LifeBook Week13: Essence

The last LifeBook lesson I completed was for week 06, so you could say I fell off the bandwagon. It's not the first time this has happened and probably not the last. I'm not worried about it though. LifeBook is not a race and it's not an obligation. I call it paint as you go: I do the lessons as I go along at my own pace. It's ok to skip some - I may or may not come back to them later.

This particular lesson is from last week by Annie Hamman, whom I adore! Annie's got real talent that I can only aspire to. I love her expressive, painterly portraits. She makes the process look so easy!

This one started out with a layer of collage from all sorts of sources: patterned papers, magazine cut-outs (or rather tear-outs!), a tea bag and a printed music sheet. A layer of thin gesso followed to mute the background a little. I then sketched a face with a charcoal pencil. This is what it looked like at this stage:

Next, I added shading with charcoal and blended it with gesso. 

I forgot to take photos of the next few steps, which involved adding colours with watersoluble pastels and more collage pieces, including some washi tape and images printed from the internet. I tried to keep the colour scheme simple: muted browns and greens. 

The crown was torn from a magazine image of a handbag. I think it looks very striking and matches my colours scheme - a lucky find! Here's a little trick: if you're not happy with some parts of your painting, cover it up with some collage paper, like I did here with the ship and the clock face, Clever, huh? They can cover up a multitude of oopsies! The word 'essence' was just lying on my desk and I thought it matched my sentiments. Here's a closer look at the finished page:

Thanks for visiting today.

It feels good to be back in the saddle and I hope I will 

have the opportunity to catch up with some more arty lessons 

over the upcoming Easter holidays.