Finding Inspiration: keeping things simple with collage

Hi there Polkadot!

How have you been?  I have been to a craft fare last week, and I will share you all about my new supplies in my next post.  I know I am a tease, but I want to keep things a bit chronological in my mind: right, to keep things simple.

You know how life can be.  I don’t know if this is a ‘Belgian’ thing, but everyone always seems ‘busy’, ‘stressed out’, in lack of time to just be and enjoy the moment.  I heard a news report on the radio earlier this week, saying Belgians are one of the least happy Europeans.  We are most likely to take anti-depressant drugs and suffer from burn outs.  What’s up with that? How come it is here in this ini mini tiny country???

I have been feeling it too recently.  And I really can’t be bothered with it really.  To put things in a funny perspective: I don’t have the time to feel it. (get it)  I am such an emotional sponge, and sometimes I take too much of the feelings and output around me, and I get stuck with it. You can get sick that way.  You can blow a fuse this way.  I chose the other way.  I chose to use it creatively. As inspiration.

And so I chose a product I was longing to work with (Dylusions paints) and a technique I knew would lift my spirits without pressuring me to create a masterpiece (collage).  Take that inner critic! In the end, after staring at the page on my worktable for a few minutes a couple of days, I decided to take a pen and just write it out. Et voila!

This were my supplies of choice:

I started with a layer of Dylusions paints.  They were the talk of the town in my artsy tribe around that time.  Nothing like seeing the excitement of your fellow tribeswomen, and their art work, to make your mood.  In Flemish, we have this word ‘goesting’, I don’t think there is a really exact word in English.  It is like ‘envie’ in French, and a bit more then ‘lust’ and ‘longing’ in English.  You can have it for food, and for carnal things too 😉  But anyway, that’s what seeing all this Dylusional stuff going on in our tribe, made me have.

When I first had the paints, I felt a bit disappointed, because my work didn’t seem as smooth and effortless as Dyans.  But of course, it all depended on the technique.  You really need only a little tiny amount on your cut ‘n dry foam applicator, and then you get this really smooth finish. Dyan has a really good video out about her paints.  You can check it out here. The colors are like nothing else in this world.  It’s like having a sunny day, in your art journal, even when it’s gloomy outside.  And then when you put the sprays over top…  Magic!

Of course I can’t waist any ink, so I grabbed my little journals around and mopped up in them. Yum!

Then I loaded stuff on top: tissue paper, texture paste, stamps, some border with paint pen and I added shading to the border with a charcoal pencil.

In the collage I like to change up the eyes.  I’ve picked up that step from Tracy Moore.  I’ve talked about her and her video’s here. I don’t think this really counts as a ‘zetti’ page.  Most of the pages you find in that category have even more white an black ink added to the ingredients. I changed the color of her lips too with Spectrum Noir alcohol markers, and made her cheeks rosy with a gelato.

This is how she turned out:

The week I finally finished this page, turned out LoveArtHappyLife was about Hannah Höch.  One of the only female DADA artists, who actually loved collage too. I’m doing another page for this assignment, that isn’t finished yet.

So my challenge to you today is: find inspiration in something that is surrounding you right now.  That can be anything: a feeling, a color, a tv show, something everyone is talking about.  Grab your journal and go at it! Have fun!