Show Your Face and Art Journal Journey!

Welcome to Magpieheaven, where I'm linking up to two blogs today! First it's Kim Dellow's 'Show Your Face', where Kim gives us the opportunity to see the faces she has been creating and to link up our own experiments in creating portraits each week. I've been having so much fun, challenging myself to create new faces each week and I've been so inspired by what Kim and the other artists have been creating. Please do take a look here and prepare to be inspired! I also decided to link up with Art Journal Journey because this month the theme is 'Masculine and Feminine' and my faces are in my art journal as well as being the male and female components of a famous literary duo!

I began by resting two sketches I had done in Portfolio pastels in the pages of an old copy of Pride and Prejudice on my art journal and drawing around them. 

This was so that I could gauge where to have my texture on the background of my journal pages.

I then added Grunge Paste tinted with Fresco paints and pushed through stencils to create the impression of an outdoor setting.

I also added some lace and some netting to this page...

and a stamped and die-cut fabric leaf to this one.

Now I played around with positioning painted, curled paper strips made from the text of the novel before removing them, putting them somewhere safe and spraying both pages with diluted South Pacific Fresco paint.

I now stuck down the faces and the curls of paper and did some painting and doodling to integrate the faces into the pages.

Some Treasure Gold and a Tim Holtz sentiment stamped onto Chatsworth paper with curled corners were added to this side, before I added finishing touches with Fresco Finish paints in Chalk, Brown Shed and Jade.

So who are my famous literary couple, the epitome of the essential Male/Female conflict that has come to be the template for virtually every subsequent romantic novel? Mr Darcy and...

Elizabeth Bennett!

Elizabeth challenges the ideals of what it was to be feminine in the early nineteenth century, when she arrives at the Bingley's home with her 'petticoat six inches in mud' looking 'almost wild' with her hair 'so untidy'! Mrs Hurst and Caroline Bingley can't wait for her to leave the room so that they might make 'catty' remarks about her! Yet it is Elizabeth who wins the heart of the dashing Mr Darcy. Just like Benedick and Beatrice in Shakespeare's 'Much ado about Nothing' the combative couple become increasingly drawn to each other and love blossoms between the prejudiced male and the proud female!

Thank you for stopping by Magpieheaven today and taking a look at my interpretation of

'Pride and Prejudice' - Darcy and Elizabeth -Male and Female - the inspiration for my project this Friday.