Mind Wide Open March Gypsy Belle

This is my entry for the Mind Wide Open challenge this month. We all work with the same digital image and it is amazing to see what all the artists do with it. Take a look, it's worth it to see all the different interpretations. Anyway here's mine. It is about my grandmother Gypsy Belle and how much I liked her name. I used some of the techniques I've been learning in my Art Journal 102 class like gel transfers and layering. I also used some of my rolled paper beads that I showed in an earlier post. TFL!

Blog Anniversary One Year! Self Portrait

Hard to believe I have had my blog for one year today! Even though I lost all my posts recently I still love doing this and will continue to create and share. I've met so many nice people here and have met some amazing artists that I never would have met if I hadn't started blogging. Thanks to everyone and all the kind remarks over the past year. Your encouragement has meant a lot to me and I look forward to year two!

Now on to my latest endeavor...my last weeks homework in Journal 102 was a self portrait ..yikes! So......I took a photo and made a sepia print the played with Photoshop and hit contrast and printed it out. Then I hand colored it. I used very bright water soluable oil pastels. It's a bit Andy Warholish looking in the colors BUT how cool is it to get rid of wrinkles and dark circles, etc ????

Little Birds joUrNaL 102 cLaSS

I am taking a new class and really enjoying it. It is with Dina Wakely at Debbie Hodge's Get It Scrapped online class site. Our first lesson was in using a motif....mine was birds and doing silhouettes with spray inks and water based oil crayons. It was a lot of fun and got me doing some original artwork again. I am looking forward to the next few weeks worth of lessons!

Here is Little Birds Calm and Night Birds Observing