Spotlight Artist for DLP!

Hi Everyone! 

It's me, Martha, in my favorite hat. 

I just can't express my excitement for being a

Documented Life Project Spotlight Artist

for this week!

This month's theme has been "Making Your Mark"  (Doodles and Mark Making). Goodness, how can you not love that one!!

The art challenge this week is "Create a Custom Element" and the prompt is a great quote by Gabrielle Roth--
"Ride the Energy of your own unique spirit."

As I thought about making my custom element within the mark making month I got to thinking about what a custom mark or element could be. I first thought I would make a rubber stamp and go with that which would have been fun. I love making custom rubber stamps! Then I thought that I really wanted to try and make a unique mark that I hadn't done in a while.  So I rummaged through all my ancient supplies in search of this soda pop folded pen that I made at a calligraphy conference many many years ago.  I hadn't used it since then so I decided that the marks this pen would make would be my unique calligraphic marks.  By the way---ANY mark that YOU make whether made by a brush, a pencil, a marker or whatever is your own unique mark.

I love the quote so I decided I just had to make some word marks.

So I just started marking while still thinking about where my quote would go.

Sometimes trying to figure out the layout with lettering can be quite challenging.

I also added some water to make the ink flow and run a bit to add some unexpected excitement!

As you see in this one I did use a regular calligraphy pen and a Tombow marker brush pen.

I was thinking about what type of layout would go into my journal so I decided to try and find some interesting 3x3 squares to cut out that might work.

Pretty cool!

So I guess it's time to show you how I made the marks. I used different colors

of fountain pen ink. Did I mention that I LOVE fountain pens?

So, here goes!

Making My Unique Marks! from Martha Lever on Vimeo.

Here is what finally came out. I had so many marks that I loved it was hard to choose so I did two layouts.  The one on the right was rather "energetic" so I decided to just write the quote

out on the left using the Italic calligraphy hand with a Speedball C-4 nib with red gouache.  

The paper has gesso on it to make for a better writing surface. 

It was so much fun to make my own unique marks for this week. 

Just remember--you are unique so every mark you make will be uniquely your own.

On your mark,

 get set,

GO!

(I just couldn't resist that one! :))

What Lies Beneath--Cover up the Good

This is a combination of a couple of weeks about this month's theme for DLP
February Theme
Layers You Will Love!
February 14
Art Challenge:  Cover Up Good Stuff
Journal Prompt:  Going Undercover

A few weeks back I didn't get a chance to do the "What Lies Beneath" challenge so I decided to just try and combine a couple of weeks.  What lies beneath the layers of paint in this one is sticky shelf liner and an image from transfer paper. I still haven't been able to get the transfer paper to work properly but it was enough to see the girls face.  I haven't don't this type of mixed media layering in quite a while and it was fun to go and revisit!

Don't stop!

I wanted to do a double page spread in my DLP journal for this week for the challenge but couldn't figure out what to do with the quote, "Don't stop till you get enough."    All I could think about was Michael Jackson who BTW I loved and was so sorry when he died. I think that this is what ultra superstardom does to people. It's a curse--not a blessing. But so much for that...
I decided to give myself about 30 minutes and not stress too much over it and just get come color down on the two page spread. I always love spraying paper with spray inks and adding some lettering. The quote is stamped with my hand carved Neuland stamps. I always love using them.

Documented Life Project 2015

 This is week one and two combined along with the journal prompt quote. I think it's a good quote!
We were to use book paper and the next week was gesso.