More practice

I love drawing faces, though I am a bit insecure when it comes to painting them. I really want to get past that and I realise the only way to that is to practice, practice practice. So that's what I've been doing. That and watching youtube video's of people drawing and painting faces.
It's really fun to see how everyone aproaches painting and drawing faces in a different manner. There is not one set way to draw a face. Some start with ovals, some with ovals and circels for the cranium and others start by just drawing the eyes and building the face around them. There are those that take a real mathematical approach and those that just fly by the seats of their pant (that is a correct expression I hope). Any which way, they all get to where they want to be.

I love that. I think I'm going to try all the different methods (or non methods) out there.

So today, when working in my art journal I used the method, start with the eyes and build the face from that. Which actualy came about because I collaged an eye, I found in a magazine, onto the page.

As you can see, there is an eye on the page in the top left corner. At first I carefully elaborated a little on that with white acrylic paint.

My first idea was to make the face fairly transparant and leave as much of the background as possible (I still need to get over that "ooh I like that, don't touch it" feeling).

I had done some collaging, stamping with home made stamps and stencilling with my new stencils and I liked what it looked like.

I definitely wanted to keep the birdy.

But once I got painting, all caution went out the window and one thing led to another, so I ended up covering most of the background.

I liked where it was going and didn't mind the fact that the background had almost completely disappeared, at all, so I added some final touches.

The first eye below is painted and the second one is the original collaged eye. Well, just to state the obvious...

I think they match reasonable well.

I like how it turned out even with the chopped off head and chin =). I might need to find a bigger journal , but who knows, I might chop off things there as well. I do have a book I want to alter, with considerable larger pages than this moleskine book.

Talking off moleskines, this book is nearly full. I do like working in it, but it did have a few drawbacks.

First off all, you need to be carefull and take precautions when working with really wet materials, or the spine might come lose. Which happened to me. 

Secondly, the book gets to be so thick, if you're like me that is, causing the spine to be too small. In my case by at least a factor 3.

I solved this by cutting away the original spine and replacing it with a bigger one. Which also solved the first problem.

The original spine and the new one.

Taped together with duct tape....in green, does it show that I like green?

Now all I need to do is decorate the outside of the journal (and a few more pages) and I'm done. But that'll be for another time, since thist post is picture heavy as it is.

Thank you for watching and I wish you all a very lovely weekend.