Part I - Inspiration from Taking Flight

I bought Kelly Rae Roberts' book, Taking Flight a couple of months ago. It's one of those books that you can read from cover to cover and keep going back and reading from cover to cover AGAIN!

I've been inspired to try some of the techniques that Kelly Rae and the contributing artists in her book have written. I've started a piece using a wood piece, some personal pieces of cards, favorite sayings, some sheet music and even a receipt from a little Italian restaurant I visited (every day on a business trip!) in San Francisco several years ago.

If you don't have this book, or even if you do, here is Part I of the piece I am working on:

I started off with a piece of 12" x 12" raw wood. Applied a couple of coats of gesso - let dry in between coats

Gathered, cut, and glued my collage of personal notes and ephemera and removed some of the paper "here and there" while the glue (I used Golden's Gel Medium) was still wet


I put a couple of dollups of Yellow Ochre and Titan Buff acrylic paints on a piece of palette paper

Rolled my brayer through the paints

Then rolled the brayer over the whole piece, and while the paint was wet, I took a wet paper towel and removed some of the paint to expose some of the writing and pieces I wanted exposed more

Then I added some Lettuce Alcohol Ink to my palette - with a little more of the paints, and brayered the piece again to give it another layer




I let that layer dry completely and then rubbed a Scattered Straw Distress Ink Pad randomly over the piece, followed by some Brushed Corduroy applied with my finger

Then I let that layer dry and applied some Walnut Ink Distress Ink on the edges and on the edges of some of the papers

I blended the inks with my finger and with another wet paper towel, I removed some more of the paint and inks from the background




This is the completed background after I worked and re-worked it

Then it was on to sketching a subject. I'm not good with faces, so I decided to only draw the bottom half of a face for my subject. I added some lips, a nose, some hair and of course some wings so she can fly if she wants to

Bottom of dress and the legs

I had to work today, and I'm tired, so this is it for today. Part II tomorrow or Friday will be painting the body, the dress, maybe add some rubberstamping - not sure right now

Thanks for following me and "the process".

Continue to be Creative Every Day!