Thursday

What -Altered Books?

These are two more of my spreads that I did in my Altered Book -themed Four Letter Words. The image on the right was in the book already. I got Heidi to write Pink Buds in calligraphy for me. These are really not flower petals, but some cool moths! Love the pink with the yellow green. On the left side, I stamped over the text with Ultramarine blue and gold acylic paint -for the stamp I cut a piece of styrofoam packing that held a computer -it had some symbols embossed into it, and I thought, "I wonder what this would stamp like?" ALWAYS answer the 'what if?' question with trying it -that is how you learn all kinds of great stuff, and also what works and what doesn't. I then attached another distressed photo of one of my paintings -just wet the photo, and scratch at the edges with sandpaper -the LEAF was scratched out with an awl. Just wait to see what else you can do to alter photos!

This spread is actually a series of pockets. On the left hand side there is one pocket made by folding back one of the photo pages from the book. This is secured with eyelets. The back page is another image from the book. Inside this pocket I have placed a paper doll that I made out of papers I had previously painted and decorated (see post Jan 24/09) which I backed with cardstock. I added a skirt made out of lace -the movable arms, head and legs are possible because of the brads joining the pieces. The PLAY was cut out of the collage papers as well.
On the right side there are 3 pockets of differing depths, secured at the top edges with eyelets through which red and yellow cording was strung, and tied with bows. Inside each pocket are three tags -each person was to decorate 2 of the tags. I have clipped one of my tags to the front of that page just to show you an example. The tags gave us a small format to try new things on I did have a problem holding the tags in place which I thought I had solved with some double sided tape, but it has since released so will have to come up with another idea. It is too deep into the page to use staples, which would be easy. Suggestions? I will post a photo of the tags and the doll tomorrow.

Enjoy!

For more information on this project, feel free to email me!

Wednesday

Altered Book Again

I did these two spreads after the exchange was over. I had removed many of the less interesting pages, primarily text pages, from my book as it was way too thick after all the altering was done. I did this with a craft knife, cutting very close to the seam. On the left side there was a photo of an ugly looking snake thing (YUCK!) so I camouflaged it with transparent glazes of Jenkins Green acrylics. I put another medallion that I made (see post Dec 26th for directions) on top. On the right side I stuck on a Canada sticker as the forest looks so much like the forest at our cottage. I then stuck on the HOME that I cut from a magazine. I still might do something else to this spread -any suggestions?

This is another spread where I had removed pages between the two image pages. I loved the little blue moths on the right, and BLUE has four letters, so it was game. On the left side I collaged on a blue jay feather I had found, which I had kept in my treasures box. It is a great idea to use your found treasures in your altered book!

Enjoy!

For more information on this project, feel free to email me!

Monday

Still More Altered Book Project Pages

These 2 spreads I did after the round robin exchange was finished -I still have half a dozen spreads left to do! The image of the fossil on the right was in the book. I liked the colours so decided to work with that palette. I painted a shell over top of the text on the left hand page, highlighting some of the words from the book. I made an origami envelope which I collaged onto the page. Inside it says "LESS is MORE". Playing off the theme Four Letter Words, I let the numeral represent the word FOUR. On the right hand page, I took a photo of one of my finished collages, distressed the photo by wetting it and then giving the edges a scrub with sandpaper. I then collaged it on the fossil. To finish the spread, I spritzed it all with my new favorite, apricot coloured Glimmer Mist. ( see a video on how to use this product)


This spread had a photograph on both pages. I thought for a long while about what to do with this, and then I saw where someone had written text around an image, and voila, the idea was there, and I proceeded to write steam of consciousness ideas about what it would be like to live on this island. What fun! I used a silver Sharpie on the dark parts and a blue Sharpie on the light parts. I had fun with the lettering of LAND, following my renewed interest in scripts and calligraphy.

Enjoy!

For more information on this project, feel free to email me!

Sunday

More of My Altered Book

This is a spread that Heidi did in my book. She took off on the image of the jelly fish that was in the book. She worked on a black piece of card that she had made packing tape transfers to look like windows and placed them behind holes she cut in the card. Heidi is an amazing calligrapher, and she wrote the words in an opaque white pen "Jelly fish swim in the deep blue sea. They swim, float and even glow. Their legs help them to flit and dive, on through the sea they go." She added the black page to the book using brads. The text page behind shows through under the images, kind of like seeing the page through an aquarium. Cool!

This spread was made by Lindsay. In this case the original pages were totally obliterated. I had previously painted them with gesso, which I then stamped into when the gesso was still damp, using hand carved stamps with tree themes. Lindsay played with the tree theme and on the left hand spread printed out and collaged a great story about a lonely tree in the desert which had been hit by a drunk driver -too much -click the page to see it larger and read the story. She then stuck on some stylized leaf stickers on top. On the right page she painted a lovely picture of a tree being held by loving hands. She surrounded it with a polka dotted frame and cut out the letters for TREE out of magazine, typed the word root, and collaged them in. I like the way Lindsay played with different fonts in this piece.

Enjoy!

For information about this project, please feel free to email me or comment below!

Saturday

My Altered Book -2 more spreads

This is one of the spreads that I did in my book. I photocopied a stencil sitting on top of a piece of newspaper and collaged that onto the left hand page. Then I tinted it with Quin gold and Perm Violet Dark acrylics, painting inside some of the letter forms. I cut a strip of that and collaged it to the right photo page. I stenciled the words with opaque paint and outlined them with markers. The center element is medallion that I made on mat board with several layers of thick embossing powders, painted between layers with red and green ink. When the last layer was still warm, I pressed a rubber stamp in the shape of a frog into it, revealing the colours underneath. Then I rubbed some gold Rub-and-Buff over the top to highlight the frog.

In this spread (also one of mine) for the background, I applied crackle medium to the left hand page, which had been painted a dark brown, and then tinted the medium with a transparent blue glaze. I then collaged the photos and puzzle shaped ladies on top, along with the text. I cut out the ARTS word and painted each one before collaging them. The right hand side held a microscopic photo of cells, which began the idea of the spread relating arts and life. For the image of the baby, I cut it out of a magazine and then made a triple mat for it before collaging it on. The quote is from Henry Moore, and I thought it was most appropriate.

Enjoy!

For any information on this or on any of my work, please feel free to email me.

Wednesday

My Altered Book Project

As I am not painting now (my four kids are all home for the holidays -yipee!) I thought I would entertain you with pictures of my altered book project, along with some of the techniques used. This was a project that I began in the spring, collaborating with 4 friends/students of mine. The idea was that each person was to choose a book to alter and a theme. Then each person would do 3 spreads (2 facing pages) in each others book per month and then we got together to have a play date (the most fun part of the project -we would share ideas and techniques we had learned) and then we would exchange the books. This lasted from May to November when we had our final wrap up party and got to see all the books completed.
My book theme was 'Four Letter Words' -the idea was not my own, I saw it on my travels through the wonderful world of the net. I choose a book called "Life On Earth" by David Attenborough to alter. It has great pages with a bit of sheen and tons of full page photographs. It was fun to see how each artist bounced off the images in their spreads.
This is my book cover. The numeral is done with light modeling paste pressed through a number stencil and then over painted with acrylic paint. The "LETTER" is made from some dimensional scrabble letters I picked up at a scrapbooking store. The "WORDS" is some fun foam letters that I painted gold. I spritzed the cover with a new favorite called 'Glimmer Mist' in an apricot shade. I put grommets through the cover with Cheryl's punch and hung an earring in one hole for a decoration. I decided to add ties to keep the whole thing together. At the ends of these gold chords I attached a gold painted acorn and a carving of a duck that my oldest son did when he was very little, both relics from our cottage in Ontario.

This is the title page of the book, in keeping with the word theme. I altered it by first painting the pages with Quin gold and red, and then painted it through a dye-cut letter stencil (again from the scrapbook store-got to love those guys!) with red and black, masking the Life and Art so that it wouldn't get covered. The silhouette was an image cut from a national geographic magazine (I have a PILE of oldies that I go to for neat images and text).

Enjoy!

Thursday

"Tree Patterns", acrylic abstract painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Tree Patterns", acrylic abstract painting, 16 x 16"
$575 framed, FREE S&H

This is another painting done on a textured ground. This one was textured with light modeling paste and gel medium, both of which were stamped into with a hand carved stamp and carved into with a credit card while still wet. After the ground dried I layered transparent washes of my favorite combination of colours: Quin Gold, Quin Burnt Orange and Permanent Violet Dark (Golden Fluid Acrylics). I also applied a float of watered down Irridescent Bronze which settles into the crevases in a lovely combination of gold and a startling green colour. Once more, calligraphy played a huge role in the development of the painting. This time the grid structure happened at the beginning in the shapes that I put my texture down in. I took the idea for the moon from my last painting, and the painted lacy edging pattern completed the theme.

Enjoy!

To purchase this, or commission your own painting, please email me.

Tuesday

"Roses Return", semi-abstract acrylic painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

This is an 'in process' photo of one of the paintings that I did for my Mixed Media class. We were exploring making surface texture with Golden mediums. This piece was initially coated with Soft Gel Gloss and then various things were imprinted into it, then it was left to dry completely -actually this was a start from several years ago, that I didn't have a clue what to do with : ) Then I put layers of transparent colour (Quin Gold, Quin burnt sienna and Thalo turquoise) in a random fashion all over the place. I 'saw' what could be the centre of a rose, so I developed it that way. Some calligraphic marks state 'roses'.

"Roses Return", mixed media painting, 12 x 16"
$425 framed, FREE S&H

I did more calligraphic brush strokes with paint and then played around a bunch, trying to find an armature/understructure to hang it all on. I think the grid is a nice foil for all the rounded shapes in the painting. The calligraphic lines move throughout the painting, leading the eye. I took these photos in my studio where the light was coming from above, so it really picked up the imprinted textures. Click on the images to see larger versions.

Enjoy!

To purchase this painting, or to commission your own painting, please email me.

Friday

"Kenesis River Reflections", watercolour landscape painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Kenesis River Reflections", watercolour painting, 7 x 11"
SOLD

This is a demo I did for my beginner/experienced beginner class but forgot to post. This was their introduction to painting reflections wet-on-wet. The secret is to puddle in the colour while the paper is slightly wet so the colour holds. The reflections above the rocks were done in one go, softening the bottom part so that no hard edge would form. After the top part was done, the rocks were painted, adding texture by scraping with a credit card on its edge, sort of like a squeegie. Then the bottom part of the water was wet and the reflections continued, mirroring softly the colours in the rocks above. The white trunks were lifted out of the damp wash, and the water marks were lifted out when dry.

Enjoy!

To purchase this, or commission your own painting, please email me.

Thursday

Christmas Card w/c demo

This is this year's Christmas card! I did this as a demo for my beginner/experienced beginner watercolour student as a paint along. The lessons covered included negative painting (trees in distant forest), wet on wet reflections (neat that the water feels like it is covered with ice!), masking fluid (foreground deciduous trees), puddling darks (evergreen tree) and bleeding back edges (soft shadows on snow banks). That's a lot to learn!

"Tecumseh Fall", watercolour landscape painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Tecumseh Fall", watercolour painting on watercolour paper, 16 x 12"
SOLD

This is a painting of Mt Tecumseh in the Crowsnest Pass, that I did as a demonstration for my advanced watermedia class. I have painted this view many times, and this time I chose to do it in a non-representational colour scheme to express the warmth of the fall colours.

Tonight was the opening of Charles VanSandwyk's wonderful illustration work, and my small show. It is incredible to me that when certain artists meet certain other artists, a lasting friendship is built based on mutual respect of each others work. This happened this evening. I was fortunate to have acquired two of Charles' amazing books, and as it turned out, he has acquired one of my paintings -but don't tell him -it's a secret!

Enjoy!

To purchase this, or commission your own painting, please email me.