I've finished another postcard to send out to Tally for our swap:
It started life as one of those free postcards you can pick up near the door of certain bars and restaurants. A big sneaker company put these church lady-looking women in their shoes for the ad. I picked up a lot of them, and mostly have been using them as the base for the other altered postcards. But this time I decided to alter the image using a challenge technique I'd seen Jen Worden use.
I seem to be getting worse at following directions as I get older, I swear. You start with a glossy magazine image; I figured the postcards were plenty glossy. Next, you're supposed to draw the broad outlines with a Sharpie first, and THEN gesso in the parts you want to cover, kind of like painting by numbers.
No... I had to slap the gesso on first, and then realize I couldn't see the image well enough. I ended up watering down the gesso so I could see a little more detail. Here's a lesson: it's really easy to dry up the extra-fine end of your Sharpie if you're dragging it through gesso. But it was still really entertaining to outline the face of the woman on the right.
Sorry about the sideways orientation: Blogger is having issues, as usual. They were the right way when I uploaded them...
Anyhoo, I added scraps, one of my favorite text stamps ("Things just weren't the same at St. Alphonse convent after Sister Agnes went on her shooting spree "), then the dancing girls stamp which I colored in with pens, and glazed the edges to blend the top with the bottom a bit more. I also used the dancing girls stamp on the back, on a transparency, and colored in their legs.
So that was a little bit of fun that'll go out in the mail today or tomorrow.
It started life as one of those free postcards you can pick up near the door of certain bars and restaurants. A big sneaker company put these church lady-looking women in their shoes for the ad. I picked up a lot of them, and mostly have been using them as the base for the other altered postcards. But this time I decided to alter the image using a challenge technique I'd seen Jen Worden use.I seem to be getting worse at following directions as I get older, I swear. You start with a glossy magazine image; I figured the postcards were plenty glossy. Next, you're supposed to draw the broad outlines with a Sharpie first, and THEN gesso in the parts you want to cover, kind of like painting by numbers.
No... I had to slap the gesso on first, and then realize I couldn't see the image well enough. I ended up watering down the gesso so I could see a little more detail. Here's a lesson: it's really easy to dry up the extra-fine end of your Sharpie if you're dragging it through gesso. But it was still really entertaining to outline the face of the woman on the right.
Sorry about the sideways orientation: Blogger is having issues, as usual. They were the right way when I uploaded them...Anyhoo, I added scraps, one of my favorite text stamps ("Things just weren't the same at St. Alphonse convent after Sister Agnes went on her shooting spree "), then the dancing girls stamp which I colored in with pens, and glazed the edges to blend the top with the bottom a bit more. I also used the dancing girls stamp on the back, on a transparency, and colored in their legs.
So that was a little bit of fun that'll go out in the mail today or tomorrow.