BETWEEN SPEECH AND SILENCE: Day 4 - 5

The last days of the week long class with Diane Culhane consisted of collaging, painting, and finding a conversation in your work.

I chose to use an old book cover for my design versus the wood canvas in class.  I plan to use it for my Fall fabric journal.  I failed to take a photo of the original, but the first image is of the painted background plus tree scuplture.  We used complimentary colors on each page, but contrasting in nature from each other.

The next step was to add "textured" magazine leaves to our tree.  I found so many neat patterns and lines, I had a hard to eliminated any.  I think Diane used like 5 per page...and as you can see, I used a lot more.

The next layer was to add contrasting colors on top of the first layer as well as "whiten" or "soften" elements on the page using a fan brush. 

While doing this page, I wasn't sure I liked it, but stepped away...woke up the next day...and loved how the fan brush looked.  It is my new favorite utensil to paint with.  Highly suggested.

I did end up covering some of the leaves and thinning out the tree trunk, but I was okay with that as it needed it in the small space.

The last step was to find a "conversation" between 2 or more items in the space.  I loved how Diane created mini-persons and larger figures in  her artwork, so I decided to do the same. 

My theme/topic for Fall is going to be squirrels, so I included one on the front and back cover of my "I AM CHARLOTTE" book cover.  Love the name as I am (in) Charlotte. :)

Then I added a girl holding a balloon in the first tree while the squirrel has his own hut underneat, and a boy reading a book on the back page while the squirrel harvests his acorns above.

I adjusted the landscape a little after the 5th day to make it seem a bit more natural, plus I loved how the flowers looked. 

In the end, I am super happy and looking at the pages makes me happy.  Definitely will be using this technique on future creations.  Simple and very mind relaxing.