Series 5 ~ Positive Self Portrait - Take Two!

Last class, we continued working on our positive self-portraits, and since I've already completed one, I thought I'd use the second background I created to do another self-portrait.

As you might recall from my earlier post, I used the questions from the class handout in my first self-portrait. To refresh your memory, here's the handout again:

And here's my first self-portrait again to show you how I used them:

For my new self-portrait, I started fresh with the second background I created, which looked like this:

During class, I started again with a basic head shape and added the eyes and mouth and then added some collage elements. I wasn't thinking too much about what the final self-portrait would look like, I was thinking a little bit about composition, busyness and colour balance. At the end of the class, it looked like this:

Just wanted to tell, you: I started with the sunflower in the upper left corner (which made a great sun, I thought), and then 5 minutes later I found the purple flowers which might have made a better focal point in the upper left corner. At the time I found the flowers, I was actually looking for something to make hair, so I decided to turn them into her head covering instead. Lesson: it's important to be *flexible*. I deliberately left the space open in the middle to add in the text (more on that later).

Over the course of a few hours at home, I finished up the collage by adding colour and definition by painting on top of them with watersoluble crayons and drawing into them using an Ultrafine Sharpie pen. I also added in my text blocks using brush lettering in a process I'll detail more on later in this post. Here's the finished self-portrait:

Now ~ about those text blocks. First of all, since I'd already used my answers in my first self-portrait, for this one, I decided to use words I've received in feedback from other people, yes, even if it seems like "bragging" ~ these are things people have told me about their experience with me, and it's good to embrace the compliments you receive.

So, about the lettering ... I know several of you are interested in brush lettering. I'm very far from an expert at brush lettering, but I've come up with an interesting solution for beginners (like me) which we'll be doing in our next class. Basically, I use deli wrap (yes, deli wrap!) as a tracing paper and write over guide lettering sheets, then I glue scrapbooking paper *behind* the deli paper and it creates a pastel-like background for your letters to stand out against.

This gives you some interesting creative options:

Firstly, you can write the same words several times and choose your most "successful" lettering. When you're working on the deli paper, if you mess up, you just move over a little and start again. The more you write, the better you'll get. Practice makes progress!

Secondly, once you've selected the words you want to use, you can "shop" your scrapbooking papers (or other coloured papers) for backgrounds. The transparency of the deli wrap lets you see ahead of time a background that works for the collage you're working on.

And when you've glued the deli wrap to the scrapbooking paper (or other background paper), you can then cut your pieces to size, possibly round corner them (as I did) and then paint around the edges once they're in place on your collage. Here's a close-up of the lettering for you:

I'll have all the goodies for you to try this beginnner-friendly brush lettering technique in our next class, so hope to see you there!