Crazy Messy Faces with Jane Davenport Stencils

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.

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.

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.

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.

Doodling and Corporate Layoffs

Sometimes I don't even know I'm doodling. I will be talking on the phone, or in a meeting, and when I look down at my desk, or at the pad in my lap, doodles are everywhere. They show up on the edges of meeting notes, on the backs of flyers, on the top of striped legal pads.

They are subconscious marks and designs that, for reasons unknown to me, pop out of my brain, travel down my arm to my hand, and end up on the paper.

I have begun saving and scanning some of the doodles and using them in my artwork.

This journal page started as a doodle--I spent a lot of time on the phone recently because the company I work for suddenly laid off 70 people--and a very dear friend was one of them. Notice the dollar sign that is coming out of the right eye.

I scanned the design and glued it into the journal that I keep on my desk. I also keep some simple art supplies in my office, which I use on my lunch hour to help decompress.

Over the course of a couple of days, I added color, then stencils and stamps.

After I glued a printout of the design into my journal, I used water-soluble oil pastels to add color. My lunch hour was over, so I put it away until the next day.

The next day I pulled out my art supply bin and played with some favorite items: a new stencil by Seth Apter, which I found at a great little store called The Ink Pad, went on the neck to simulate a tattoo. I had a lot of bubble wrap hanging around my office, so I filled in big blank spaces with bubble wrap dots. I pressed a black stamp pad on the bubble wrap, then flipped the inky wrap over and gently pressed it to the paper.

I also added more of the flourish stencil around the page, and used black markers--both thick and thin--to add some extra doodles and detail.

This may not be the best artwork I have ever made. However, it was extremely therapeutic. I was able to let out my frustration with "big brother" and the corporate axe that fell all around me in a safe, creative way.

Hope But Anticipate Journal Collage

 

This journal page started with the idea of experimenting with transparency--while at the Ink Pad, I saw some a big pad of gorgeous, preprinted transparent paper by a very well-known mixed media artist with his own line of supplies. I mulled over the idea of buying it, but being frugal, decided to print my own. And after all, why use somebody else's designs when I have a computer full of my own designs and collaged images that I created in Photoshop?

 

So, I found some similar paper, cut it to size, and printed a few sheets on my laser color printer. It came out beautiful and printed easily. Today, I dared cut it up and experiment. I tried two different journal pages.

• I loved the sheerness of the semi-transparent paper
• I didn't love the lack of stickability...I tried matte medium and also my favorite glue stick. With the matte medium, it buckled and didn't stick very well. With the glue stick, it stuck a little better. I placed the experiment (covered with waxed paper) under a heavy cast iron pot and will see soon what a little time and pressure does to it.

On the piece above, I recycled a hideous painting I did recently as lunch-hour therapy. By laying a section of partially painted deli paper over the watercolor and adhering it with matte medium, I was able to keep some of the underneath image, yet partially mask the ugly parts. After it dried, I then added some of the new transparent paper--the stripe of vintage French script and the butterfly. Next, I put a lacey stamp and a Julie Fei-Fan Balzer stamp made from one of her woodcuts. At the top I used a strip of newsprint from the New York Times.

 

Reflecting what is going on in both my life and in the world, and probably inspired by the butterfly image, the words "hope for the best, anticipate the worst" came into my head, so I wrote the words on the page freehand with markers.

Journal Therapy

After a very intense week at work, and a really, really long and good sleep, some time to just putter in my art journal was most needed today.

I randomly chose some scraps from leftover projects: splatter painted paper from a (paper traders yahoo group) PaperTraders ATC house project, some of my own textile designs (scanned and laser printed, then over printed with stamps and white printmaking paint), printed teabags and painted deli paper from a Julie Fei-Fan Balzer class.

I used a glue stick and matte medium to adhere the various papers around the edges. Next I chose a big colorful ad from a Corcoran real estate booklet as a center spread in my journal--a luxury apartment that bears absolutely no resemblance to my apartment at all. I glued it on with a heavy matte medium to make sure the heavy Corcoran ad stuck.

Next steps: some green accent stripes, a green splatter newsprint circle, and a tea bag, printed with a geometric Balzer stamp and a white stamp pad.

Final step: I used a new Artistcellar stencil to put some flower shapes on the page. They were randomly placed and I applied white printmaking paint using both a small makeup sponge and my finger. I was tempted to write on it, but sometimes colors and shapes are enough, so I quilt while I was ahead. Well, I also couldn't find the pen I wanted, or just the right word stamps and stencils so I decided to leave the page wordless...well, not exactly wordless since there are words in the Corcoran ad and in the newsprint, but wordless in that I didn't add any meaningful, heartfelt words to the page.

Quirky Paper Dolls as Art Therapy

 

Paper dolls make me feel seven years old. They make me feel like a fashion designer, a crazy artist, sometimes a dancer, and sometimes a wizened old woman. They make me forget about my troubles. Making quirky paper dolls is my “go-to” project when I don’t quite know what to do but I want to have a little art fun.

I use vintage paper dolls or blank paper doll templates, and combine body parts with scraps of paper and fabric. Sometimes I use faces I have drawn or painted, sometimes I use famous faces, sometimes I use vintage photos. I occasionally take apart dolls that didn’t quite work out, like the Frida doll on the left, who once wore a Halloween costume that wasn’t quite right. The little child is a Graphics Fairy image, but I discovered after I printed her on cardstock that she had a head, chest and legs, but nothing from the waist down.  So, I improvised a skirt from some watercolor paper that was printed with bubble wrap—exactly the right color and concept for a little girl!

The shoes, black hat and hands holding roses are from the Graphics Fairy http://thegraphicsfairy.com/. The blue hat used the black hat as a template, but I cut it from my own paper, blue painted watercolor paper printed with a white commercial stamp. The striped band is from an M&J Trim bag. Most of the parts are attached with mini brads to make the dolls poseable.