31 Hearts: Page #1

Hey everybody! It's Jordan, and I'm here with all of you guys again today. I know that I didn't manage to update my blog again yesterday, as I was hoping to, but we had a visitor from Ohio who came and stayed with us for a night. I still did the art, I just wasn't able to update you guys a second time. I might add some of that stuff on here later so that you can see it. But anyways. Let's get onto the first project that I did today.

It was actually an art journal page. I was trying to visualize an idea that I had when I read the challenge on Alaya's Art blog; to make 31 hearts in the month of July.  I had a concept that I was trying to visualize for it, but when I flipped to this page, when I was trying to decide what page to work on, the very basic sketch of this face called to me to try and complete it; or, at the very least, work on it. Just the basic sketch was down. I used a bunch of watercolor and acrylic paints that were already in my pallet; this page was basically made up of leftovers. THIS is why I can never throw anything away. :)

As I was working on this girl however, what I started to imagine was a type of heart on her dress. And then, I started to realize that sort of went along with the challenge. So I decided to go with this for today's heart page, instead of the original concept that I had. So that will most likely be tomorrow's page. But the cool thing about this page, for me at least, is that I feel like that I am really starting to develop my style in faces and portraits a lot more than I have in the past. For example, I like this a lot more, and feel it's more my style than this portrait I did for my color challenge. Even though I like that one too.

And HERE I have my 30-30-30 challenge for you guys today. So. Let me tell you something; I have a surprise for you guys today! I decided to start recording my process of doing these 30-30-30 pages. And, if you click here, you can see me make this page.

I hope you like it!

Here, we have my ICAD for today. Number 31. For this card, I used the prompt "dramatic". Now, honestly, I don't really know if this card is all that dramatic. But what I was thinking about when I came up with the concept for this card was how things that are dramatic are often times big and bold. I was thinking about just putting the crab image down in the middle of the card, and building the collage around it, but I decided not to do that, when, by freak accident, I laid the girl down right on top of it. And I just happened to really like the way that it looked. And really, it just evolved from there, me adding more collage elements and pieces to make and interesting piece.

And this piece too, like a lot of my more recent pieces, is really all about the details. I have loved incorporating that into my newer pieces. As I said earlier, as of late, I feel as if my style is progressing. That it is really becoming possible for me to create my own style that is definably me. Which is saying a lot, since I am so eclectic by nature.

Here is a closer view of some of the more minuscule elements. Layered on top of one another, I really enjoy the effects. And that would be that. For today at least. So, I hope that you guys enjoyed this post, and will join me again tomorrow!

New Materials and a Canvas

Hey guys! So I'm back with all you guys once again today, and I've got a couple of things to share with you. I went to Michaels today, and got a whole bunch of stuff, plus started painting my first canvas!! The first part of my blog post today is going to be about the canvas, and the second part is going to be about the stuff I bought today. Okay. So let's just get started here, with the canvas. I did this canvas pretty much the same way that I do the rest of my art; lots of layers, bright colors, and distressed effects.  I've been experimenting with a new technique, and that is sort of shown on this piece, but I still need to perfect it a bit before I tell you what it is. For now, you're just going to have to deal with the look of this piece as to see how it works out. :) Now I'll go through a few of the layers I did on here.

I started out with a layer of lime green paint as the base. I love the way this color looks. Then I took a piece of plastic canvas that I had bought and stenciled a circle through it. I added a little bit of text stamping, and, after letting those layers dry I sprayed some glimmer mist over top of it. I made a wash, then added the two layers of drips. And that's where I ended the layers. I know that more layers will be added in the very near future; I was already prepping some more stencils to use on this before I took the picture. Now let's continue on to the stuff that I bought at Michaels.

This is the first set of stuff. I got quite a bit of stuff, so I had to separate it all into three separate piles to photograph so that you could see all of it. In this stack I have a piece of plastic canvas, 2 Sharpie paint pens (a white and a black), a drawing set, a 36 pan watercolor set, a dollar set of clear stamps, a set of 12 tube watercolors, a set of 12 acrylic paints, and a 16 pack of Cray-Pas. Some of this stuff I've never worked with before in my life, so there will be quite a bit of experimentation that you are going to be seeing on this blog in the very near future. I love, love, LOVE experimenting, especially when I get to play with new supplies. So I'll probably be doing that quite a bit.

This next picture is really quite simple, but I really wanted you to see it. I got a 2 pack of 8"x10" canvas' for $5.99. Plus, they were buy 1, get 1 free, so I pretty much got each one for $1.50, which I consider pretty good for canvas'.

This is the last picture of the stuff that I bought today. This is more the paint materials. I got a big thing of white tempera paint because my white paint was gone. Then, I got six different paints for 59 cents each. I really wanted to get one of each color; a pink, a red, an orange, yellow, green, purple, brown, black, and a gray. I had picked out one of each anyways. But what ended up happening was that I had to put some back because I wanted to have some money left on my gift card. And I did. I have about thirteen dollars left on a fifty dollar gift card. So I got all of that stuff, including one last thing of black glitter glue, which is also shown in the picture above for a grand total of $36.18. I would say that I got a lot for my buck. What do you think?

Well, that's about all that I've got for you guys tonight, and I'll see you tomorrow! Bye!!