MomoTheLion Page Take One

Okay here we go, I joined up to do another Chunky Techniques Book from Art Unraveled classes I took last year. I promised to blog about it and just like everything else in my life, I only do it when up against a deadline. So here we go!

The theme for this exchange book is to design a page around a technique you learned from an Art Unraveled class taken within the last two years. This was easy for me, because my most useful class from 2011 was Karen Michel’s class Altered Photos.

The premise and tools are so easy, I really can’t believe I didn’t figure this out on my own. But it’s one of those things like, well, you don’t think about taking your photo, purposefully getting it wet and scratching emulsion off in layers when you’ve been taught your whole life to treat it so gingerly. I got to tell you, this is right down my alley!

Anyone who’s ever processed photos before, or even heard about how it’s done knows that at the end of all the chemicals you give your photo a nice water bath. Before it dries it is especially vulnerable to scratches.

So you get your photo printed from a commercial center like WalGreen’s (my new favorite printer). My photo above was originally color, I cropped in and made it B&W for this project. Even though it is B&W you want it to go through the color process so that you have all the color layers there (cyan, magenta and yellow). Don’t worry if that doesn’t make since, you don’t really have to know that, just get the color process anyway!

Why do I have so many? Because I have to do 28 of these for the exchange of course.

My tools of choice, the photo, a shallow dish of water that is larger than the photo. Sand paper. And a clay carving tool. Thank goodness I got that in college! You can see some black floaties in the water, that’s some emulsion I’ve rinsed off. When you do a lot of photos you need to change your water often.

I scratched away some detail, made her whiskers more prominent and suddenly she became a lion! The scratching took about three or more hours to do. My hands hurt, but I got over it!

I forgot to show my coloring tools! I just used my kids water colors and cheepo markers mainly. I like to use unnatural colors. About the only natural look is her green eyes.

Not quite done yet. Still need a backing, some Fantasy Fiber fun and glitter of course! This is my prototype above, however, I’m all done with the 28 for the Chunky book and they are sent off, but I didn’t have time to take photos.  I still need to make a few more for my friends and family, so I’ll get on that and take photos.

Did a quick post on it for ArtGlitterBlog.blogspot.com here…  But I promise to give more directions and photos soon. Enjoy!

BTW, a personal thank you to Karen. It was a wonderful class, you are a caring, helpful teacher and I had a blast!