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| Jane Green, finished. mixed media journal page |
Above is the finished journal page I named Jane Green. Jane, for the Jane Davenport stencil that I used as a guideline for the face, and Green because I got all sloppy and messy and the skintone accidentally turned greenish.
Jane Green finished looks completely different than the unfinished, fairly neat drawing below, done the day before.
I lightly sketched, with a pencil, the facial features, then hand-drew the lines for the hair, neck, swirls and checkerboard. The drawing was started one evening as I sat beside my husband and quietly drew while he was watching a TV show. I felt pretty calm and just wanted to relax with some art supplies and see what emerged.
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| Jane Green unfinished |
The next day, I let loose with the wet paints and the design turned into something unexpected. I ended up painting over areas I didn't like with gesso, and smearing some of the colors together and getting muddy.
There is a big Jane Davenport fan base on Instagram and Facebook. I am a big fan too. But where I go with her products is pretty unlike what most fans do. I seldom have an adorable mermaid or a doe-eyed child. Mostly I end up with crazy looking females. Hmmm...what would Freud say?
Below is another journal page, using a different Jane Davenport stencil. Lots of scribbling, painting over, mixing of medias. I glued a strip of scrapbook paper over the forehead to break up the design, but wasn't sure if I liked it. It was sort of '80s Flashdance meets '60s hippie. I stepped back and decided it was too busy, and went to bed.
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| Jane Black, unfinished |
The next day, I looked at the page and thought, "What was I thinking? This is busy, what a mess!" So, I grabbed black gesso and knocked back the purple in the background. I had to stop myself from painting over the whole page and covering the face. It's still kind of a mess, but it is done--at least for now. I named her Jane Black: Jane for the Jane Davenport stencil, and Black for the background gesso.
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| Jane Black, finished |
When it comes to drawing, I can be pretty neat. Aided by a computer, I can be rather precise. Never reaching the perfection that my Virgo brain seeks, but lines are reasonably straight and if I am trying to do a repeating design, I can figure out the math and make it work.
Sometimes my brain needs to work on something orderly and neat to calm it down. But sometimes a design that starts out neatly drawn ends up a hot mess. And sometimes that hot mess is gorgeous. Mostly I end up gessoing over hot messes or cutting them up into ATCs.
