Painting Over Collage - Finding Your Style

Over the Christmas break I bought an art lesson by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer over at Interweave called Paint Over Collage. 

At $1.99 it is a terrific value and, as always, Julie does a fabulous job walking you through the steps. 

I've been messing around with my Gelli Plate so I had lots of random papers to collage onto my painted backgrounds:

Then I got at it. The first one was a wreck. It happens. 

And if you don't fail on occasion you aren't really trying.

Collage Girl #1:

But even the hot mess that she is, there is a lot I like about it. The interplay of the patterns across her face made me want to keep trying.

Collage Girl #2: 

I did a bit more with the eyes and shaded in her nose. Better. 

Still terrifically strange and not at all right.

Then I reread the lesson and realized I was supposed to be shading in the face a bit. *headslap*

Note to self: don't try so hard not to copy that you fail to read through the whole lesson as you do the steps... at least at first.

Collage Girl #3

I feel like this one was a huge leap forward. I shaded, added a shoulders, clothes and accessories. She's weird but she's me-weird.

Apparently I needed to sleep on it and let things percolate a bit.

Collage Girl #4:

This one is from the same day. I really like how she came together but I feel like I lost a lot of the collage. Her lips are my favorite part as the bright pink background and washi tape created an interesting effect. I also left the whites of her eyes collage paper instead of painting them white. It's kinda cool.

Collage Girl #5:

 A new day. New girls to draw. 

The night before I read through Suzi Blu's Mixed-Media Girls
 and she insisted that the pupils and irises need to be perfect circles. So I hauled out my circle stencil and made sure they were more circular and less goggly-eyed. Better?

My boys call her 'Man Face' LOL

Collage Girl #6: 

Same day, I tried this one with less hard outlines and more abstract shading. 

She's cool... in a hammer-head shark sort of way. How her eye ended up in her hair I'll never understand. LOL

Collage Girl #7:

 We watched Love Actually so I had the urge to draw feathered hair (the caterer).  Again, a little masculine. Okay, a lot masculine. One of my teenagers may or may not have referred to this as my, "guys in drag series"

Collage Girl #8:

This is my most recent one. I tried adding all the shading first and then the features. I love the effect. But I find the cool greens and blues a little Marilyn Manson in the 90's. She really makes me happy though. I was thinking of a dear, dear friend back in the NW and some of her essence came out in the painting. 

So, yeah, I cherish it.

As always the backgrounds have a ton of splatter and stamping. If you open up any of the above pics you can see the details.

Thanks so much for sticking around for this gargantuan post. I wanted to show you the evolution of a project and how your style starts to emerge. I think it's safe to say that no matter what I try, my work has a 'look' to it that's inherently my own.

Linked up at A Colorful Journey