Three Leaves Art Journal Page

Watercolor, acrylic and Neocolors on in watercolor journal

:-)

Because I'm a Woman - Art Journal Page

Here's another art journal page featuring an analogous background and employing a complimentary color on the focal point for POP.

Click to see this up close :-)

This gal was originally an illustration of 'women of the future' from the 1920s. She looks like she means business. 

Complimentary Color ArtJournal Layout

I made this page after downloading Dina Wakely's newest art lesson from Interweave. The topic was using complimentary colors to make your focal image pop. 

(click the pic to see this up close!)

The background was a mop up page that was all analogous warm colors so I used cool colors on the woman.

And the quote is one of my all time favorites from Danielle LaPorte. She really knows how to drop Truth Bombs.

Thanks for visiting!

#28Patterns

Julie's done it again. She has a terrific way of motivating people to make lots of art; first with her #CarveDecember and now with #28Patterns.

I started this one by carving a lemon stamp and fill stamp.

Then I stamped in Staz-On for the edge and Ranger Squeezed Lemonade Distress ink for the fill. Then I went over the whole thing, adding some green shadow and bright yellow highlights with neocolors.

And lastly I added the stamp to my bullet journal where I'm indexing my patterns. I've left my options open so that I can either just do a pattern in the journal or make something more elaborate and record it here. 

Coffee Girl Art Journal Page

I've got this strange quirk. 

I keep practicing faces and then using the ones that I'd call fails in my art journal. 

Which has resulted in a good many weird ones making it into 'finished' work and the 'good' ones in a stack of papers with my mail... getting coffee stained as I'm a huge klutz.

This is funny as I've always been a proponent of, 'kill your darlings" and this has a whiff of, "those ones are too precious" to it.

How about you? Do you use your crappy stuff (supplies, sketches, backgrounds, yarn...) and hoard your good stuff?

Just me?

P.S. I'm very happy to be going back to my art journalling roots. It's nice to just mess around with no real concern for the outcome. Makes this girl very happy.

And Happy Halloween!

Bald Face: Art Journal Page

Meet the latest, and by far the most androgynous, addition to my art journal. 

At home I refer to this as my palace eunuch - been reading a little too much Game of Thrones. LOL.

Aside: still have not watched any of the HBO series. I've read the book and they do nasty, horrible things that I never, ever, ever want to see. I already need mind-bleach due to some of the ickier bits so I've refrained from watching it in HD.  Whenever someone tells me they've read it I always think their a bit of a perv. Having read it myself…    I know! 

Anyhow, before I offend, back to crafting.

Meet Bald Face. 

In Pam Carriker's Art Journal Live workshop, Pam mixes acrylics with tons of water making a soft, pleasant watercolor-like wash. I've never done that before so my end result ended up being very acrylic and not light like the example. 

If you want to see some of the other work from the class, Julie Balzer posted some on her blog. You can really tell which one is hers, which is Dina's, which is Traci's. Their style comes through so clearly. 

It's going to take a lot of practice to approach a project like this with any sort of competence but I'm looking forward to figuring out the lines and planes of the face - if only so I can mess with them egregiously later :-)

My kids art journaled with me and made some terrific pages. Here is T.'s:

And this one is B.'s

Thanks for visiting. 

Note: Found this in my drafts folder from January, never posted. Sorry!

Art Journaling on the Go

This past weekend we went on a road trip to Boise, ID. 

I'd been commenting to my family about how my youngest is a much better artist than I am and how I attribute that, in part, to his practice of drawing in every spare minute. In the car, in bed, on his iPad, in line, at movies, watching TV... the kid draws non-stop. And he's always getting better.

I on the other hand tend to wait until the table is clean, I'm home, chores are done, supplies are laid out. See what I'm getting at?

So I tossed a handful of supplies into a gallon zip loc bag and decided to art journal while we drove.

Things I noticed:

1. It's not near as messy as you'd think. I dropped all my scraps at my feet and whenever we got gas I lifted out the floor mat and tapped off all the bits into a trash can.

2. Limited supplies aren't limiting. Not limiting at all really. I did a lot more art and a lot less deciding on which medium was perfect for the job.

3. A spray bottle of water is your best friend. Dirty brush? Lay it on your folded piece of paper towel (or a couple of napkins from lunch, or even a wad of TP) and spray it clean. Need to activate your water soluble crayons? Spray them. A 2 oz spray bottle is tiny enough to include but it packs a big punch.

4. Pre-colored backgrounds are a huge help. Had I brought my usual art journals, they would have had some paint or stencil dabbings already. But this was a SMASH Book that I'd bought, with good intentions and didn't really warm to. The paper is very construction paper-ish so it balls up and wrinkles a ton when you add wet media. All my media leans pretty wet so we were a bad fit from the start. My intention was to make some backgrounds using collage and a glue stick and then tear them out to use in my other journals. It didn't go that way but at least it got me using the book. Starting with their printed graph paper and such gave me just that little boost of visual interest I needed.

5. I do this at home already but it bears mentioning, keep an envelope (mine is a waxed translucent kraft envelope usually for baked goods) with all the bits and pieces you've generated making stuff. For me, anything the size of a credit card or smaller goes into my envelope - gelli prints. stamped but unused images, quotes, wrapping paper, tissue, ephemera (like stamps), the last embellishment in a package... you name it. I also include a few sheets of (folded) book paper, dictionary pages and hymnal sheets so I have some large neutral bits to work with and some punchinella. This provides you a ton of colors and textures to use when you don't have access to your supplies - or you just don't want to haul them out. 

6. Gelli prints, especially on deli paper, are the ultimate stand in for a rainbow of paint colors and an abundance of stencils. With scraps of gelli prints alone I was able to replicate the look of zillions of supplies - while driving down the interstate. I love simple things that look complicated.

7. Mod Podge, Matte Medium, Collage Pauge... pick one and bring it. Once my collages were 95% of the way there I pulled out my tiny bottle of decoupage medium and applied it to the pages by squeezing a little dab onto my finger and rubbing it into the page. I tend to get my hands in there anyway so this wasn't all that weird for me. But it was very controlled, not a drop landed where it was not intended, and the medium makes the deli paper 'melt' into the page so all you see is the painted patters. It also stuck down errant bits and edges as well as sealed the neo-colors so my black pen would write over them. Since you're rubbing in the glue you apply a very thin coat and it only took moments to dry. Which is a good opportunity to look out the window and enjoy the view a bit.

 

8. Don't worry about completing things. Get your background in, maybe do a little fleshing out of your focal image but don't stress. Each pages I made took only a few minutes to finish once I got home and most of that was adding a unifying paint color and some splatters. I was a lot more 'done' than I imagined at the time and not stressing too much about the final product took all the pressure off me while creating in the car.

9. Don't forget your basics. For me that includes Cutter Bee scissors, gesso, Mod Podge, Neo colors, spray bottle, paint brush, black and white pen, paper towel and ephemera. Here's all I brought:

Thanks so much for stopping by :-)

Art Journal Live: Window

One of the things that Dina Wakely says, that I've been doing for years, is that two pages are as easy to make as one. My experience is that I tend to make two backgrounds, side by side, and then finish one and save the other one for a later date. It's nice to not have to haul out your stuff twice and you can experiment more with the color scheme.

This is the second page I made following the instructions in the Art Journal Live video. You can see the branch page here.

Windows have such meaning, I think they'll be cropping up in my work a lot more this year. 

Nice seeing you :-)

Thanks to all the winners for sending me your addys. I went directly from pneumonia to the flu so I am two days behind in posting your prizes. My apologies. 

Respect Yourself: Art Journal Page

Click picture to see all the details, please. 

This is one of my favorite pages I've made in recent memory. The background is recurring layers of the TCW Blazonry

 used both regularly and reductive stenciling (when you wipe paint off through the holes as opposed to applying it.)

You can see the normal stenciling in the white top layer and the reductive edge bits in the blue. 

I also (finally!) used the Ganesha stamp I carved last January. I really love, love, love this stamp but it had got lost in the shuffle. I think the open image works well with simple gelli printed paper. Ganesha is the destroyer of obstacles and in a sense, that is what this page is about. 

To be honest, I think my entire 40th year has been about removing obstacles and letting go any things, ideas and even people that were in the way of my growth, health (physical/mental/spiritual) and happiness. It sounds harsh but there comes a time where letting harmful things stay in your life just won't do anymore. 

The other technique I used here that I adore (but don't hear anyone talking about) is I used watered down acrylic for the yellow drips. You just put a little puddle of paint on your palette (in my case, my craft mat) add a bunch of water and then scrape your brush off along the top of the page. It creates gorgeous, slightly-more-controlled drips and it dries water fast so you don't have to worry about smudging. As much as I love my spray inks, I love this more.

Thanks so much for visiting. I still have several more art journal pages to share so come back often.

Warmly,

~~~~Nicole

Art Journal Week Posts:

Day One: Branch

Day Two: Merely to be Normal

Day Three: Royal

Day Four: Home 

Day Five: Our Devils 

Day Six: Say Thank You and Grow 

Day Seven: Respect Yourself (You are Here)