An Ocean Inspired Watercolor Face

Today's mixed media (but primarily watercolor) face is right up there with some of my favorite pieces I've done for the entire 29 Faces challenge. This is actually my 22nd face that I have completed, despite the fact that it's only the 17th of September (I'm a bit of an overachiever, if you haven't noticed), but I wanted to say that I probably will be continuing to create faces for the rest of the month, even after I hit 29. I've been having an extraordinary amount of fun with it, especially when I manage something that I love as much as this piece.

In the long run, I sort of wish that I had done this piece on a more legitimate surface, rather than a page in a composition notebook, and I don't think I'm going to give this girl any more of a background than she already has. However, I do like the lines peeking through in this piece, so in the end I suppose it all works out.

• This piece was done in a composition book art journal, as previously stated, but I did decide to prep the surface with a thin later of white acrylic paint that I scraped onto it with a palette knife. The pages were slightly shiny and I wanted /something/ for the watercolor to adhere to, rather than sitting on the surface or sinking into the paper. 
• As you can probably tell by the photographs, I incorporated a good bit of graphite into this piece. The entire idea for creating this face was to just play with watercolors. I didn't want to be too structured with it, but I didn't want to be too abstract either. I just wanted to have fun and try to curb some of the fear I have of watercolors. For the most part, I feel like I achieved that. 
• The colors of this piece are honestly one of my favorite parts. The color of her hair originally sprung from trying to incorporate some blue into the actual tones of her skin, but it just sat on top of the face and seemed like it could be shaped into a hairline. I went with it. 

•  Something you can also see in these photos was something I used on another of my favorite faces I've done, which is a gold marker by Studio G that I got at Michaels for something like $1.50. It writes smoothly on top of paint, and it adds a shine and highlight to the page that I utterly adore. Sometimes it just seems to be the perfect finishing touch.
• Almost contrasting yesterday's face (though I like today's a lot better), the blue of her hair made me feel as though she could represent water. That was why I decided to go with such a freeflowing neckline for her shirt, almost letting it fade into waves. 

In the long run, it's days like these that make me excited to do challenges like this one - if I paint enough faces, a few are going to stand out as my favorites!

Thank you all for visiting, and I hope you like this girl as much as I do.

Minimal Layers + A Short Story (8.11.2016)

Today's post is going to be a bit of a shorter one, since I've been working quite a bit lately (I just finished seven days straight) and haven't been able to make much time for mixed media. However, among the chaos I was able to make time to put together one page, which is actually pretty minimal in its layers compared to a lot of the other art I've been working on lately.

This page was actually done on the inside of the folded piece of card stock Unseen Beauty was created on, and you can see a little bit of where I began the next page in the edges of these photos. Consider it a sneak peek.

I'm not quite sure why I decided to call this page Awake, considering that I most likely wan't fully awake when I finished it. However, there is a ton that I love about this page and I want to touch on a few points.

• I started this page off with a page out of the phone book, glued onto the page upside down. The intention was always to keep the layers thin so that the text could show through and I succeeded in doing just that.
• As you can see in both the left and right hand photos, there are some areas with a scallop pattern. That effect was achieved by putting down a bit of a thicker layer of white acrylic paint and using the end of my paintbrush to carve away the pattern for a bit of texture.
• The pink circles were collaged down onto the page, and then blended into the background using layers of paint, both acrylic and watercolor, gelatos, oil pastels and a gel pen. I really wanted to focus on these circles in particular on this page - the concept was really what inspired the whole thing.

As much as I love this page, I want to pull away for a minute in order to bring attention to something that one of my art journal pages brought into being. I wrote a short story the other day - I'd say it was in the thriller genre, and it was inspired by a brainstorming session I did while looking at The Evolution of an Idea.

I got there in a pretty roundabout way, and it's not really easy to see any similarities between the two pieces, but there was a connection, just the same. It's called Chosen Fate and can be found here if you want to check it out!

In the end, even though I've been exhausted recently, it makes me happy to share these things with you guys. I hope you enjoy seeing the finished pieces as much as I enjoy making them and I hope to see you all again soon!

Connections (8.7.2016)

I'm not sure if you can really tell from the photos, but the piece this post is about was done on a canvas. It's the first canvas I've done in a good long while, and I absolutely adore the way it turned out. The layers, the colors, the message - I feel like I've created something I'm proud to call my own and that's a good feeling.

As far as the message is concerned, it's a sort of companion piece to a poem I wrote for my Patreon page. If you look under the "Why Immensum is on Patreon" tab, the bits that are in bold are part of  poem I created to describe my journey. After I had done the mixed media layering of this canvas and was trying to think on what words would fit the feeling of the piece, this phrase is the one that immediately came to mind.

There are far too many layers for me to fully explain all of them, but I'll do my best.

• The first thing that stands out to me, because it is clearly the focus of the page, is the giant pink heart. That design was actually created via a stencil I made a good while back on a simple piece of printer paper. It was never intended to be used for long term use, but it was made during a period of time when I was experimenting with hearts as a significant theme in my work. I still like the idea of that.
• The stenciled letters in the upper right hand and lower left hand corners of this canvas are indeed the same stencil as the word 'heart' in the title. For the title word, I applied multiple layers of the while paint in order to make sure it stood out against all the layers of the background and didn't blend into it too much.
• Speaking of the corners, the lower right hand corner is probably one of my favorite parts of this canvas. You can see that there is a lot of texture, which was created by dabbing on white acrylic paint with a paper towel. There are also a few bits of book paper, layered with some stamping, some watercolors, and a bit of masking tape.

• In this photo, you can see the details of the title a bit better. I simply used a gel pen to outline the letters of the title, doing it several times for emphasis. The rest of the words were stamped.
• You can also see in these photos how a bit of the heart has been lifted away. That effect was achieved when the piece got wet, due to an attempt to make some vague drip marks. However, I then proceeded to place a sheet of paper down on the canvas and pull it back up (a technique that you may have seen in the video from my last post. I love the effect that I ultimately got.

As you can probably tell, I sort of love this canvas. It has a bit of personal meaning to me, but I also think that visually it is incredible important. It defines a specific point in my artistic journey, the point where I truly decided that I wanted to try to make art for a living, at least in some capacity.

Also, from the creation of this canvas, I was able to come up with several other ideas of things I would like to try to create in the future - a potential digital drawing inspired by some of my favorite parts of this canvas. But that's the funny thing about art - you always come up with the best ideas when you're creating something else. Thank you all so much for joining me, and I'll see you next time!