Lifebook 2014

Hello lovelies,

I mentioned in an earlier blog post that I was behind in Lifebook 2014, then realised that I have not even told you about that class. D'Oh!  So I thought that I should rectify that glaring omission.

So, what is LifeBook?  Well, it is a year long series of journal classes organised by Tamara Laporte featuring a ton of fab guest teachers.

 

Tam aka willowing is a mixed media artist, illustrator and art teacher who loves making a mess and has an unhealthy obsession with brayering paint. Her work can be described as “mixed media folk art”. It ranges from whimsical children’s illustrations to a more stylised fantasy art. 

I had done some online classes with Tam previously, and have found her to be a fantastic and generous teacher.  The classes are well structured, concise and clear.  Once you buy access to her classes you can download all the class materials and videos so that you can keep them forever - which is brilliant and in my experience, not the "norm".  So I took the plunge last year and signed up for Lifebook 2014.

All the information about Lifebook 2014 is here. There are "main" lessons about once a fortnight or so, and "bonus" lessons in the off weeks. (Bonus lessons are for those people who are total girly swots - aka not me).

So I started well, and got the first 2 main lessons done in good time - probably because I was in Perth and on holidays. Then in Feb, everything started to go downhill. My main priority was to get all the prep done for the remainder of the art journal classes I was teaching, and to complete that journal so that my students could get a feel for what their finished product could look like. That took every spare hour that I had throughout Feb. Then the class write-ups & notes took most of my spare time in the beginning of March.

So here I am at the end of March (well the beginning of April by the time this blog post goes up) and I am really behind. 

But to get you all up to date, here are the art journal pages that I completed in January.  The journal is done on individual pages and then bound together at the end of the year. 

This is a depiction of my "spirit guardian" for this year, as well as my word for the year - prosperity.  It seems to be working well for me so far (touch wood).

 

 

These were from a class with Carla Sonheim. I must say that I was a little worried about doing this class as it was very much freehand drawing and generally "letting go" - neither of which I am particularly good at! But I have to say that I loved it, and I have added extra little cards into the pocket that we made in the class.  

We did exercises like drawing whilst not lifting the pen from the paper, drawing from memory with eyes closed, drawing an object while not looking at the page, and making blobanimals - my favourite of which is above. This is so not "me" it's almost zen like in its emptiness... I love it.

I'll be posting more about Lifebook as I play catch-up.  I'm in the process of working backwards from now, and trying to get the main lessons completed. I'mma going to be busy!

'Till next time

~Liz