the girl with a tree on her head

 

i haven't taken a painting class in a long time and i was kind of amazed to see just how much i learned and grew from misty mawn's stretching within e-course! 

i have never art journaled before! and what a fun experience! i hardly ever work on paper, so that was a nice switch, especially since paint and charcoal and so many of the supplies i love to use work so much differently on paper that wood or canvas!

the blank page can be a bit daunting, but being a journal with so many pages was super freeing because if you don't like what you've created you just turn the page and try again (it's funny how my mind works sometimes!).

i'd been paging through some anthropologie catalogs (one of my favorite places to find images for collage), and i came across some really pretty blue backgrounds, so i started with that. then as i flipped through the catalog, i tore any image i was drawn to, without thinking (oh, what would i ever do with that?) and i just immediately glued it where i felt it belonged on the page (i love letting intuition guide me as part of my painting process!).  

i also had a vintage valentine and placed one of the girls inside, glued on a background i liked, then added a shape like a windowsill and some cut out flowers inside. the column came last, and that ended up being what i was most drawn to.

 

 i was so into it all that i stopped documenting the process! somewhere i had been trying to paint over the original girl's face, despised it even after a few tries, and pasted another girl right on top to cover up that goofy valentine heart too. and from there, this piece flowed!

i painted over the new girl's face with black and white, added her hair, shoulders and tree branches! then i noticed one of the images in the catalog had this amazing angle to the floor, so i used that shape as sort of the triangular horizon line here.

the owl came in as sort of a totem, which i'm loving paired with the butterfly over her opposite shoulder! more things that just sort of happened!

and at the end of the day, my kitchen table looked like this! 

i've realized that on sunny days (which is when i most want to paint) i simply do not want to be in my studio where the windows and light are beautiful, but the sun only in for a bit in the morning. in our kitchen, it stays all day! 

so i've reenlisted my painting cart that i fill with supplies and take out into the backyard in the summertime. now, i'm wheeling it out into the kitchen for painting days! why didn't i think of this sooner?