Peculiar Gaze

She is still there.

In my mind or gut.

Enjoying her presence and inspiration.

Still very cold here.

At desk today.

Fingers not talking.

Thank you.

She's Peculiar

Gut Art Journal
She was peculiar!
Told you

Texture

I don't know why but I always get one eye out of whack. It seems to be the same eye too high and too big. But I never see it until I have nearly finished the painting. Usually, I leave it.

As I worked on this page this morning, and sketched her off the edge, it became a challenge for me to see if I could balance the page. I like the result and I didn't wish to write over it. It may be time for me to get out a canvas. But I have to tell you that I am enjoying exploring in my Gut Art Journal.

Expect ............

Sharon

Faces

Painted with homemade pallet knife (new favorite tool).
Scrapped eyes and shape into wet paint with homemade pallet knife.
Then outlined. No additional paint added.

Just had to show you the spreads and how they integrate.

The hamburgers were great.

Thanks Sonic for bargain burgers.

Expect faces,

Sharon

Beauty

I thought you might want to see who she is looking at. Their story continues.

Many of you have ask about the white pen I have been using in my Gut Art Journal. So here it is. It writes and flows better than any I have tried and I have tried all of them. After it dries, I usually seal it with Golden Matte Medium. Then it is permanent.

Expect hamburgers for supper,

Sharon

Can Page

This is all I'm going to do with this. I did not enjoy the page.

Going outside now.

Expect

My Plan

I haven't made much progress and I'm vaguely embarrassed to show this at this point. But maybe you will enjoy wondering just how on earth I will transform this forlorn, scary, pitiful, frightful, sad, mismatched pair into a loving story.


In the meantime, I have a weekend plan which does in fact include this journal page.

And here it is. It might be rather vague because you how I am. If I write it down, then I have to do it. I could have chalked up a million things-to-do but I'm feeling like I might enjoy just being.

The house will be quiet and I vow not to use my day time hours on that "pot and pan" item. I have a plan that I cooked up in the wee hours of this past night as I laid awake.....thinking.

Here it is. Tonight or tomorrow night if I find myself awake........thinking in the middle of the night, I plan to get up and do the pot and pan chore. That's what I'm going to do. I'll show you if I do. It's not ARTfull though.

Expect being,

Sharon

Morning Gut Art

Good Morning,
Keeping in mind that my Gut Art Journal is about "Looking for my Words", or as Mystele would say, "my authentic self", I consciously apply text and bits of paper with letters and words in the first layer of collage. However, I give no attention to where on the page any of it lands nor what any of it says.

I saw the word "afraid" when I first started painting this page but I just didn't get it. There it was just about to slip off the top. My sense of composition had no idea what to do with it. You might remember when I finished the page, I simply had no "Words" and wrote, "none". Then I discovered the red wings were birds and not only birds but birds with a "tender touch". This morning I revisited the page and there was that word and right above it even closer to the edge was "not". I get it. I'm not afraid.

I guess the point is art will continue to speak even when you think you have heard everything.

So, that didn't take very long. After quickly cutting an "afraid" stamp, I still had time for more art.

I decided that I need to concentrate on the element of drawing. So I chose a magazine face to draw and proceeded.

First, notice that word "can" right at the top of the picture. I let that sink in the whole time I was trying to draw this face. When I finished I realized that I would have liked her closer to the top of the page.

So, since this exercise is about drawing, I just moved over and added a second face. Now I have something to go home to this evening to paint.

About ears: Do this. Put your head back as far as you can and look up. Now, put each index finger at the bottom of each ear.....like you are pointing to the bottom of your ear. Draw an invisible line level and around to the front of your face. Where did the line end up? My invisible line met just below my mouth in the middle of my chin.

Do this. Look down so your chin is almost touching your chest. Now, put each index finger at the bottom of each ear....like you are pointing to the bottom of your ear. Draw an invisible line level and around to the front of your face. Where did the line end up? My invisible line met just below my nose.

Wasn't that fun. The point is, the placement of your ears as well as other features will give perspective to your face and help show that it is looking up or down.

Expect art,

Sharon

Tender Touch

Painting from your gut is not always serious. Turns out her red wings were the sweetest little red birds looking over her shoulder. She knew all along, I was a little slow to "get it". Makes perfect sense now. I've never seen a red butterfly; however, red birds hang out at my feeders all the time.

Expect a tender touch,
Sharon

Red Wings

Red Wings

Gut Art Journal

I didn't find her or pull her from the background. Ijust needed to paint her.

I can no longer be found on the couch in front of this TV. My sweetie crawled through the attic several times and put one foot through the living room ceiling one time to get me hooked up right here in front of my ART desk in my studio. I am so happy.

Expect happiness,

Sharon

Colorific ART

While participating in Mystele's on-line Gut Art class, I am trying to listen to the "why" that I do what I do. I'm not sure that it is necessary; however, while I'm feeling the freedom in my Gut Art Journal to just BE me and explore ART without my own self imposed limitations, I do hear the "why". What I'm saying is that I do make conscious choices about making marks of color.

For me, the finished facing page dictated that I should carry the color red across. I scrapped the leftover red on the page and days later came back to discover houses and roofs and there was the word "home" at the center bottom. The face also reflects the red as it should.

I finished up the page with the adjective form of color.....Colorific !

Expect colorific ART,

Sharon

Castle in the Air

Sometimes it is just plain fun to doodle and imagine while day dreaming. That's what I did when I discovered this face in the background. We daydreamed together while I dripped pearls from her pink hair and thought about her story.

When I finished, I looked up "daydream" in my thesaurus and found "Castle in the air" listed. What a perfect title for her story.

Expect daydreams,

Sharon

I Must

WORDS....10-24-2009

"While on a field trip [video style] last week, I could not help but sketch the tour director. I never meant to do more than a sketch. I was inspired to sketch Mystele because of the way her head scarf looked.

When I turned to this page and saw the irregular corner, It made me think of the scarf. While adding paper layers for the background, I found a scrap that said, "I must". I glued it to a corner and kept mulling over these words. "I must" sure sounded like a message from my gut. So, I made a photo copy of the sketch and did a gel transfer, taking advantage of the special corner. While painting this I was thinking about how Mystele made a book with this long format and how it represents her. She is giving us her "words" and so I resisted a closed mouth even though I have never painted someone talking. She is much prettier than I have represented but It was a very quick sketch. More than one field trip made me think about how much I enjoy hands. And so I included her hand from my mind's eye.

The landing of the butterfly was a serendipitous happening and represents me.

The skin tones were achieved mostly with Caran d'ache watercolor crayons.

While looking for my Words, I found I must."

Having a wonderful day! My heart sings when I get to paint.

Expect songs,

Sharon

Page Finished

Before sitting down with her this morning, I was unsure whether or not I would touch the face. I thought maybe I wanted to leave it as was and just finish up the background and journal part.

But as we were face to face, eyeball to eyeball, with paints at hand, a little voice from the gut said, "you haven't tried painting with your new tool wet-on-dry yet. That was the only excuse I needed.

So I did alter her chin, I frequently end up with a chin too long. To see what I did, scroll down to the prior post. I added detail in the eyes and nose. Then I did what I always do. I made sure that I had some of my darkest dark right next to my lightest light. Color value is one of my core elements.

Expect more tool painting,

Sharon

Morning Art

Below is the background page that I started with this morning. As I paged through my Gut Art Journal, I saw a chin line, big hair, and eye socket. I think you can see it; however, I did not sketch around it. You might recognize the bird as a napkin. Yes it is. The paint that is scraped here and there including the hair was where I cleaned my new tool while working on other pages. I really like this page and enjoyed a few minutes of morning art doing it.

Expect your wishes,

Sharon

Do This

Remember this tool?

Did you make one?

Wanna play?

Do this:

Put out six, seven or eight puddles of paint.

I did.

Allow yourself about 15 minutes.

I did.

(cause I had to be at the office because I had to report for jury duty because I went yesterday and it was today instead)

Because I had to do it. Could not Not do it.

Driven to do it.

Now, just pick some up with your new tool. I used the darkest value but not the red.

Spread it around in an oval.

Then pick up other colors and fill in.

I add the eyes first.

Remember they should be in the center of the oval.

They don't have to match.

Give her a nose and mouth.

Go not longer that 15 minutes.

I didn't.

I had to leave her like this all wet and with lots of paint texture.

When I get home, I will finish the page.

Mine already had a background but yours doesn't have to.

I have to go back to court now.

So Do this.

Expect fun,

Sharon

New Favorite Tool

and paint color..........

Yep. It is a deconstructed foam brush. I plan to deconstruct some larger sizes too. They are very fun to scrap the paint on and then scrap it off and then use the point to scratch words and then use the flat area to smoosh the paint around. Just fun stuff. You can put several colors and smoosh them together or you can let one color dry and then add another and so on and so on and so on........................

Expect fun,

Sharon

News

I do believe I'm late with this news but I wanted to tell you that I will be at the Houston Quilt Festival this coming Saturday. If you are going to be there, you are probably already on your way.

You can find me during the last two hour shift of the day at the Cloth Paper Scissors Open Studios section of Make It University. I plan to demonstrate painting faces with Caran dAche and other water solubles on muslin.

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More news:

Shady Ladies Altered Art Workshop is a new art retreat in Texas to be held April 2010. Jeri has a great line up of teachers and I am thrilled to be one of them. I will share more about this later but you can get the scoop by clicking over to the website.

Registration is now open and I would be so thrilled for you to sign up. Wouldn't that be fun?

******************

I went on a field trip this morning (video style) and could not help but sketch the tour director. I had a gut reaction to her headscarf and ...........

so

I

sketched.

I probably won't have much art to show until next week, but you never know about me so I'm not saying I will or I won't.

Expect calmness,

Sharon

A Group of Strangers

Above is finished. As you can see, I did very little painting after finding this group of strangers in the below shot.

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Update on grandsons:

Tim is good and will be going back to school. He has missed several weeks and so that will be a challenge.

Ryan has busted out of ICU after 7 days and is in what they call a "step down unit" where there is less monitoring but more than a regular room. The epidural is out but he is still on pain meds and expects to ween down soon.

We did get to visit yesterday and I can tell you that he certainly is a little more feisty, looks better, and say he feels better.

We all appreciate so much your caring concern, prayers and thoughts. His Mom says, "keep them coming as they're working."

From the bottom of my heart, I thank you.

Expecting wellness,

Sharon