripped it from the side...

Then I did it again with a teal, which seemed like an enormous mistake at the time!

And here I added some stamps, embossed them, clear embossed some teeny little flowers (they make me happy), and added brown ink to the orange (it needed something) and to the edges.

Then I added a quote. It doesn't seem quite finished - the words run into the flowers, which I don't really like so I was thinking about doing some white outlining but do I outline the flowers or the words? I'm not sure yet. I'll live with it for a while and see if I can think of what it needs.

Evolution of a Pam page

OK, I really didn't think I could do this. (Maybe I can't, it's still too early to tell.) But I really like this page so far and I wanted to share it with you! It's taken FOREVER. Hours. I started this one last week at Kelly's. (I posted it then, I think)

Then I COLLAGED! (Please be proud, you know I'm a horrible collager. Collagist?) And over the collage I stamped a little more. (Pam says.)

Here it is with charcoal added around the collage elements. I'm not sure if I like the charcoal yet, but that's what Pam would do.
I'm happy with how this one is going so far. The others, not so much, but that's a story for another day...

Collage (more Pam Project)

I've been trying really hard to do this correctly. People will say things like "There's no mistakes in art" and "happy accident" and "don't think too hard about it" and blah, blah, blah, but those are NOT things I believe. If I make a mark I don't like in my art, I erase it. Sometimes I have to "erase" using paint. No problem. Lots of people can collage fast and furious and things look wonderful or if they DON'T look wonderful, they have a way to make it look wonderful. One of the reasons I suck at collage is because I'm not interested in those strange, unsmiling old people. I'm just not. Sorry. You don't scrapbook strangers, why would you make art out of strangers? I also don't understand the obsession with eggs and birds and butterflies. My word is trains and legos and How to Train Your Dragon and Mr. Men books. Not butterflies and eggs. So working in this way is difficult for me. BUT if The Tessha Project taught me anything, it's that if I don't give up at the first sign on "this makes me uncomfortable" then I can sometimes make something I like!

These first two I painted under Kelly's careful instruction - at her house, with her guiding me every step of the way and in Pam's colors.The bat is (naturally) my favorite part. But I'm pretty OK with the rest of it, too. It's not horrible. (Maybe you think it is, but I'm sort of liking it.)

So far, just a door and a butterfly here. Baby steps.

Here I have a clock and a car - probably not what Pam would do, but it's still her process, right? And in the upper right corner, that's a napkin from Caribou Coffee.

This is Rylee, she lives next door to me and I gave her a flower, a butterfly and a piece of music paper torn out of a church bulletin (no the church did NOT burn down while I was inside it).
Pam says "collage around the edges until you're happy with it" but I'm too nervous to collage anymore today. It's ridiculous, I'm a grown woman and you'd think the matte medium was going to attack me I'm so nervous about collaging. Really, what's the WORST thing that's going to happen? But I just get really nervous! AFTER I had all these little tiny things in place I remembered that Pam usually places all of her collage, THEN glues it down. Maybe next time I'll try that.

SLACKER!!

Nope, I'm not screaming that at you guys - I missed yesterday! I was doing SO GOOD with my posting, and then yesterday just got away from me! I had a cupcake and coffee for breakfast, followed by some REALLY exciting news that took a couple of hours to get all worked out and I spent the rest of the day trying to calm down from all the excitement. I was so freaked out I couldn't make the journal page for week two of the group I'm leading and LOOK WHAT I DID:

That's right, I COLLAGED. I need someone to be proud. OK, Kelly's proud but could you guys be proud, too? Look at the cute picture and the music paper doesn't look bad. But now I've been struck with PPS. You're supposed to collage MORE (because that's what Pam would do and this is her month) but I'm really afraid of f-ing it all up. I gotta get over it, I know, but I'm just so awful at collage...

The Masters Project: Month 2

Pam Carriker! I can't afford to take a class with her, but Kelly and I are going to spend January studying her style and figuring out what Pam would do. Here are some pictures from our play date today.

It's paint and stamps and more stamps. Some embossing and texture-making.

I'm afraid of Pam for some reason, so I tried to get a bunch of pages done at Kelly's before I had to come home and handle it by myself. And you know what the next step is?

COLLAGE!! You know I'm a collage retard - Kelly said so.

Luckily this one still needs some stamping.

And this one! This one might be my favorite so far - until I wreck it with collage, of course.

I'm going to spend some time tonight watching Pam tutorials on YouTube so I can get int he Pam mood. WWPD?

The Teesha Project continues...

I'm REALLY in love with this page! I don't know what it is that I like, and I'm not even sure if it's finished. It looks a MILLION times better in person. I really wish I had a scanner so the colors looked better!
I was still feeling pretty Indigo this morning, but journaling it made me feel a lot better. And cookies. Cookies always help.

OK, after much internal (and external - I talk to myself a lot) debate, as well as asking Kelly about it all day long (yes, I'm the annoying friend), I decided to outline the letters and I'm glad! I like it. I feel like there should be MORE in the blank spaces. More what? I dunno. But if I figure it out I'll post another picture!

What Would Teesha Do?

That's Teesha Moore, for anyone who's just tuning in. This is the cover of my Teesha Project journal in stages.

This is with just the collage elements applied.

I meant to take a picture before I added the writing, but I forgot. Then I doodled some. The colors are CRAZY.

You can't tell as much in the picture, but the black dots REALLY toned down the crazy colors. In case you can't tell, it's supposed to say "WWTD? A Month of Odd". I should put that it's December 2010 on there somewhere, shouldn't I? How come I think of these things after the fact?

OK, I lied, I wasn't finished! I added the date on the horse in pink, and on the right I put "Month 1 of The Masters Project" (Kelly came up with that name). Also, the doodles seemed like they needed a bit more "something" so I added sparkly gel pens - brown to the brown doodles and green to the green.
In this one, I'm trying to show the sparkly brown doodly part...not sure if you can really tell!I like it more. A lot more. I'm starting to "get" it. Usually in my journals, I draw. Then color, paint, whatever. In my studio. But there are LOTS of times where I want to make art but I don't really know what to do. I don't have anything in mind that I want to do, I just want to do SOMETHING. Or I wish I felt like making art and I don't. Well, this kind of journaling is perfect for that. First step: slap down paint. Second: borders. Third: collage images. Fourth: doodle. Nothing that requires me to get out my ruler and make sure the eyes are in a straight line and there's enough space between them but not too much space and the eye lids are blah, blah, blah. No thinking necessary.

Teesha Project

OK, I've been purposely NOT telling you this...I don't know why except I really feel like my ideas are mostly stupid and I don't want like putting myself out there. But I've been working on this for days and now I kinda want to post pictures. So, my thought is this - back in the day artists would study and mimick other artists, trying to capture their style EXACTLY. These days, we're all about "originality" and "doing our own thing". On that note, I had coffee, mini oreos, and mint M&M's for breakfast.

So, there are TONS of artists out there whose style I admire from afar, maybe attempt to make something kind of similar and fail and then tell myself they're more "talented" than I am and that I just can't do something like they can and blah, blah, blah. But really, they have just developed into their style. They practiced at it and worked at it and perfected it. There's no reason I can't do the same thing. I convinced Kelly to do it with me. The idea is to spend a month working in the style of each artist that we like (I have a list) and we're starting with Teesha Moore. I have tried several times to make journals in Teesha's style, but sort of making it my own and I've hated every single one. So instead I'm going to work like she says to. I'm using magazines (not scrapbook paper), I'm cutting up faces (not drawing them). I have Sharpie poster paints and PanPastels and Copic Markers. I didn't make my journal with Fabriano Artistico paper like she does, and I used the paints she hates because I like matte finish better than gloss or satin. Other than those small changes, I'm going to channel my inner Teesha.

This is the front:I've since added a bit of shading with PanPastel and plan to add the title "A Month Of Odd"

I really like this one

Using bottles as bodies seems fun to me, and she needed something else so I gave her wings.
This one's head is on backward - I love it!
Yes, that does say "goddess" - aren't we all?

I'm not sure if I'm having fun. It doesn't really seem like it. I don't get the satisfaction out of this kind of work that I do when I've drawn something, but it might be just that I'm not used to collage. (Kelly says I'm "collage retarded".) I wonder if this experiment is going to teach me that it can be more fun to admire someone's work from afar than to try and create it myself, no matter how much I love it? I mean, if these pages were straight out of Teesha's journals, would I like them because I'm not the one who created them? I'm not sure. The next step for these pages is pen work, and then lettering. I re-watched all of Teesha's YouTube videos and that's what she says to do - and she's the boss.