journal pages: history in flowers...

apparently, I have somewhat of a habit of writing posts, then forgetting to hit the 'publish button. I wrote this post about a month ago, and just never published it: 

Another journal page, this time a '2-page spread' that started with a background collaged when the book was made. The background papers include scrapbook papers and brown- paper bag (? I think) which made the pages a bit stiff-- note to self, don't do that again!

history in flowers... 

Above is a close-up of the left-hand side; I added an image found on the internet (from the Graphics Fairy, again, maybe?), deco tape, and some souffle pen details. The writing was done using one of my newest items, a set of Italic lettering stencils... (I love playing with new stuff!)  Below is a photo that shows both pages:

history in flowers... both pages

What's on the right side (the entire page topic, really) is a newspaper article about gardening that my mom sent me a couple weeks ago . I thought it was really interesting, and didn't want to just recycle it after I read it, so I pasted it into my journal. 

I don't know why it took me so long to do this sort of thing in my journals; I still have fond memories of the big 'scrapbooks' my Grandma had that we used to flip through whenever we visited her. The pages were made from wallpaper sample book pages, and were pasted full of newspaper articles, quotes, comic strips from the Sunday funnies, and other interesting things. Sadly, I don't know whatever happened to them... I guess there's not room to keep everything, but I can keep a few of my favorite things in my journal, at least! 

how to have fun: see below.

I had to show you the new, cool thing I did just last night for my next art journal page!  (yes, I'm excited; but just wait- it's really cool!! (At least I think so, anyway... lol!)

so, I learned this technique in Kelly's class on lettering, and when I started on it, I said "I do not like the way this looks." She said, "just wait, you'll see" and when I still protested, she said, "okay, how about this: everyone I've taught this too said it was their favorite thing to do in this class." High expectations, right?? But you know what? In the end, she was right, and it did turn out really neat!! (I should have listened... lol!)

So here's what I did... I started with this piece of paper:

my starting point: a journal background, stenciled with some Dylusions spray inks

This pic is actually the reverse side of the paper, but the side I used looked very similar to this. This was a background that I ripped out of one of my other journals; I didn't like it, so I used it as scratch paper and drew a map on it-- anything when you're in a hurry to get out the door to an estate sale, lol!  But I didn't want to just throw it away, so I figured out a way to use it in my current journal.

then, I doodled all over it:
lots and lots of doodling with all sorts of different pens and markers

Now, I like doodling, but I think this looks sort of *ick* the way it is... lots of mixed media artists and art journalers do this sort of layered doodling very well, but not me- some people who I think are very good at it are  Tracie Bautista, Tammy from Daisy Yellow, Roxanne Padgett, and iHannna, to name a few.

 close-up of the doodling... I like this section!

After I did all the doodling, I got out the scissors... and voila! the results are below:

this girl knows how to have fun!

The word 'fun' was cut out of the doodled paper, and outlined with white souffle pen. And, like Kelly said during the class, I like it!! I don't do much hand-cutting of lettering like this either... I've seen other people use this technique: Kelly Kilmer of course, Julie Balzer, and Mary Ann Moss, but again, I don't think (didn't think) I was very good at making and using lettering like this, but I'm liking it more and more!! I will definitely do this again, for sure.

so-- cool, right?? I think so!! (and now I have the rest of the doodled / painted piece of paper to cut up and use for other things!)

How to have fun?? paper, paint, pens, and glue, of course! :D

 

5x7 journal pages- finished and unfinished

Finished: watercolor background, collaged paper
(including some Chinese newsprint gotten from someplace
I can't remember), deco tape, and doodling

close-up of the deco tape- dots on the tape
filled in with more dots with gel pens... 

finished: crazy-doodled page.
the main doodles were done with my only
Copic markers (I have a whole two of them!);
the round bubbles were then filled in
with many colors of watercolor paint.

close-up of the details. This page won't be
written on; I really like it the way it is! 

an unfinished horizontal 2-page spread.
A bit of gesso stamping for texture (the circles, done
with a wine cork before the painting), watercolors,
and a bit of random stamping with teal StazOn ink.

a few more art journal pages: both finished and not

remember this page that I showed you a couple posts ago? 

Well, it doesn't look exactly like that anymore:

I didn't alter the figure too much, but I did add to her hairdo with Sharpie poster-paint pens, changed the color of her eyes with my Sakura glaze pen, and decided to go a bit crazy with the background. If you haven't scribbled on anything for a while, I highly recommend it!! It's really therapeutic, and unlike doodling, scribbling doesn't require any thought at all about pattern or repetition. 

Above is a detail of the scribbled background. (scribbling is the most fun with a good, soft pencil, a nice heavy-line marker, or even a crayon; you really should try it!!) Again, I think this page is done- no writing necessary; her expression (and the scribbling) says everything that I need it to.

This page most likely isn't done yet, but I love how the painting turned out! It was made with one of my favorite stamps ever, which is bubble wrap! I love how bubble wrap gives such an 'imperfect' pattern, and adds a bit of texture from the thickness of the paint.

Above is a close-up of the yummy texture and pattern bubble wrap gives. If you haven't tried this yet either, what are you waiting for?? 

This page is collage only, and was pretty simple: a magazine photo, a printed quote I found on the internet, and a couple pieces of collage paper with a bit of red wax pencil on the tissue-paper heart for texture.

Another doodled page made with red and white wax pencils, soft black pencil, and a few circles cut from a vintage National Geographic. Doodling with repetitive shapes is also quite therapeutic-- you should definitely try it sometime! Well, that's all the newest pages I've worked on in the last couple weeks... I think that means it's time to do some more! :D

ArtFest- The Art of Silliness

My third class at ArtFest was another one that had me kind of wary: The Art of Silliness, taught by Carla Sonheim. From the class description:

Here are the Top Five Reasons to take a Silly workshop: 5. You get to complete activity worksheets, third-grade style. 4. The drawings you create are meant to be silly, i.e. not perfect, i.e. not stressful, i.e. FUN! 3. You can mix metaphors all you want and pretend you did it on purpose. 2. You want to lighten up, in your artwork and your life. 1. The supply list is not a list. (fyi, the supply list was only one item: a black marker or pen) And also, there was this: "As a workshop teacher, I try to help adult students recover a more child-like approach to drawing and art-making. To loosen up… shed those fears, and just let the joy of creating be the primary focus: That’s what this workshop will be about."

I was wary because-- well, frankly, because I find it difficult to do that-- the whole "shed those fears, and loosen up" thing. It was a rewarding class, and it did made me think, about a lot of things-- but did it help me to loosen up in my artwork and in my life? To be perfectly honest, probably not much. (But that's not Carla's fault; that's all me-- it was still fun, though!)

Anyway, we did lots of fun (but kind of scary-to-me) things in that class, like drawing with our non-dominant hand, drawing without looking at the paper, drawing without lifting the pen / pencil from the paper, things like that. Below are some of the results:

On the left is a drawing I copied from a book for one of the drawing exercises. The point of the exercise (if I remember right) was to draw the "shapes" and "bulk" of the object without drawing the "outline" of the object. On the right is one of my "one-liner" (draw very quickly, without lifting your pen off the paper) drawings. I actually quite like how that cat turned out... I think he gives off the "essence" of cat, and he makes me laugh when I look at him! (I think what makes me laugh is that he's sort of cross-eyed, and that his whiskers look more like a droopy mustache than whiskers).

We also got to fill out elementary-school-style handouts throughout the day... filling out a worksheet takes the pressure off, somehow-- it really does take you back to that elementary school feeling. (FYI, Carla also offers this periodically as an online class; she sends fun worksheets like this to your e-mail inbox, along with othr fun stuff like photos of sidewalk cracks, ideas for doodling, etc. For more information about her classes, you can check out her blog by clicking here. ) The ship on the left was an exercise in randomness and using your imagination-- we ripped sticky-back foam into random shapes, then arranged them into an "object" and used the resulting image as a printing block. (a bit messy, but fun!)

This is the afternoon's exercises: we also got to make a sculpture!! (To be perfectly honest, I was not enthusiastic about this at the start-- my brain works much better in 2D than 3D). We made the wire armatures, then "filled" them in by wrapping yarn and fabric scraps around them. My bird didn't want to stand up, unfortunately-- he's tired, I guess! Then, we sketched our sculptures, and used Pan pastels to shade them... I actually like how these drawings turned out-- much looser than I would normally do, but again, I think they give the "essence" of the bird (as odd as he is!).

These are sort of amusing-- I don't remember the exact exercise- it was either "draw with your non-dominant hand," "or draw with your non-dominant hand without looking at the paper," I don't remember which. Whichever it was, the results are pretty funny; I was really worried about not going off the edge of the paper on that scrunched-up one, I guess!!

This little guy was one of the objects we drew for the "draw without looking" exercises...

I quite like how my drawing of him turned out! (see scrapbook page below)

And finally, here is the scrapbook page I made to document this class-- I included a couple of the actual class exercises on this page including my sad little dog scribble, and I used a pretty "loud" patterned paper for the background, because, well, it's all about being silly, after all!

04/26/11 journal pages

A couple recent journal pages for your viewing pleasure. I really don't have a particular artistic "style" for my work; the page style changes depending on my mood and what I want to convey or capture. I don't usually work with a particular image = page idea, either; mostly I collage pages just because I like the images, and write "whatever" on them at some later time. Every once in a while, though, I do find a particular image and idea that go together; both of these pages went like that. This one shows visually how maddening it can be to have tons of ideas floating around in my head! (maybe it goes with being a Gemini, or maybe it's still leftover ArtFest inspiration?? Nevertheless, sometimes I do wish I could turn it off- especially when I'm trying to get to sleep and my brain just won't shut up, already!) FYI, the larger page in the photo above (the one with the greenish background and the black stamped medallion pattern) was the background for this finished page. I didn't really think the colors of the paint "went" with the page design as I developed it, so I added some collage paper and color with Stabilo Woody watercolor crayons. Not that you can see much of the background on the finished page anyway, but I wanted to show you that they can change quite a bit from the way they first start out, which is totally okay-- it's my book, right? yes, it is!! :D Here's a closeup detail of the page above: this page might not be pretty, but I really didn't want it to be. I wanted it to be full of "stuff" and energy to get the point across. When I first started doing "art journaling" I was intimidated by the thought of doing the "wrong" thing on a page, or "screwing something up," and I thought the finished pages were supposed to be "pretty" or "artistic," but I've gotten over that. I know some people do have that sort of personal style, and that some people use their art journals as a sort of "practice" place to try out new techniques, color combinations, etc. for use in other artwork later, but mine isn't like that. For me, the act of painting, collaging and doodling is a bit like meditation-- my mind goes sort of blank when I'm "in the flow" with the art, without any thought of time passing or of the final product. Later, I'll use the page to write on if I have particular thoughts about something, or I do a bit of "what I did today" writing on them. Some pages don't ever get words on, and that's fine with me, too- the act of creating the artwork itself is sometimes enough for me. This page is another that started with a specific idea and image... the "skyscraper" on the left was originally an advertisement for a hanging light fixture. The phrase "urban sprawl" was in my head from a conversation I had with my mom, so I decided the light fixture looked rather like a high-rise building, and went from there. The other skyscrapers were cut from a magazine page and some vintage music. The "sun" with the vacant-eyed china doll sort of conveys the uban sprawl emptiness idea; even though it really is sort of creepy to me, it got the idea across so I went with it. a close-up of the doodled details on the urban sprawl page. I usually can't leave paper the way it is; I embellish it with doodles and patterns on top of the patterns that are already there. In this case, the white dots were added, along with the purple and pink details on the green paper. A few of the collaged papers on this page are from Teesha Moore collage sheets that I purchased at ArtFest; I love how she photocopies her designs and journal pages then uses those on her artwork and in her journals ---> journal pages on top of journal pages! I have just started scanning some of my own journal pages to print out, so I can do the same thing using my own artwork. The phrase "urban sprawl" refers to the Phoenix Valley of the Sun in general, and I do personally agree with that assessment... there are small pockets here and there with more of a "neighborhood" feel to them, but they're few and far between (at least in my opinion), and the "strip mall" feel does dominate the area overall. That's one of the reasons I like living in Maricopa; it's not really part of "the Valley" proper, so it has more of a separate, smaller-town feel to it (even though there are 30,000+ people). Living in Maricopa does lead to a large amount of driving, but at least it's driving through the desert / reservation land, which means views of mountains, cactus, and the possibility for wildflower and wild horse sightings; personally, I'll take that over traffic lights and 6-8 lanes of traffic one way, any day!