Pastel Yellow

Yesterday i bought some nice new pastels - four yellow ones this time. I don't know why but when I decide to try out new pastels I always seem to end up doing circles of colour and blending. So here it is yellow for Project Spectrum's air. I have found this hard because air is hard to reproduce pictorially as you can't see it and yellow isn't my most favourite colour....

Sea Rose

My blog name is Rose Sea and while searching for a little flash of inspiration to do a nice flickr photo mosaic, I decided to use this name...

What I discovered makes me realise that this is a very fitting name for me. I love the places where land and water meet, not just the coast but marsh and bog and fen to. It is patly in the blood - I come from fenland stock some way back.

The muted greys with their hints of blue and green and th soft pinks seem suitable somehow. With the odd flash of that rich green so much a symbol of verdant life. In these places where earth and water meet, it often feels to me that neither of those is the dominant element. The element I always feel most in these places is air. They are places to breath deeply...

Both old fashioned roses with their glorious scents that even I with my dead nose can smell and the salt and seaweed of the sea make me want to breathe as deeply as I possibly can.

I guess this has ended up being a Project Spectrum post after all... and thinking of that - lets do some more Project Spectrum photo mosaics...

Metalliferous Earth

I also got some lovely metallic oil pastels - the sort you buy one by one and try not to let yourself pick up too many colours at a time.....

I had a little play this morning and drew spirals which I then blended. I kept adding to highlight the colours I wanted in each part of the picture. It has a lovely soft but sparkly earthy feel...

I have to say these more expensive pastels are much smoother to use than the cheap nasty ones I have a pack of. I can see more colours creeping home....

Elemental Photo Mosaics

I really enjoyed making my first photo mosaic so I thought I should make some more for Project Spectrum and Creative Every Day. Over the course of eight months Project Spectrum will look at the four directions with links to various traits such as colour; earth - green, air - yellow, water - blue and fire - red. The theme for Creative Every Day this month is colour.

I entered the appropriate colour in flickr search and choose 9 pictures from the first page of results...

A Secret...

I am taking part in my Soul Journal Yahoo groups Mandala ATC swap. For those (like me) who have no idea what ATC means, I have finally discovered it means Artists Trading Card. This means I have to produce 20+ cards, either copies or originals. As it is sometime before everyone will receive their cards, i don't want to post pictures of the cards or certain details... I wil later, but not now...

So here it is...

I began with three sheets of white card upon which I marked the cards out. I then gesso'd with a mix of clear gesso and acrylics in colour one. i used a glue spreader so the mix gave a nice texture with little ridges and different thicknesses of colour. I then used scissors to scrap some chalk off a stick onto the wet gesso mix. The chalk was in colour two and once dry I brushed it so it gave a softer look in places. I then splatterd some ink on in colour three.

I then began work on the mandala itself by cutting out circles of sugar paper in colour one. I then used oil pastels in colour three to draw round the edge of the circles and then smudged the colour inwards. Onto this i stuck six shapes in a darker shade of colour one and into the centre of these, a smaller shape in colour two.

So now I have to choose my affirmation and copy them onto each card. I would also like to pretty up the back of the cards a little, if I have time!

One thing I love about the cards is that every one is different. The balance of the three elements of the background varies. The way I cut the shapes and glued them on varies to. Every one is unique!

I also love the fact that the cards suit Eostre and also fit Project Spectrum! Bonus!

Earth Part Three

This part of the collage is now done I think. I will add all four collages to a large sheet of card board I think and papier mache and embellish a frame for them later on.

Progress

I have been quite busy since leaving work early yesterday.

Earth - Some paint and glitter have been added to the original after a little (but not enough) experimenting on the copies. I just have a little text to add then this part of the project will be finished. I think I may mount it on some cardboard and papier mache a frame of some sort.

Soul Journal - I have missed out the house pages from Caspiana's for the moment and have been enjoying the collage pot pourri pages. Basically Caspiana gives a list of instructions to carry out on a page and you have to do them in a different order. The results are a little random especially if you are haphazard when selecting colours.

The first of the three spreads has an unusual look for me as I used the first paint I picked up to dry brush the two pages was brown. The second colour I picked up was yellow so the wash I did didn't really do much. I then drizzled and flicked some metallic paints onto the page. The last step will be to do a silhouette of a figure.

The second spread has turned out much nicer than the first. I blobbed primary colour paints onto the page before closing the book and squidging all the paint together. Over this I used some pinky chalky inky stuff which toned it down in a subtle way and coloured the white spaces. When I wrote the numbers across the pages I got as far as 46. This number is especially significant right now as a friend of my Dad's died of a heart attack last week. He was only 46. This page began to take on the essence of living a life fully and brightly, no matter how short, like a butterfly. I forked on some black paint and then drew round my hand with a glue pen before putting on some black glittery embossing powder. I heated this up and all the little left over bits of dust to so the page is glittery and colour full with black bits as well. I then wrote on some words in silver like Be, Blossom, Flower, Grow etc. The last stage will be to sew on some flowers made from felt.

The third spread was started using a dusky pink chalky ink pad which didn't get into all the folds of the paper and so highlights the texture of the pages. I used some wool to stamp on some copper ink. I wrote the alphabet in purple. For the metal I added some eyelets (which will be under the flowers on the other side) and some metal tape. I then gesso'd out a section with pinky gesso. More steps to follow...

Jewellery - I have had to pick upmy beads again after a three month break as I have demands to fulfill. I am currently 9 inches through a daisy chain made in size 11's (11 beads to an inch) in transparent glass in clear, pink and blue.

The worst thing about the journals is that many of the steps need drying after.... This also makes it hard to scan in as whenever I start I don't think about this until I have wet pages!

Earth Part Two

This is my Earth collage for Project spectrum so far...

The brown panels at top and bottom and the flowers in the bottom right are from an envelope.

The four triangular images in each corner are microscope images of very thin sections of rock, used by geologists to examine mineral content. (These are quite plain, many contain much more vivid colours as different wavelengths of light are used to identify the minerals - to look st more try 'thin section rock' as search in google images)

The central cloud like image and the image in the very centre are both fractals, mathematically generated images.

The stone ring is Men an Tol, an ancient stone in Cornwall.

I am really pleased with the result so far but have decided to experiment with some colour photocopies before committing to the next stage of altering the original. I will experiment with colours of paint mixed with glue and amounts. I want to bring the images together more smoothly before I begin working over them... I want to add a food circle around the outside of the stone, a haiku and some glitter, maybe in a nice triple spiral....

I like the idea of bringing the four finished collages together with the Goddess Reya mentioned. I am hoping I can find out who she is!

I can tell I am going to enjoy taking part in Project Spectrum and can't wait to see what others produce!

Earth

A little while ago I decided to look at the four elements and see what they meant to me, particularly as a scientist, and also their symbolism. I have just re-read my blog written on the brainstorm I did for earth, which you can see here. Reading this has sparked images and ideas in my head.

For each subject of Project Spectrum I want to complete several different projects and I would like to include an A4 journal style collage sheet on each. This is my current idea for my earth journal sheet and I shall start collecting images etc soon.

In the centre is a picture of Men-an-Tol (a Circular Cornish stone with a hole in the middle) Around the stone is a little food cycle with the animals flowing round the stone. This is overlaid on a fractal design which has been altered to make it faint. In the corners are nature patterns, such as those from rocks. There will also be a border at the top and the bottom taken from a pretty junk mail envelope. This is liable to change somewhat but it gives me somewhere nice to start from. I would also like to include some words on the page somewhere to....

Yesterday I also bought a pack of air drying clay and I expect to do something with this. I also like the idea of getting out my bead loom and doing something in earth colours. We shall see what else I get up to....

The Four Elements (Project Spectrum)

I have decided to join in with this project, called Project Spectrum! This year it will focus on the four elements or the four compass directions each of which has been associated with a material and a colour. Each element will be explored over the course of two months giving plenty of time to produce something and fit in with Creative Every Day.

At the beginning of the year I focused on the four elements a little and brainstormed on what they meant to me before writing about them. This project feels like a nice extension on this work.