Piece by Piece

Hello bloggy mates,

We've been away on holiday, catching up with family and friends in beautiful Cornwall, so I'm a little behind on my Life Book 2016 lessons, but I did take some limited supplies with me and was able to finish one picture, inspired by the bonus lesson for week 22 with Kristin Dudish ...

"Life is a tragedy when viewed in close-up, but a comedy in long shot"
Charlie Chaplin

Kristin introduced us to a fun game for facing your fears one piece at a time. You start with an image you want to use as inspiration for your picture - I used this one of a forlorn-looking Charlie Chaplin and friend ...

The idea is to cut the reference image up into pieces, number them and divide your paper into corresponding pieces. Then you shuffle the pieces and take one at a time, using a different medium to render each little section of the picture ...

By doing this, you forget about the whole picture and concentrate on the shapes, lines, shadows and highlights within the individual piece you're working on - so the whole thing is much less daunting, and even if you only have ten minutes to spare, you can just do one piece. 

Unfortunately, both faces fell neatly into squares - I want to try this again with a larger face so that doesn't happen, but as soon as I saw this picture I couldnt' resist trying it. With the dog's face, I turned the whole page upside down, so as to trick my brain into forgetting it was a dog - and it worked! 

I had very limited supplies with me, so this was done in coloured pencils (some water soluble) and a biro, rollerball pen and propelling pencil which I found in my handbag. Great fun, definitely a technique to return to again and again. Thanks Kristin!

Thanks for visiting today, see you again soon :o) 

Annie xxx