Life Book: Week 1

I have finally completed my first project for the awesome mixed media, year-long, online art course I am taking, called Life Book. As I mentioned in a previous post, I used to draw as a child. I really loved drawing faces from photos, but never quite managed the technique. I never coloured them or painted. So this course really pushed me out of my comfort zone, but oh(!) I am so thrilled with how my first one turned out.  Life Book also has an underlying personal development theme and the course creator, Tamara Laporte comes to it from the perspective of Non Violent Communication (NVC) and is inspired by writers like Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle.

The first project’s theme is to celebrate our “goddess superpowers”. It is a fold out layout on watercolour paper, using acrylics, watersoluble crayons, waterproof pen and graphite pencils.

I am going to include all of the drawings I did this week as I worked my way up to the portrait for the project, because the development is obvious and I want to keep a record of it.

quick pen sketch of my goddess (with chamomile tea stains by my son )

second sketch of my goddess, following the tutorial from the course

Although this one looked very much like the one that was produced in the tutorial, the idea behind the theme was to get in touch with our own inner goddess and our inner celebrated qualities. She turned out very pretty, but didn’t feel like “me” and she looked too young to be a goddess to me, so I found a photo of myself where I felt vibrant and gave a self portrait a go. It looks a bit scary because the eyes are too darkly rimmed and the mouth and teeth are dark from a lot of re-drawing and smudging, but I was pretty happy with the results, considering I haven’t drawn since my teens:

self portrait attempt

Interestingly, to me, as I drew my features, the person I actually saw emerge in the drawing was my mom, who died in 1998. Here is a photo I found of her that I think was taken some time in her 40s, so, not too much older than I am now.

Linda Keys

By the time I had finished the self portrait, I had finally found something I could use as the backing to stick the watercolour paper together, because I didn’t have any 12×12 sheets to do it with and my attempts at making a substitute failed. I used an old poster of a woman sitting in a tree looking at the moon. By then I was chomping at the bit to get drawing!

pencil sketch of my goddess and celebrated qualities

close up of the face

I really loved how the drawing turned out and I was scared of starting to paint and of messing it up! But then I realized that I can paint over anything I don’t like and that it is my first one and so, no matter how it turns out, there will be others and every one will be better than the last (hopefully), so I began painting.

I actually found it really tricky to do the shading. My goddess had her head tilted at a slightly different angle to the tutorial and I couldn’t find any reference for how to do short hair. I only had flesh tint pencils, not crayons and they weren’t as easy to work with, and I was a bit short on colours, but I think I can work with what I have for now and add to my collection as I go. One of the things I really missed having was background stamps. In the tutorial, Tam uses stamps with writing to create a really detailed, grungy background that I couldn’t replicate. I really like the layered grungy style, so I might see if I can find some stamps to use in the future.

I would also have liked to keep the sassy, ‘present’, penetrating look in the eyes that the sketch had, but I didn’t know how to get my painting to look forwards! I think it might be the reflection to the right of each pupil, but I’m not sure.If you’re an artist and you know how, please let me know! Tam might cover it in her group feedback, I’m not sure, but I’d love to have control of that.

I found that my paper has curled a lot, even though it was a good name 300gsm paper. Some of the surface also began to lift off when I used a brayer on the background, but I may just have not waited for it to dry out between techniques and layers and let the paper get too wet. Ah, so much to learn, but what an awesome process!

However, all that said, I am totally thrilled with how my painting turned out!

Here it is:

My inner Goddess and my celebrated inner qualities

close up of the face

with the fold-out cover closed

I feel really good about sharing this one, but I plan to share my process, if I have the time, through the course, even if I don’t feel as happy with the outcomes. Giving myself permission to create like this and not only to be painting, but also to deviate from the tutorial and paint the truth of my heart and soul is ground-breaking for me.

And makes my heart sing!

If you are doing Life Book too and are blogging about your process, please feel free to leave a link to your writing about the lesson too, along with your comments