Show Your Face - Just for Fun!

Hello and welcome to Magpieheaven. We've had a guest staying this week, and that, along with all the family commitments, have meant I've not had quite so much time to craft. I've still been obsessed with creating faces, though. Ever since Mo introduced me to Kim Dellow's wonderful 'Art it Friday', where she's been encouraging us to 'show our faces' I've simply had to create new faces and to find interesting ways of presenting them! If you haven't done so already, please do take a look at Kim's blog. Her work is such an inspiration and each week more and more really interesting artists have been joining her and showing their faces too!

I've had two projects that have occupied me over the week. The first has been a tiny face. I've always been fascinated by the miniaturist's art and one of my favourite books is on the work of artists like Hilliard and Isaac Oliver, painters who worked painstakingly to create likenesses on ivory, using minute brushes and magnifying glasses. I took a short-cut, reducing a little sketch, which I then transferred onto linen and added to one of Sandra Evertson's smaller Relics and Artifacts.

The shell is a tiny mother-of-pearl sequin, which is really iridescent, but sadly I could not capture this in the photo. I used rusting powder and Prima art sugar in charcoal to create the ageing effect. The leaves in the surround are from broken jewellery and I painted the piece with Frescos in Jade and Guacamole. As I worked on this, Ariel's mysterious song from Shakespeare's play The Tempest came to mind:
Full fathom five thy father lies:
Of his bones are coral made
Those are pearls that were his eyes
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer  a sea change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell...
When I had finished my Tempest themed relic, I decided she was, in fact, a Work in Progress and I'm going to include her on a bigger project I'm working on at the moment. I was still preoccupied by the sea and sea nymphs and this journal page was the outcome of my dreaming! What exactly might a sea nymph look like?

Once again I used Inktense pencils with Signo and Pilot fine-liners to create a sea-nymph who might have gone just a little too far in making a statement with this hair-do!

After I had created my sea siren's face, I just had lots of fun with her curls and waves, giving her the most improbable hair ornaments - including a little lady braving the billows! The tree was inspired by my daughter showing me an image of a tree growing under the sea!

After the mystery and magic of Ariel's song, I thought it was time for a little humour with my sea nymph, so the caption reads 'This time even she had to admit to having gone a little too far out with the new hair-do.'

Thank You so much for taking the time to read my blog. I'm really looking forward to 'catching up' with the other faces this week. Best Wishes to everyone who has a special holiday this weekend and even if you don't, have a creative time anyway!