Colour Your Life

After going to see The Vagina Monologues at my local theatre, I keep being sent 'what's on' guides for it.  Buried in the last one was an advert for Colour Your Life.  Its an arts programme partly funded by the NHS and its to aid well being through art.

So far I've been 3 times and have *loved* every minute.  There is an artist in residence who will help if you want / need it.  At the moment its Paul who does incredible art work.  If you want him to he will guide you through a project or you can just get stuck in and do your own thing, which is what I've been doing.

They have loads of stash there - canvasses of all sizes, paint (acrylic and watercolour), pastels, brushes, pencils, mod roc, corrugated card and if there is anything you particularly want they will try, within reason, to get it for you.

So far I have completed 2 pieces.  The first is called 'Windows to the Soul'.  I initially covered the canvas (15.5" x 11.5" shallow edge) with mod roc (the stuff plaster casts are made of) and attached the masks with that.  I then took it home and me and the masks had a falling out and they came un-stuck.  So I covered the whole thing with paper taken from an altered book I started at a workshop ages ago.  I painted the background with a weak wash of black Ecoline Ink.

Before I reattached the masks I printed 'art, beauty, passion and love' out from the PC and and traced round the words using Promarkers and stuck the words behind the eyes of the masks.  I then stuck the masks back to the canvas using my new fave glue - Hard as Nails!!!

I painted the masks with a weak wash of ultramarine violet Ecoline and finished the whole thing off with individual letters stamped using a See-Ds tiled alphabet stamp.  I wanted to convey the thought that despite all of the background noise I still have all of these things in my soul.

I'm really chuffed with it :-)

The second piece I've done is called 'My World is full of Colour'.  I started with a 20cm square deep edge canvas and planned to colour the background with a nice smooth layer of DI's but as I clagged them on ready to blend, Lisa and Pauline who I sit with stopped me blending them.  And I'm really pleased they did!  

The colours are Spice Marmalade, Broken China, Mustard Seed and Dusty Concord.

I already had a picture to go on it, cut from a magazine and just need wording.  I used the Artistic Affirmations stamps set from Chocolate Baroque.  I stamped them using Tuxedo Black Memento Ink onto tissue paper.

I used Golden Matte Gel Medium to adhere them all to the canvas and here is the finished article.

I think the picture is advertising a body wash or moisturiser that contains no chemicals but I just *love* the picture!