Hi!
Linda Edkins Wyatt with you today.
In my art journaling, and in my paintings, I love to add a word or two to express how I am feeling at that moment in time. Sometimes it is just one word, sometimes a phrase. Sometimes I don't realize how much emotion I have been holding in until I stop and see that there are words all over the page. One of my favorite things to do is combine a portrait with words.
This 12" x 12" painting started with a face stencil done in lavender acrylic on a plain white canvas.
I added skin tone and bold strokes of color for the hair. It didn't feel quite right, so I set it aside...for almost a year!
A couple of months ago I decided to kick it up a notch. I wanted to have a face that was multicultural, so I had the idea of dividing it up into sections and using a different skin tone for each part. It looked really awkward, so I put it away until last weekend.
As I added words from Gwen Lafleur's Not Afraid to Try stencil to the canvas, the painting took on a new life. I carefully penciled in lines so that the words would be in a straight line, and wrapped them around the canvas.
I decided to play with the words, so I did some flipping and mirroring with both archival ink and embossing powder. I also added some handwritten words (you are enough) and a few bits of paper torn from my old thesaurus. I added a leaf stencil below the right ear to suggest an earring. Using only the middle of the Crown Chakra stencil, I added OM in different colors around the canvas. The OM is a meditative sound that calms and empowers a person and helps take away fear. I also used the small Rembrandt's words in the hair and on the neck to suggest a tattoo.
Along the way, I took about 100 process shots of the painting, and made them into a video...hope you enjoy watching it!
Stencils Used:
What could you paint if you were not afraid to try?
