Creative Instinct! A Blog Hop for Jill K. Berry New Stencil

UPDATE---

Drum Roll Please...tadadada

The winner of Jill K. Berry's stencil giveaway is lucky number 26!

And that would be:

shazza said...

Awesome recycling of your canvas. Wouldn't have thought of making a heap of papers to have on hand - Great tip. Loved the way you explained your process & a class sounds like an awesome idea too. Hope you have had an amazing birthday & may your wishes, hopes & dreams be fulfilled over the next year. The stencils are awesome & would be over the moon to win the set. Thanks for sharing the process Shazza007 at Hotmail dot com (if I happen to be so lucky lol) :))) Enjoy the rest of the day Sharon

9:52 AM

Congratulations, Sharon!!!  I'll forward your info to Lisa at Artistcellar and she will contact you for shipment info.  Yay!  And for anyone else that didn't win but would like one of the stencils or a 4 pack of the new release, the links are in the paragraph below.  Stop on over to take a look and thank you all for playing along. All the wonderful quotes and and birthday wishes really warmed my heart.  :)))   Have a very happy Holiday Season!!

Happy Friday the 13^th Everyone! 

Today is NOT an unlucky day for you….no not at all!  I’m here today celebrating the new release of 

Jill K. Berry’s 2^nd signature stencil line available over at Artistcellar! 

 When I was asked to take part of this blog hop I was especially excited because I love Jill’s work and was already a big fan of her first stencil release.  Not to mention, who doesn’t love stencils these days?  I’m always looking for new inspiration for my work and classes and stencils are a great way to incorporate a lot of fun marks into your work. There are endless way you can put your own ‘signature’ to them, well…it just gets my creative juices flowing when I’m using them.

  In this new line called “TEXTures 2 Series “  You’ll see how Jill blends a love of . Calligraphy and mapmaking into abstracted calligraphic journeys inspired by legendary artists and quotes that serve as inspirations for Jill's work. All designs 6" x 6".

And here’s the cool part, one of my readers can enter to win a set of these new stencils by simply leaving a comment on this post. If you want to leave a quote to inspire us all as Jill was inspired to create the stencils, even more cool and I’d love that, too (although it’s not necessary to be entered).

For my project, I used all of the stencils to start creating papers for my mixed media collage/painting.  

I used deli paper because I love the translucent quality of it once collaged over paint or other papers.

At this point, I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do other than the basic concept of knowing I wanted to do something abstract and in a color family I have another painting that I wanted the piece to compliment with.

My goal was to have several papers in Black, Dark Gray, Light Gray, White, and Red.  I make way more than I need because you never know when you might need more papers or if something goes wrong, I want to have extras available as back up.

*Creating several papers at once when getting ready for a painting session not only gives you options to use, but also creates efficiency in the studio.  I always try to prepare ahead of time for future projects.

*Use a dry brush on when painting over stencils. If the brush is too wet, you won’t have as crisp of lines as you might desire.  I didn’t always follow this rule because I tend to work quick but I was okay with a little imperfection.   

I also wanted to create some textured painted paper to potentially work in even more depth into the collage.  One way to create textured paper is to crumple a sheet of your chosen paper up and then smooth it out.  You can then paint over it , blend out the paint, and even paint a second color over top of your first layer to take advantage of the ridges created by the crumpling.

Next, I pulled out a painting that I had in my studio from a recent demo. It wasn’t quite done and quite frankly, needed some help. 

Okay so here’s the hard part or the hard part to explain in writing. One day (maybe a class coming soon…;)  I will have to SHOW you my thought process and some of my techniques I use while creating abstracts.  The hard part to explain is that you just fit your papers in like a jigsaw puzzle.  You start with an idea you want to convey or an emotion and then you let your instinct take over and fit the pieces together.

Constantly you evaluate whether it all fits together, whether you need more of this or less of that…and it is to put it mildly, an ongoing exercise of pushing and pulling. You cover up, and you reveal. You create balance, and then imbalance.  Patterns emerge, and then sometimes they fade away.  

*Soft Gel medium by Golden was used to adhere the papers to the canvas.

So much of working in an abstract way  is instinct, you just have to feel it as the artist. Even when you don’t create ‘masterpiece’ worthy work (how many of us do that???), just by  doing, you are learning and generating future ideas for your art .

After I got to a point that I was satisfied with, I used charcoal, pencil, and pastels to add elements of my own writing, and further shade or highlight other areas.  You just keep working and pushing through to the other side until you are ready to call it done, or complete for now.  And that my friends, is in a nutshell how I do it. For better or worse, it’s just one of many processes you can use in your art.

Take a look:

 And the Finished Piece:

 So much fun:)

Don’t forget to leave a comment to take part of the giveaway. You also can have multiple chances to win by visiting one of the other artists blogs featured in this ‘hop’.   *Each one may have different giveaway dates so be sure to read their post to find out the details.

Winner will be chosen on Sunday, December 15th and announced Monday.  Good luck!!

Before you go…be sure to check out my other blog post for the day as it’s my BIRTHDAY..whooohooo and I’m doing something I’ve never done before in celebration of another blessed year I get to be here .   Here’s the POST  to check out, but don’t delay, the Birthday Goodness is time sensitive and only going to last a little over 24 hours!!

From the Artistcellar Newsletter:                                                                                   

As usual, we are having an epic blog hop to roll out Jill’s stencils and we invite you to hop along. Are there prizes you ask? Why, of course! Each artist in the list below will be giving away a FREE set of stencils to one lucky winner who leaves a comment AND their contact info. (This part is very important! Leave an email so they can contact you.) Each artist will decide when they will pick a winner so be sure to read the post. The schedule will be as follows:

*12/7 Artistcellar www.artistcellar.com/wp

*12/8 Kecia Deveney http://www.lemoncholys.blogspot.com

*12/9 Sketchbook Challenge/Jill http://sketchbookchallenge.blogspot.com/

*12/10 Brian Kasstle http://apaperbear.wordpress.com

*12/11 Mel Kolstad http://reliefpress.blogspot.com

*12/12 Kim Rae Nugent  http://www.kimraenugent.blogspot.com

*12/13 JodiOhl www.sweetrepeats.blogspot.com

*12/14 Effy Wild www.effywild.com

*12/15 Tamara Laporte  www.willowing.org/blog

*12/16 Jane Davenport  http://janedavenport.com/

*12/17 Chris Cozen http://chriscozenartist.typepad.com/my-blog/

*12/18 Guadalupe Brizuela Cabal http://guadasartplace.blogspot.com.ar/                   

    *12/19 Jill Berry  http://jillberrydesign.com/blog