WORKING IN MY JOURNAL OF "FACES"

"EVERY ARTIST DIPS HIS BRUSH IN HIS OWN SOUL, 

AND PAINTS HIS OWN NATURE INTO HIS PICTURES."

Henry Ward Beecher

I had a very interesting conversation with a 94 year old friend of mine who has some very old fashioned ideas about a myriad of topics, in particular "ART."  We happened to be talking about how we define "art."  This all came about when I started to tell her about my journal of "faces."  She quickly interrupted me when I got to the part about finding my inspiration from photos of faces that I find on the internet.  She said "that's not art."  According to my friend, art is drawing or painting from real life figures or landscapes and not from, in her words, "copying a photo."

I think that we can all agree that my friend's definition of "art" is a very narrow and shortsighted view which would leave out many of the masterpieces hanging in art galleries today but yet she is not wrong.  Art is personal...It is whatever appeals to the viewer and what the viewer or artist considers to be art.  If you look on the internet you will find many definitions and no two are alike. There is no right or wrong.  So my question is...why did I feel that I had to defend my position as an artist?

INSPIRATION PHOTO:

For this painting I used Derwent Intense pencils, chalk paint for the highlights on the skin, Molotow yellow paint pen for eyeliner and hair and pan pastels for the blue background.  I love the way the Intense pencils worked on the hot press watercolor paper.  Nice and juicy!

Thanks for stopping by and until next time...

Hugs,
Ginny

PUMPKIN GIRL

Whew!  I can stop holding my breath now...hurricane Irma is gone and luckily, I have no damage to my house or yard just a lot of leaves and small tree branches strewn everywhere.  And...I HAVE POWER!  I am so fortunate!

Many of my friends and family are still waiting for the electricity to be restored and are waiting in temperatures of 91 deg. Fahrenheit or above.  Our State has never seen anything like this in our history and are just now beginning to understand its impacts.  To give you an idea: All services have been interrupted and many people can not go back to their jobs because of the power outages. Streets are cluttered with yard waste waiting for the Cities and Counties to pick up the residue. Grocery stores had to throw out all refrigerated items due to spoilage and are waiting for the trucks to arrive in order to restock.  Some areas are told to conserve water by limiting showers and flushing toilets and to boil drinking water (I am not one of them thank goodness). Many areas will not be able to rebuild without adhering to stricter and more costly building codes.  This storm was a monster and its impact will be felt for a long time by many.  

I was too nervous to do any drawing during the storm and now that it is past, it's time to get back to normal. So here goes...Pumpkin girl was created using good old dependable Prismacolor pencils.  My "go to" medium for coloring my whimsical girls. I love how the colors build up into a creamy satin finish.  For more information on how I use prismacolor pencils go here.
          

I like to sketch my faces in pencil first because it allows me a lot of tweaking with the eraser.  I am not trying to get an exact likeness but I am trying to get some kind of resemblance to the inspiration photo.

Once I obtained the look that I was going for, I outlined the drawing using a Copic fineliner sepia pen.  Then I erased the pencil lines.  Prismacolors and pencil graphite don't mix, they will smear and muddy your colors, so the sepia ink works better.  The ink is permanent and it gives you an outline but yet it is light enough to be covered by the colored pencil.

Hope you enjoyed "Pumpkin Girl."  I can't show you my inspiration photo on this one as I actually snapped a picture of this girl from the TV.  I thought that she has the most interesting face shape and features.  Perfect for drawing a whimsical character.

Until next time.....

Hugs,
Ginny

MORE TOTEMS

This is another Totem created with collage and a rubber stamp that I made by carving a rubber eraser.  Simple, simple, simple!!!  After the collage was glued into place, there was very little embellishing that needed to be done.  Just a little shading here and there to create depth and the addition of a few doodles to create interest.  Ta-dah!!!  A totem is born!!!

The following picture is the collage sans shading and doodles.  Like I said…simple, simple, simple!

Collage prior to shading and doodles

Carved rubber stamp

Until next time….

Huggs,
Ginny

TOTEMS

totem |ˈtōtəm|
nouna natural object or animal believed by a particular society to have spiritual significance and adopted by it as an emblem._____________________________________________________________________

Funny, how someone can plant a seed in your head and it grows into something that you had never imagined.  In this case it grew from something scary into something beautiful and not scary at all. You see….I always though that totems were kind of scary…something that I would imagine to be present in nightmares. (They never appeared in any of my nightmares but anyway…)  Animals and faces with snarly teeth and squinty eyes…ready to dance around you and pounce on you once you run out of ground in which to escape but after I saw the beautiful artistic quality of the totems created by Teesha and Tracy Moore...I became excited about drawing totems. I saw them in an entirely different light. They're not scary at all!!! They are "totems" of beauty!

Footnote:  Teesha and Tracy Moore, in the Artstronaut's Club, are currently exploring drawing totems using different media.  

Until next time,

Hugs,
Ginny



                                                                         

COFFEE CUP JOURNAL

I know that you have probably seen the journals made from a paper coffee cup….like the kind that you get from Starbucks.  Well….I was at Einstein Bagels and they had the cutest coffee cups that said "celebrate close knit friends" with a little cartoon dog pulling the end of the yarn.  Perfect for cutting up and making a small journal.  The coffee cup cosy had a huge black mustache on it so I used that as well.

Here is the finished result:

And…this is what I am drawing inside.  Whimsical faces (close knit friends) using collage news print and Inktense pencils.

That's all for now….Until next time,

Hugs,
Ginny

TRYING OUT A MOLESKINE

Where do I begin?  I am trying out a Moleskine journal for the first time.  I am a Moleskine virgin!  As  with using any art medium for the first time...there are always challenges.  In this case…it is the thinness of the paper.

I already know that the paper in the Moleskine journal will probably support only graphite and colored pencil so I plan to use it just for pencil sketches.  No ink! That was the plan but once I completed my pencil sketch, I felt that something was lacking and outlined it in ink.  Well...guess what?  It bled through to the other side!  Anyway, I did what I usually do...I decided to go with the flow and let happen what may and deal with the issue later.

In the art world there is always a solution to a problem…right?  Maybe a little gesso or gluing something over it?  Or….maybe even gluing two pages together.  What would you do?  I would love to hear from you and learn how you deal with this issue.

Until next time!

Hugs,
Ginny