Guest Designer - Michelle Jackson-Mogford

Hi all, me again! I’m getting quite comfy here everyone’s made me feel so welcome! And these IACW girls share some fab projects! So did anyone have a go at creating a ‘metal’ LO?  don’t forget to share it!! This time I thought I would bring you something more colourful and a bit different! If you know my work you will know I love paper dolls and doodling and so I came up with the idea of …

 

… A Funky Family Portrait

 

 

The other thing about this project is you get to use up a few of those scraps that I know you have lurking around! You will need a cheap canvas, scraps, tissue paper, white card, coloured card, doodling pens, coloured pencils, acrylic paint, ink, pva, loo roll and a piece of corrugated card. Oh and some little photos of your loved ones!

For this project we are going to reverse the canvas and set our scene inside it! Cut a quirky shaped frame from the corrugated card to fit around the wooden frame of the canvas. When you’re happy with the shape and size, mix some pva with water (about 5 parts glue to 1 part water) and papier mache the frame with some loo roll (classy me!!) You can get a great texture with it and build it up as much as you want. Put it aside to dry.

 

Then papier mache some torn and scrunched up blue tissue paper onto the canvas, making the sky. Add some hills with your scraps. When you’ve done that paint some blue and green acrylic paint on the inside of your frame matching up with your sky and grass position.

 

Next get Doodling! I doodled some clouds onto old book pages cut them out and inked them. I cut a house from scraps and doodled a rainbow onto white card colouring it with my pencils. Build up the base of the picture as you wish.

 

Now we move onto the paper dolls. Cut out some simple body shapes, similar to the paper dolls we used to play with as kids. Colour the parts of the bodies that won’t be covered by clothes with some coloured pencils (or medium of your choice of course!)

 

Lay one of the dolls onto some coloured card and use it as a template to draw the clothes, cut out and decorate.

Once all your dolls are dressed, cut out the photographs of the people in your picture. I tend to crop a picture and size the heads to around 4cm in height, (I put them all onto a word document and print in black and white on fast draft to check the size!) always make the heads slightly larger than you think they should be as it adds to the cartoon effect.

 

Now start to assemble the family, I built my people up on silicon glue to give the whole project a more 3D look.

 

Now doodle some more!! I added some more doodling at this stage to build up the picture. The blue birds I attached to the front of the frame with nylon thread so they will ‘fly ‘when the picture is hung.

 

Going back to the frame I painted it with white acrylic, then a cheap gold acrylic (from a kids craft department) it has a slight translucency which I liked so the frame wasn’t too heavy (although I have made frames like this before and used gold spray paint to make mock gold frames!) Once the paint was dry I then inked around and over it with a brown ink to add shadowing and ‘age’ I adhered the frame to the canvas.

 

Lastly I folded the body of my paper doll in 2 places so it could sit on the edge of the frame and sat my dog next to me, I love the way this finishes off the 3D feel of the whole piece.

 

 

 

A fun and quirky way to show of your family portraits, and great if your family is spread far and wide and the opportunity hasn’t arisen lately to have a real family portrait done, all you need is head shots of everyone and you can make your own up! I hope you’ll all go and have a play now, paper dolls are such fun! Don’t forget to share the results and I look forward to seeing you all again on the 29^th July with my final project to share. Until then happy crafting!

Love

M x

http://www.mjm-thearttart.com/

 

Comments

[bonnierose]

wow.. this is amazing!

[Kelly]

I love it & like you said, it's a great fit. I totally agree that EVERYONE can draw. There's a great quote from Robert Fulghum about asking a class of kindergarteners "who can draw?" "who can sing?" and they all put their hands up. By the time we're adults, only a few are prepared to put their hands up to such questions, and usually, only if they are semi-pro! We need to reclaim art! We need it.

[GlitteryKatie]

VERY cute!!!

[michelle]

Thanks all and Kelly here here is what I say LOL!!

[Debbie Roberts]

I love this frame, the 3D figures are great, will have to have a go at making my own.

[Rosie]

I love love love this!