New Work - Collages

Been a busy bee this week. My output of art always goes in collections, so I will do a batch of one style and then onto the next one. I think I am in a slightly surreal state of mind.

Invading the Victorians

Victorian street scene from 1866 newspaper, 1960 images from a boy's Lion Annual, hand colored with watercolor pencils. I still love coloring, it was one of my favorite things as a child.

Listen Carefully Pete

Vintage Sheet Music, 1950's image of a girl and the Lion Annual again. The little man, Pete, has his name printed on his front.

Mechanical Men

AA Map of the UK, 1930's image reworked into a greyscale photo, cut out and all adhered with Wax.

Sunshine on My Garden

1950's Embroidery images, AA Map of the UK, Bible pages cut into leaves and a bit of scribble with a Sharpie.

Troks Marching Orders

1950's French Adverts and the Ladies heads from a Fashion Magazine, AA Maps and speech bubble from the Lion Annual.

We Can't Hold ON!!!

Victorian Images from 1866 Newspaper, 1950's girl images and yet another speech bubble from the Lion Annual.

All are on a background of watercolor paper, dressmaking tissue paper with acrylic glaze. I've used wax for the first time to adhere and color some of the collage. Rest is stuck down with my favorite Heavy Structure Gel. All are 8 x 6 inches in a 10 x 12 cream mount. Backed and ready to frame.

I do hope you enlarge the images as the words in the speech bubbles just make the images work. It's so funny taking the speech bubbles and adding them to another scene, I've really had fun with these.

Featured Artists - Scotty Wilson & Madge Gill

Back in 2006 I went up to the Whitechapel Gallery in London. I had been invited by a friends son who worked there and also met up with an old school friend.

This was the Exhibition we went to see at that time I had only just started on my artist journey. The art affected me deeply. Mostly I fell in love with the work of Madge Gill

Recently there has been an upsurge in interest and now there is an excellent Madge Gill website.

Then there was also Scottie WIlson

He invented a world populated by "Greedies"

There is not a dedicated web site for Scottie - what a shame. Most large galleries have one or two of his works so you can see agood variety if you search google..

As a child I played continually with Spirograph. I was fascinated by the lines weaving their way around a design.

On the homeward journey my train got stuck due to a points failure :-) That gave me time to do  "Woman Reborn"

It was the first of my doodle art works.

Inspiration Avenue Challenge - Snake Sisters.

Heres a link to Inspiration Avenue Challenge This month the theme is Snakes.

This is my entry.

Why not pop on over and enter???

On My Computer Today - Retro Divas Pattern

Still working on the pattern.

Here are a couple of the pictures from the instructions.

Machine embroidering an eye.

Legs and a heart cut out ready to stitch.

Can't wait until its finished. Writing detailed instructions is quite hard on the old brain!!!

Freebie Friday - Free French Fashion Illustrations

Just a few images today as I am off to organize my art at the Chelmsford Pop-up shop.

These are from Le Petit Echo de La Mode. A French magazine showcasing the latest fashion patterns, from 1950's. Scanned at 300 dpi. 

To practice my drawing I often make pen and water colour sketches of these sort of images.

Hope you have fun with these.

Collage with Vintage Papers and Maps

Great news the Chelmsford Community Pop-up Shop is to re-open. Lucky for me I have been working on some new collages.

The Word is on the Fashion River.

Using a mixture of pages from Boy's Annual 1901, Bible 1890, Who's Who 1974, Dictionary 1913, Butterick Patterns 1980's, AA map 1970's and modern tissue paper, the sort that bleeds when wet. 8 x 8 deep canvas. 

The Word is on the Center of Paris Fashion.

Same as before but the map is 1940's European one and the figures are from 1950's French Sewing magazine. 10 x 10 square canvas with sloping sides, no sharp edges.

The Word is on the Fashion Square.

Same materials as picture one. 8 x 8 narrow canvas.

The Word is on the Fashion Pattern.

Same materials as picture one. The figure is cut from a photograph of a 1930's pattern. 8 x 8 deep canvas. 

All the canvases have texture. I really like doing collage on a textured canvas. It adds a different dimension to what can be a rather flat picture.

Next one is 20 x 16.

The Word is on the Beachy Habitations.

I used the European map pages, a little of the East and South Coast from the AA map, all torn into small pieces and images from The London Illustrated News and other similar periodicals, dating from 1850 to 1900. 

This was a lot of work snipping all those tiny images and working out the architecture of the houses. 

Did you know that a 1913 dictionary does not have the word Seaside in it? Also lots of words seem to have changed their meanings since 1913. 

I am really liking the tissue paper, that colour blue makes the pictures really zing. When you are sticking it you get blue glue. This spreads into the other papers. I have edged the large picture with the blue tissue, but not used it in the main part.

These will all be heading off to the Chelmsford Community Pop-up Shop.

For those new to my blog, the Pop-up shop is a charitable venture that takes over an empty shop in a smart shopping center. You can read more from an earlier blog post  here .

Photo Software Giveaway on Handmade Harbour

You all need to go check out this fab giveaway.

Handmade Harbour - the lovely Wendy is doing a giveaway a day. This is the best one so far. Photo editing software - with clear help and You Tube back up. No excuse now not to have the best pictures on the NET.

I've grabbed this from Handmade Harbours post and you can see the price of the package. Pretty good value compared to others.

Good luck hope you all have a go at winning a free copy.

x Joan

The Snow 2013

Time to upload some snow pictures. It's melting today.

My lane looking away from my house.

Looking back to my house. Nice and quiet and 2 miles before we get to a gritted road. So you need to be fearless for driving on ice and snow.

The best form of transport, local farmer Terry in his tractor.

A fallen tree on the footpath.

Molly sniffing the badger tracks.

New sign needed - "Danger Deep Ice" !

A new invention a Snow Can

And Snow Body Sitting on my Chairs.

Hope it's warmer where you live.

There will be a Freebie Friday some good French Fashion images from the 1950's and more Victorian images. No competition just free for you to copy and use. 

Valentine Heart - Tinfoil & Paper Mache

So some spare time and I got on and finished another sample for my class at The Ideas Hub.

To the basic shape I've added vintage lace and doilies.

A lace butterfly and some Edwardian text.

All wrapped up in gold thread.

A broken faux pearl necklace, vintage lace and that mystery gold mesh, again wrapped with gold thread.

Hiding on the other side - could this be the mistress or does the lady have a secret friend?

Cut work from a doily and another Edwardian image.

Some lines from an Edwardian verse.

You can make up your own story from the images. All images and text are originals, gleaned from a magazine called Pall Mall.

What are you making for Valentines day?

Seth Apter The Altered Page ~~~ Mixed Media Art Blog

Seth Apter runs one of my favourite Mixed Media Art Blogs.

It's a wealth of information on mixed media and  links to his most excellent books and videos. Not only that Seth is very generous and shares other blog links and features artists that will take you further on in your art journey.

Here's a link to a preview of one of his videos. Easy Mixed Media Surfaces

I always find something useful from his posts. So how excited was I to get an email from him! I had applied to have my blog listed on his site being my usual negative self did not think that this would happen!. But YAY I am going to be listed. The list goes live next month.

Also Seth is hoping to come to the UK to teach, even if I have to sell the dog to raise funds I will be there.

Other news - I will be continuing to facilitate once a month workshops at Colchester Slack Space. I will be putting a tutorial up on this blog for every workshop I teach. It will be pictures and a comment of stages through from start to finish. All the workshops at Colchester Slack Space are done on a voluntary basis and all materials are provided free too.

Great start to my day now I have to go walk the dog - its freezing out there.

Free Victorian Advertisements

Well it's cold, snow and all frozen up and the car is in the garage, since Monday. So slipping and sliding walking about and fingers were blue when I got back from my walk this morning. Molly was cold too as she shot indoors and curled up in her bed with her thick winter coat still on.

As I may have mentioned before I have a lot of Victorian Newspapers. All out of copyright too. So I thought I'd put up some images for you. Please copy and use as you like. They are adverts, scanned at 300dpi greyscale, not fiddled with them at all. You should be able to capture the images with a sniping tool and then print or alter them as you like. Hint at the bottom........................

............................ if you want to make vintage images look more authentic, then you need to print on vintage paper! Yes but where do you find that then? Well I use the blank pages from redundant vintage books, found at the front and sometimes the back too. Or you could use the blank pages that you find within vintage sheet music. Also at the end of chapters in books there is sometimes a 1/2 page blank. With careful positioning of your image that paper can be used too.

You will need to reduce the size of sheet music as its larger than A4. Also you need to measure the size of your pages and tell the printer this measurement. That will be somewhere in your Printer Properties menu, I know where that is for my printer but so many out there you'll have to read the booklet on How To.

Hope its warmer where you are than it is here.

Tutorial - Tinfoil & Paper Mache Hearts

How to make Tinfoil & Paper Mache Hearts

You will need :-

Hearts cut from firm paper or light card. Use Christmas Cards or cereal boxes. Draw freehand they work best.

Tinfoil, aluminium if you are in the USA. Decorative, thread, string or ribbon for the hangers. Buy the cheapest foil in a large - better huge roll.

Heavy Texture or Structure  Gel (referred to as HSG) - I like Winsor & Newton Galeria - it's cheap and does the job. Company link on my side bar - right and above - is the cheapest in the UK. Water pot, small plate, torn up newspaper, phone directory or other soft waste paper. Old brush and baby wipes as this is a messy process you might want an old apron or shirt too.

Place a paper heart onto the tin foil, then carefully scrunch and fold the foil onto the heart.

Make sure you push the foil down firmly especially between the heart bumps on the top.

Also keep the point of the heart a nice pointy shape.

Add more foil until you have a fat heart.  This one is just under 1/2 inch and 2 inches long.

You can make your heart fatter by laying scrunched up foil around it.

Or you can add extensions. Just try some different shapes and ideas.

Here's a clutch of hearts made whilst I watched a TV program.

Now sticky time. Make sure you tear up plenty of newspaper before you start.

Put HSG all over the heart and then place the news paper onto the heart. Use your brush and fingers to work the paper into all the creases. You will need to dip your brush in the water to thin the HSG a bit. Smooth out creases and eliminate any bubbles. Keep going until you have about 7 or 8 layers of paper. Remembering again to push the paper into the gap between the heart bumps and keep your point neat.

Now add your hanging string, this is crochet cotton twisted into a cord. Your heart should still be wet. Cover the cord with plenty of HSG and then put two or three more pieces of newspaper over this, sticking with HSG on each layer. Again smoothing down well and keeping your point sharp.

Hang somewhere warm, Mine are held near the radiator by butchers hooks and a ruler. Take care they do not adhere to the radiator.

Here they are 24 hours later yes it takes that long to dry them. They should sound hollow when tapped.

I have added coloured tissue paper to two.

That's the first part of the project. Now you are ready to paint, add tissue paper or other decorative finishes.

Here's that odd shaped heart with red tissue paper and vintage sheet music added.

The tissue paper bleeds so I've used that to take some colour onto the sheet music. Also wrapped some red crochet cotton round the heart.

This is what I used to decorate the next heart. Some loose woven gold mesh , sorry I can't name brand or be more detailed but I got this at a charity or thrift store. Its possibly a florist supply item. Vintage lace, images and sheet music. Gold thread.

Here's how, Prep all your materials first and decide where they are to go. 

Add brown tissue paper, stick with HSG, Place random pieces of the sheet music over the heart, make sure you put some interesting words, numbers and images. Stick with plenty of HSG.

Hint - if the paper is thicker, immerse in water first to soften it and allow the HSG to sink into the paper.

 Whilst still wet cover and wrap with a piece of the gold mesh, use plenty of HSG.

Now use some images of ladies and gents on top of the mesh.

Then some lace and here a tiny piece of a crochet doily. Stick with HSG and also go over with slightly dilute HSG.

Whilst still wet wrap with the gold thread.

Wrap several times round the base and top of the heart where the hanger is. Finish and secure with a dab of HSG.

Again dry for 24 hours.

   

A couple of close-ups so you can see the details and see that the HSG dries nice and transparent.

I'm sure you have plenty of decorating ideas for these.

Christmas, Easter, Birthdays oh lots of lovely stuff can be done with this idea.

I'd love to see your work so please leave me comments and links to your blogs :-)