Hello my lovely friend!

Welcome to the Life Book Halloween Edition! :) Muahahahaha!

Today I'd like to encourage you to pick a halloween costume, a character, that helps you embody something that you're really needing in your life right now. I'll explain further: lately some difficult things have come up for me and I've been feeling very vulnerable and shaky with it all and really needed some inner strength. While I was processing these emotions I started creating art and a lady with 'whimsy house hair' appeared! Oddly, she looked like a queen, the houses looked like a crown, she seemed strong, fabulous and in control. Really the kind of qualities that I've been needing lately. So then I wanted to embody that character a bit more and decided to 'dress up' like a queen for Halloween this year (in my painting today that is, ha ha!).

Now, for you it might be different. You might want slumber and relaxation so you could dress up as a cat! Or you may want more fun and play in your life and choose to dress up as a clown or a joker! Or more serenity and perhaps you like to be an angel. Whatever it is you need, try to find a character/ costume that can help you embody that quality and put it into your halloween painting today! :) It's super fun you'll see. NB. Of course we all have different associations with the costumers and characters. You might not associate a cat with relaxation or a clown with fun and play, so go with what costume/ character calls to you. It's not important what association others have with your costume.

Art wise, I decided to work with a black & white portrait of myself and I deliberately took a photo of myself with some high contrast lighting in there, both to set a more 'Halloweeny' mood and I wanted to share a bit more information on shading a face for you guys. By painting over a print out copy of your face (or other, it does not need to be your face if you feel uncomfortable with that) and using the photo as a reference you can really explore the tones of the shading which is what I was hoping for today. :) So here is what you'll need to join in:

Supplies used this week:

• Graphite Pencil• Black & white copy of either your own face or a

face of someone who will represent you• Watersoluble crayons• White gesso• Heavy body acrylics (portrait pink)• Collage papers for background• Matte Medium for gluing• Water-soluble Crayons• White Gesso (Optional• Iridescent paint (gold) for the crown• Posca paint markers• White fluid acrylics for splatter• Black fluid or heavy body acrylics• Clear Gesso

creating your page

Step 1. Take a high contrast photo of yourself (or other person who represents you – you can google 'high contrast portraits' on google) and print it out. To help with understanding where the different shading segments are, take a pencils or paint and start to circle around the different tonal parts on your face.

Step 2. Cut out your portrait and glue it down onto the page, be careful, the printer ink will respond to the matte medium, so if you don't want it to smudge, avoid going over the ink with your brush/ medium.

Step 3. Add collage elements to the background. I chose orange/ golden/ red/ yellow colours to go with the halloween theme.

Step 4. When the background is dry, add a layer of clear gesso over it. This is optional but will help with creating the next couple of layers as the different kinds of paper collage elements will respond differently to your paints.

Step 5. When the gesso is dry, sketch in some other elements like the upper body/ head gear any other elements you just want to get a feel for.

Step 6. Study the shadows and highlights on your portrait, if you haven't already outline the different tonal segments you can do that now (do this on a different copy, NOT on the one you've glued down on your page).

Shading the face

This was my process:

Layer one: Watersoluble crayons in salmon colour – I covered the entire face apart from features like eyes/ mouth

Layer two: A layer of heavy body acrylics in portrait pink, I applied this lightly rather than a thick layer

Layer three:

Bring back any lost details with a graphite pencil, at this point you can also change some of the features if you feel called to (I curved my eyebrows a bit), or add things like stars or hearts around your eyes etc.

Now refer back to your print out copy of the portrait with the segments circled and start adding the darkest parts with graphite.

Use a blending stump to create a subtle(r) gradient shading.

Add other colour details like an eye colour and a touch of colour to the lips. And then with white gesso, white acrylics or a white paint marker start adding in the stark highlights.

Start adding colour to the background in your chosen colour scheme.

I love it when the sun hits my desk unexpectedly!! :-)

I started adding more details to my 'costume' (worked on the hair) and also added more background elements like the moon, stars and the pumpkin.

I continued adding details to the 'costume', focused on the collar and then the crown.

I painted the crown with a golden iridescent paint.

To finish off the background I add white paint splatter that gave a sort of snowy/ wintery effect. In order to create a white splatter effect, dilute some white fluid acrylics with water, protect the sections you don't want to get splattered, dip your brush in the solution and start to 'shake' it over the areas you want the splatter to appear on.

And tadaaaa, here is the final result:

Copyright Willowing Arts – willowing.org