Leanne Shawler, Artist

I was going through my basket of washi tape, looking for good colors to use in my Fall Studio Yearbook, and I came across four Faber Castell Pitt pens. I checked and sure enough, they were duplicates. So I thought I would challenge myself to use those (and a white Posca pen and a Lyra water-soluble pencil) to do a portrait. First, the sketch. I started with the lightest shadow color and discovered it was almost dried out. Oops. Did I go use the other one in the same color that I had? Of course not. I kept going with the others and used the white Posca pen to blend it together. I did this on a piece of regular copy paper so it quickly soaked up the ink making it difficult to move and blend. Gessoing the paper first might have been a good idea, but oh well. And here's the result: It's a self portrait but I couldn't be bothered to figure out the glasses (and teal wasn't one of the colors anyway) so I have left it as is. I have another one that is well u...

This portrait is based on a LifeBook 2018 lesson where we learned what our archetypes are. They aren't constant and are supposed to change. So I took the provided quiz and decided to do a portrait featuring two of my archetypes (as of the beginning of this month): the Engineer and the Eternal Child. Did I find this concept particularly helpful? Not at this surface, introductory, level. Perhaps they are of use if you dive deep into them, but this wasn't that. However, painting two of them was fun. I went back to my trusted Golden Heavy Body paints and put together a palette from Titanium White, Cerulean Blue Deep, Cadmium Yellow and Quidacridone Magenta. I sketched out a face on page where I'd been "wiping off" paint brushes and the like, and glued down some collage pieces around the edge. One side of the face is the "Eternal Child" I started out with Pebbles-like pigtails and greens and purples. She's even wearing a Peter Pan collar. (A...

This piece was inspired by an essay "echoes of the same" in the collection of the same name by Nicki Salcedo . I met Nicki at an Atlanta Romance Writers conference many years ago (wow, that makes us both sound ancient so maybe not that long ago), before I was published in romance. She was sweet and kind and encouraging. She was inclusive and hospitable to someone who had come from San Diego, and being introverted, I remember hiding out in my room a lot. I've admired and followed her ever since, but only recently read "echoes of the same" . (I highly recommend it.) Her essay really struck me -- which is probably a sign that I should be diversifying my reading outside of SF/Fantasy and theology a bit more -- and an image came into my mind that I knew I had to paint. Here's the quote this portrait is inspired by: "Our palms, if raised, look the same. All of us with lines that tell the future. Lines from where we make a fist. Those palms used to be a ...

I've been taking LifeBook 2018 this year, dipping my toe in where I have been really caught by one of the themes, or the teacher's lesson for that week. This was the case with Ivy Newport 's lesson last week. The floating blue hair of one of the figures on her art journal spread really captured my attention. In the end, I believe I followed along a little too closely and came really close to declaring that I wouldn't count it, but instead I am choosing to acknowledge the influence of Ivy's lesson as you will see in a short while. Hers was a two page spread. I used an image from Unsplash as a reference for a portrait that dominated the page. I followed along with Ivy's collaging and using watercolor. (She also used acrylic paint, but I only brought a Posca paint pen along with me for fine details.) I spent the weekend away and this came with me. I had prepped the page before we left with gesso (mostly covering wipe-off paint underneath). Then I collaged...