Lifebook: april lessons

In between all those delicious colors of my Dylusions journalpages I have also made two new pages for my Lifebook. The theme of this month was 'honouring your past', although I didn't do much with the theme. For me, Lifebook is more about the great techniques and the magnificent teachers than about the 'healing thing'...
The first lesson this month was from Tamara Laporte herself. We had to paint a front facing portrait, based on a historical figure. I chose to go out of my comfort zone by using colors like brown and greens and I chose Charlotte Bronte as my model, because I loved the TV-series of Jane Eyre so much when I was young...(never read the book...lol).

I'm not sure if I like the results....but I'm okay with it. I learned a lot in this lesson about background techniques, collage and using modeling paste.

The second lesson this month was from Jane DesRosier.

She showed us a how to make a 3/4 portrait, first with charcoal and later on with acrylic paint. 

I skipped the charcoal part, which was just an excercise in learning how to create shadows in a face.

For the real Lifebook page, we had to collage a background with black and white pictures from your past. I googled pictures from the seventies, eighties and nineties. Most of them were music, fashion and TV related pictures, like Bon Jovi and Wham!... Like Converse All Star sneakers and the Harlem Globetrotters... Like John Travolta (I loved Grease!!), Freddy Mercury, Prince and Doe Maar....Like Dallas with JR Ewing....And more....All memories from my past!

Jane painted over this layer of pictures with acrylic paint 'raw umber'..I used 'burnt umber'. We had to sketch the portrait with a white chalk or something:

The next layer was meant to be as an underpainting, using black, white and grey tones.

But as I was painting I loved the effect so much that I decided to leave it this way, instead of painting it in full color.

To be honest...I was surprised that it all worked out so well! I love painting portraits! Although I still need so much more practice....

By the way, I didn't paint this portrait 'out of nothing'. This was my model:

So let's say...a little bit of her and a little bit of me....(lol).

TFL!

Sandra