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Art Inspiration

Inspiring song and illustrations by Andrea Dorfman

 

Journal Pages

Not all days are happy days; therefore, not all art journal pages are happy pages.

Sometimes, they have to be dark and messy . . . and therapeutic.

But through all hurt feelings, we eventually come to terms with the situation and make a decision on how we are going to handle it.  So I decided to make the other page about that.

I blurred out the words so you don't have to read my temper tantrum . . . but it just talked about how we try to forgive, but never forget how people make us feel.  I think there's a similar quote by Oprah or Maya Angelou.

And my decision to accept the things I can't change, forgive the ones I can, and let it go.

Thanks to Zac Brown Band for those lyrics.

3 Canvases: Nature, Peace, & Creativity

My mom recently turned 60, so I wanted to create some canvases for her to hang in her office.  Each canvas signifies a piece of her:

 

Seeker of NATURE: my mom loved horses as a kid, but never had an opportunity to ride.  In 1997, her prince rode in on a horse and scooped her away . . . well, he actually wore a cowboy hat and lassoed her.  He is a calf-roper, has two horses, and they live happily ever after out in the country of Wyoming.

 

Finder of PEACE:  Just five years ago, my mom decided to learn how to play the guitar.  She's wanted to do this for years and finally made it happen.  She practices daily and finds a deep peace in the process.  Inspiring, for sure.

 

Maker of CREATIVITY:  My mom has always been creative.  I remember rearranging our living room multiple times as a child. She sewed dresses, quilts, curtains, and pajamas for us.  She made my 3 bridesmaids' dresses and 2 flower girl dresses.  She always had clever ideas for Halloween costumes.  She's been a lover of photography for as long as I can remember.  My dad would often start drawing a new stained glass pattern and she would finish it years later.  Today, she owns a creative framing store, where she is always trying new things - guns, fishing lures, bridal bouquets, photo name mats, etc.  She also is a stained glass and sandblasting artist.  Creative blood, indeed.  Check out her work at Rocky Mountain Framing

 

Here is a little more of the process that went into these.  I wanted to experiment more with the xerography process I tried in this post.  I found images & words that I wanted to use and printed them with a black laser printer.

I cut and tore them apart, laid them on the canvas to decide on the layout, then covered the backs with gel medium to adhere to the canvases.

 

One of my favorite techniques is adding texture with stencils and modeling paste.  

I went to grab my paste and learned I was out, so I did what my mom always taught me: WING IT!  I dug through what I had and ended up trying extra heavy gel medium.  I loved the results.  

I just laid the stencil on the edge of each canvas and applied the gel with a palette knife

 

After they dried completely (heat guns speeds this up), it was time to add some color!

Many more layers of paint and textures were added.  Sometimes, I just rubbed in some color with my fingers, other times I sprayed on colors.  My favorites are Ranger's Color Washes and the shimmery Tattered Angels: Glimmer Mists

 

A finished trio to hang on the wall.  Happy birthday, mom!

Butterfly Canvas

I enjoy reading the blog of artist, Kelly Rae Roberts.  She is brave in many things, writes with an open heart, and is a new mommy.  Her artwork, her story, and her style is inspiring to me.

I've had her book, Taking Flight, for over a year and have flipped through it so many times I can't count them.

 I finally decided to try making a piece in the same steps that she uses.

I painted the background, cut up some fabric and paper squares, and adhered them all to the canvas.

I used my fingers to add paint on and around the background.  Messy fun!

The paint continued until I felt like it was time to stop.  I wanted parts of it to be hidden, while parts were visible.  Next came some butterfly stamps (formerly sold by Spellbinders Paper Arts Co.).

I knew I wanted to use this large butterfly from Tattered Angels, but I only wanted to shape of it.  I needed the inside to put my word strips of song lyrics.  

So I stamped it onto copy paper, cut it out, and traced around it on my canvas - basically using as a mask/stencil.

I used a stencil and butterscotch Color Wash by Ranger to add more detail.  About this time, I was wondering why I fretted so much about what pattern papers and/or fabric squares I should use at the beginning.

I printed out song lyrics from Live to Learn by Darius Rucker and laid them out to see how I wanted to arrange them.

I adhered the lyrics stips, rubbed on some brown paint to tone them down, and it was done.  I enjoyed experimenting with Kelly Rae's style.  

He Dances with Me

My hubby and I have been taking lindy hop dance lessons for the past 8 months.  I can't tell you how thrilled I am.  I've always wanted to take lessons, as a couple, to learn how to dance together.  We saw this lindy group dancing down the street in the Christmas parade in 2008.  I wrote down the website from the banner they carried and the rest is history.  My hubby was extremely uncomfortable with the whole thing at first, so I can't even express how thankful I am that he agreed to try it.

Eight months later . . . he's enjoying it as much as I am!  It's something we do together and it gives us our own little "date night" once a week.  We are often forced out of our comfort zone, but it helps us grow.  He says he continues because he loves how it makes me smile so much!  How lucky am I?!!!

So I knew, when I saw this post by Alisa Burke, that I wanted to make a heart wreathe with a dancing theme.  Here's what I came up with:

Alisa's canvas was totally my inspiration - I made my heart wreath exactly like hers, so I give her full credit for this idea.  Take a moment to check her's out at the link above.  She inspires me everyday!

Following Alisa's instructions, here is how I made this 16x20 canvas:

1.  Paint some scrap paper with watercolors.  She used scrap, junk mail.  I used white 12x12 cardstock.  I used a wet on wet watercolor method to blend my colors.  I sprayed the paper with water, then painted, then sprayed, then painted . . .

2.  Add words on the paper.  Vary the size, pen width, color, etc.  I used words that were all about dancing:

    Oh Suzie Q, baby I love you

    Shorty George

    Swing out, passby, circle, outside turn, basket

    Texas Tommy

    Boogie Back

    etc.

3.  Cut these papers into circles of various sizes.  I used a pair of scissors and cut them very quickly in three sizes.  They are imperfect, wobbly circles - but it doesn't matter at all!

4.  Scrunch these circles up to resemble flowers.  At the INSPIRED.artist.workshop, Donna Downey showed us that you can form paper into many shapes by adding water.  While making her canvas apron, we twisted book pages into stems by adding water.  Once they dry, the maintain that shape.  The water loosens the fibers in the paper.  So I used that method here by spraying both sides of the circle before scrunching it up.  It worked great.  They held their shape and are firm now.

5.  Now it's time to make a background for our heart wreath.  I painted this canvas with acrylic paints, sprayed water, and blotting with a paper towel.

6.  I followed Alisa's suggestions to adhere the flowers with hot glue.  They are dimensional and bumpy, so a mess of hot glue worked great.  I then tried out an image transfer technique that I learned from CD Muckosky at INSPIRED.  I painted gel medium onto printouts of sheet music, then adhered to the canvas.  At this point in the photo above, I was pretty sure I had just ruined my piece.  I let it dry, then wet the paper and rubbed off with my fingers.  Sure enough, the paper came off and the image remained!  whew!

 

7.  I then added the words "He dances with me", using a calligraphy pen and black India ink.  The word "DANCE" was stamped on with Technique Tuesday alphabet stamps

8.  Lastly, I found an image on google images of a couple doing the lindy dance.  I altered it in Photoshop Elements by increasing the contrast and levels until it resembled a silhouette of the couple.

I'm completely thrilled with the finished result.  It makes me think of our Thursday nights together dancing and makes me smile!

 

Music Album Inspiration

I love album art.  I right-click and save tons of album covers for inspiration.  Here are a few that I've saved.  I compiled these into a blank sheet and use it as my desktop wallpaper right now.

Right about in the middle is Faith Hill's "Fireflies" album.  I decided to play with this one tonight.  She has two bright lense flares near her chin.

Here is my version on a photo of my dd10 and dh of 15 yrs.

 

How to use lens flare: In PSE: Filter - Render - Lens Flare

You can play with placement and brightness. 

For more flexibility, you can do the flare on a black or gray layer (google this), but I didn't do that here.

Love, Love, Love

now I'm singing "love, love, love, I want your love" (Bad Romance, Lady Gaga) - love that song!!! video here.  She is crazy, kooky, wild, and theatrical!  Modern-day Madonna, you could say.  Her background story is great.

but today's post is not about bad romances, it's about good (unless it'd be therapeutic to make a piece of art about a bad romance, then be my guest)

I found the blog of Alisa Burke through the Donna Downey "INSPIRED" site.  Alisa is one of the instructors for a mini workshop and she is fabulously messy and grungy!  As I was browsing through her site, my heart was drawn to this piece: Love Everyday Wreath.  I am determined to make this piece SOON!

check out the tutorial page to see the entire completed piece.  It's a project you can make from junk mail!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Canvas Project

Here's how things often work between my sister and I - she calls me up or sends me a link through email about a contest, design team, etc. and says, "We should do this!" or "You should do this!"  So that is how this canvas project got made.

Spellbinders  was having a contest to make something using their new "Pendant" dies.  I haven't been on the design team for three years and hadn't ordered these dies, so my sister Priority mails them to me.

I'm really on an kick of altered canvas/donna downey/kelly rae . . . so I was trying to figure out how to use these dies in that sort of way.

I decided on these colors and a canvas.

 

And then I ended up with something totally different

That's usually the way my artwork goes.  I "think" I have an idea where I'm going . . . and then the creative process takes me somewhere totally different.  Kind of a fun surprise, really.

Here are the pendant dies I used from Spellbinders Paper Arts Co.

I die-cut several pendants from my cardstock colors and laid them out to see how they would fit.  I was attempting to imitate the background process Kelly Rae Roberts uses on her pieces.

 

I then adhered them to the canvas and inked them up a bit.

I wasn't sure what color I wanted this background to be, but I knew the current look was too bold to be a background.  I toned it down with turquoise, green, and white paint - rolled on with a brayer.

getting there, but still too dark.  I added white so my foreground elements would stand out when I put them on later.

okay, now I'm ready to add my trees.  I made trees from the other pendant dies and cardstock.  The tree trunks ended up being one of my favorite parts.  I embossed the design onto the drunk pieces for texture, then inked.  The tree tops were cute from silver and copper foil, along with some cardstock for contrast.

 

I felt like the trees needed some ground to stand on, so I white-wash painted the bottom strip, drew a black line, then stamped with a music notes stamp.

I added my quote with chipboard letters and black pen.

 

I wasn't a finalist for the contest, but I gained a new piece of artwork to hang on my walls.