Phone Book Series

As previously promised I would like to share my phone book series mixed media paintings with you all.

Now how this all began - I was bored and flipping through a older copy of Cloth, Paper, Scissors one night and stumbled upon an article regarding figure drawings. (I'm sorry I can't find the magazine and tell you more - but I have moved since then and I am still patrially packed!) UPDATE: It was Katie Kendrick in the Winter 2006 (issue 9) of Craft, Paper, Scissors!

So I decided it was the perfect time to try this out. Now, I have never been one to draw or paint figures as I didn't feel I had the ability to. I also didn't really paint anything at that time. Most of the art I was creating at the time was collaged ATCs and a few sharpie or gel pen doodles.

The start of my attempt: I decided the perfect paper was an old phone book I had kicking around, so I sat at my coffee table with my whole phone book, black acrylic paint, 1 paint brush and my pastels.

These are some of the results:

8 x 10. Mixed Media on phone book pages. Acrylics and pastels. Not sealed.

Now these are just a very few of the total amount I ended up making that night. I made about 30 in total. The process: I painted on the black outline - tossed it onto the floor to dry - and then continued onto the next one. Always painting it directly onto the phone book paper while still in the book and ripping it out to toss on the floor. After they were dry, I pulled out the pastels and coloured them all in.

Now some of them I LOVE, some of them I like, and some of them I'm not too thrilled about. It could be by line work, my colour choices, anything. Overall, they make a pretty impressive collection all together.

I have a few postcard prints of a few of them that I freely send away (message me for a free postcard), but I don't think I would ever part with the originals of this series. In fact as soon as I buy frames and paint my walls - I am finally going to hang them all. They have been living in a file folder in the file cabinet for the last few years. Poor neglected art! :)