Age of Ignorance - Daily Art Journal Page

Hola people! I'm back today, with yet another art journal page. Today, I used the opposite page of the beginning of the spread I began yesterday. I realized that I wouldn't like it as a full spread, so I decided to paint over the one side of it. I liked the depth I knew I would get, and I think I may have mentioned my plans to do so yesterday. 

Anyways. The title (Age of Ignorance) is actually the tile of my current most favorite song. One of my guy friends, whose style in music is very similar to mine, sent it to me on Facebook over the weekend, and I haven't been able to stop listening to it since then. Actually, I'm listening to it right now, even as I sit here typing to you guys. I'll link to the song itself here, if you want to listen to it for yourself. It's about the corruption of government and society in America. 

Because it has been stuck in my head for so long, I knew that I had to do something about it. And the only thing I could think of was to record it in my art journal. At first I was planning on actually putting some of the lyrics from the song on the page, but the more I thought about it, I thought it would be interesting to do some of my own thoughts on the concept. 

Here's a few more of the details. I had some punch out letters that came with a scrapbooking kit I had from years ago, and I just painted over them with some metallic paint, to make them blend with the rest of the page. And I really like the way that worked out. Some of the leftover paint I had from painting the layer on top of them created a sort of mask on my scrap paper, which was kind of entertaining. 

Also, today I went to the Holocaust Museum as a field trip with my school. It certainly wasn't a very happy experience, and was very emotionally draining. I got to a point, near the end, where I wasn't completely sure that I wasn't going to burst into tears. However,  I managed to keep a level head, and have taken some time since then to work through some of the emotions. Expect some pages based on that in the very near future. It was an emotional experience, and that's what I like to journal about. Things that mean something to me. 

Linking to Ruby Tuesday.

ICAD 8: Black and White

Hey everybody! Today was my last day of sports camp at my school; so my official first day of "break", otherwise known as having nothing to do, starts tomorrow. Today, I once again struggled to work in my art journal, but for a different reason today. Yesterday I slipped really badly when I was outside playing basketball. And I got a really deep wound on my hand. It's in an extremely awkward place on my hand, so I'm having difficulties doing anything, including doing art, or writing this blog post right now. But I did manage to push through to create this doodled ICAD. The prompt that I used today was "black and white". Tammy just released some new prompts today, so that's extremely inspiring. A fresh new start to the week!

So I created this card today with Pitt Artist Pens. I used a bunch of different brush tips, that were included in a Manga kit; lots of different grays and blacks in order to do that type of graphic drawings. Anyways. The background of this card is a little bit wonky and darker in some places than in others... I think that adds to the charm. When I was working on the card, I made the decision that I wasn't going to care about the direction of the marks. I could have made it a whole lot smoother if I would have desired to, but I decided that it would be a whole lot more me in this way. 

I hope to do a little bit more art tomorrow, since I won't have a whole lot to do, besides play basketball and read. And of course do art. Which I am sure I will try to do, even with this injury. :) Of course I could clean. I should clean. But there are so many other things to do... ANYWAYS. That's all I have for you guys today, and I'll talk to you later. See you tomorrow.

Graphic Art Journal Page

Today I've got another unfinished page for you guys. This happens all the time, I know, but I'm just hoping that you guys are liking it too. :) I just like sharing. This page is a very graphic type of page, which is very different than most other pages that I have done in the past. Normally, I do a bunch of layers, which will eventually end up looking pretty cool. But this was inspired by a class on 21 Secrets, which I enjoyed while it was still alive. Now that one is dead and I'm being forced to work from the PDFs. :) Actually, I don't care as much as I'm trying to make it sound. I think that it's fun, and forces me to use my imagination more than it would otherwise. Also, the colors of this page are a bit different than what I am used to working with. I enjoy using pinks and purples on occasion, but it seems like I'm using them more and more lately because that's what I have left. Yeah. That's the way I roll. Anyways, because it's getting kind of late, I think I'm gonna go. I know that I don't have that much for you today, but I'm hoping to come back tomorrow with a tutorial. We'll see. We will see.

Polka Dot Art Journal Page

Hey guys! Jordan is back with you guys today, and I've got something that's actually pretty cool to show you. It's this art journal page. Of course. Again. But I know that you guys love art journal posts, so that's why I'm back. I worked on this page a bunch today, and I really like the way that it turned out. I love the colors, and the way that they work so well together on the page, if you know what I mean. Lime green and black. Two epic colors, one epic color scheme. :D So yeah. Anyways, now maybe I can launch a little bit into how I made the page. It was actually really easy. I actually worked over top of another page, which I've been becoming more and more known to do lately. I took the page, and I painted over top of it with my lime green paint and a paintbrush. I had made some really random doodles on the base with a brown marker, and, as the lime dried, it started to seep through. I know that a lot of people might have put another layer of the paint down, but I'm the type of person who just likes to what happens happen. It happened that way for a reason, so let's not mess it up by trying to do it "our" way. You know what I mean?

Okay. So now let's go onto the next part of the page, which is pretty much the only other part there. But there's a little bit of depth that I want to speak to you guys about. First off, I'm obviously going to talk about the black dots all over the page. You guys have probably seen the stamp that I used to make them in the past, because it seems that I am becoming more and more fond of that stamp by the day. Every time I use it, I seem to create an even greater love for it deep inside of myself. ;) I actually made the stamp myself with a piece of cardboard that I found from a cereal box, and a bunch of fun foam tiny circles that I adhered to the box. I never clean it, I like to let the paint build up on it. When it becomes too much to handle, I'll just make a new one. It was super simple to do. Anyways. Now let's talk about the depth I mentioned. That's going to come to you in the form of the upper left hand corner. See how some of the dots are kind of almost white? Yeah. Let me tell you how I got that. I took my stamp, painted all over with the black paint, and then pressed it down onto the page. Then, there was something important that I needed to do in the other room, so I left it. Without even pulling it back up. It was kind of difficult to remove when I returned, but now I love the effect. Yeah. So anyways, that's all I've got for you today, and I hope to see you tomorrow! Adios amigos!!

Textured Art Journal Page

Hey guys! I'm here today with just a really short post. It's getting kind of late, so I thought that I could just post now and get this sort of over with, if you know what I mean. I just have a single page to share with you guys today, and it was a page that I was really enjoying working on. It's blue and green like a lot of pages that I do, except this one has a little bit of added black and a TON of texture. I don't even really know how I got the texture I did. It's kind of an odd thing; that I don't even know. It's also just a little bit disappointing. Because now I don't even know how to recreate it. I think what I really need to do is start keeping better track of what it is that I am making. Then maybe I won't forget how I did something. I did just a couple of layers on this today; very mundane layers. But I'm already getting ideas for more of them. But I do think that some of the texture comes from masking tape that I laid on the base of the page. I don't know why I put it there anymore, but I do know that I like the effect. But anyways. That's all I've got for you guys today, and I'll see you tomorrow. :)

India Ink Doodles

So today I was experimenting a little bit with india ink. I've never really played around with this so much before, but I've really enjoyed it thus far. I know when a lot of people work like this, they'll use a calligraphy pen to make thinner lines, but I decided to try this with a really thin paintbrush just dipped into the bottle of ink. I did the piece above on a basic piece of copy paper. That's something that I really enjoy doing, as it's a cheap alternative, and I just love the different effects that you can get on it.

And on this page, I'm showing you the page that I've done another layer on. I showed you this page a couple of days ago, and I just added the ink doodles today. I love the way that it looks, and I did it on top of some oil paint, which gives the page this AMAZING texture, even though it takes forever to dry. On occasion, though not as often, oil paint IS worth it. I'm not really sure all what I'm going to be adding to this page, but that is what I've got today. And I'll see you guys tomorrow.

Art Journal Experiment and an Altered Magazine Page

Hey guys!! I'm back here with all of you once again! I'm glad that I'm actually managing to get on here with school and all. Since that has started, be expecting daily posts (hopefully), unless I decide to bail on that idea. Just be expecting them later on in the day, okay? :) Okay. So you you guys remember that page that I showed you guys yesterday? The yellow one that I couldn't decide how to continue the layers? Well, I found out a good way to figure it out! I have a color copier that is currently sitting in the garage. It's a huge thing, and really clunky. But it's beautiful. In it's own special way. :P I like to use it for art journaling, and this is how I did it. I ended up making color copies of the page I was a bit unsure about and then I just did the choices on different copies. The first time I masked off pinstripes and then painted them black. Something that must be noted is that the color copies came out a LOT more green than the actual piece. In the real piece it's more of a deep yellow than a lime green. But I went with it anyways. It was more the technique that I was going for.

The second thing that I did was stamping with bubble wrap. This is actually one of my favorite things to do on my art journal page, and when I looked at it, I could just see it. But I was still having trouble deciding between the two. Thus the experiment on the copies. :) I really liked the way the bubble wrap looked. The way I got the effect I did was I took a piece of bubble wrap and kind of tore it into a weird shape. That way it didn't look too staged. Anyways, I applied a TON of black poster paint to it (I use poster paint a lot in my work) and stamped one clear(er) image in the upper left hand corner. Then I used the same application of paint to off stamp the rest of the page. I LOVE the effect. :) I decided that this was defiantly the one I wanted to use, and so: here's the result:

I love the way it turned out. It reminds me a lot of my style, or what I think my style should be. Messy, and worry free. Although most of the time these pages come out of my head when I'm stressed. Luckily I don't think that's the case with this one. I love the grungy effect the stamping gives the page, and I love the way it sometimes pulls up paint as well. Also, since this is the original, this is the ACTUAL color of the page. See how it's kind of a dark yellow compared to the limeish color of the copies? I don't really know what I'm going to do from this point, but I'll probably work my way through this page on this blog. Ha. I'll do a layer and then post it along with some other stuff, then another layer. That would be funny. :)

Finally, I have one last thing to share with you. This right here is something that I've been working on for my 21 Secrets class. It's an altered magazine page. You tear pages out of a magazine or catalogue and then just do a bunch of stuff with it. So far I haven't done that much to it; there's actually only two layers on there, but I think it's looking pretty cool thus far. If you look on the left side, you can see where I tore this page out of the magazine; some people may decide to trim this up, and others may not. They may just decide (like me) that they enjoy the raw edge and the playfulness and the non-perfectness that it perceives. That's all I've really got for you today, but I'll see you guys later! Bye!!

A Wash Makeover

Okay, so as I told you guys plenty of times yesterday, I completely hated my page I made yesterday. So I thought I'd just give you a bit of a tutorial on how to fix/change a page that you hate. I decided that the best way to fix something like this would either be to paint over it or use a wash. I haven't done washes in a long time. So I decided that I'd go with that. I decided that the problem was that the page was just a little uncoordinated.

So I decided that I'd use a black wash over top of it, just so all of the colors will manage to meld together, as that's what I was trying for in the very beginning. So what you do is you start off with a bunch of supplies. I show them above. It uses a page you want to redo, a pallet with some black paint in it, a basic paintbrush, and a little container of water. You mix the black paint with a bit of water.

Then, use the paintbrush to paint over the entire background. I like to totally saturate it. I think it makes the end result much better. Then take a baby wipe, a paper towel, or a napkin and just wipe away. The below picture is what it looks like after this.

I really like it now. I'm pretty happy with this. It's awesome. I think it may be one of my favorite pages now since I first started this Art Journal Everyday challenge. It's day 7 I think, and it's been going pretty well up until now. I know that it took a bit too long to get this post up, but at least it's still today. It's pretty awesome. I also worked on this page for the Green Isle Crafts art journal challenge. Today's challenge was No Waste. To use something in your page that you normally wouldn't. I chose phone book paper.

Here's the finished page all in all. You know what I mean? I know that I'm totally addicted to this zebra ribbon. I like it so much. It's weird. :)

I've also got this card. It's been fun working with cards lately. I really, really like this card though. It's cool. I like the way that the curved lines make it seem like space. I know, it's weird. But anyways.

Here's a better view of the card. I like it a lot. The card challenge was called Just a Touch, and the actual challenge was to use a stamped image and put two touches of color in the image. I like the way it looks. It's pretty cool. So anyways, that's all I've got for today... hope to see you guys tomorrow!!

99 Art Journal Pages!!

Hello, hello, hello!! I've managed to make it back another day. I'm glad too. I've missed blogging so much and it just feels GOOD to post again. So anyways, yesterday I counted up all of my art journal pages that I've done thus far, and I had 98. So that means that this one is number 99! What a coincidence is that? I had a lot of fun creating this page, but you can't really tell what it took for me to get it like this!! I started it out with a lime green background.

Then I glued a bunch of torn papers to the lime color. So far so good. But then, I added black. And I don't mean a little black. I added a LOT of black. Too much black. So it was way too dark for my taste. I hate when that happens, since I love bright colors. I love them. Love them. So what ended up happening was that you could barely even tell that there was any lime there. There was just too much black.

So what ended up happening was that I added white over top of the whole thing using a paintbrush. I sort of mixed it in with the black, and it created this grayish color. Then I pulled up a couple of the paper strips I put down in order to reveal the lime. I like it a lot. A whole lot better. I just need to learn to control my black. Every time I add something black, I end up putting too much. There's a thin line between too much and too little. And I haven't quite figured it out yet.

I decided that I'd show you a card that I made using the glitter I bought the other day. This is a more sophisticated way to use it I assume. You see, instead of using school glue for it, I decided that I'd use a tape runner instead. The glitter stuck perfectly, if not even better than school glue would. I like it a lot. My only problem is that whenever I try using the glitter, it gets ALL over my clothes. And I never have been a glitter type of girl. Especially on my clothes.

This is the fourth card in a row that I've made for the 365 Cards challenge. It was called 'Up in the Air'. You were supposed to use three things that can be found in the air. I decided to try a new type of approach to this. I used a picture of a dragonfly and a butterfly. Then, instead of another animal or insect like I assumed others may be using, I decided to use the color blue. You can defiantly find blue in the sky, even though it depends on the day.

So now for the progress on my cross stitch. I managed to finish the football except for one line of stitching and of course some of the back stitches I'll be using on top of the actual football itself. Also, I've got started on the next train car I decided to start with. I'll probably work more on that once I get off of here.

Here's a bit of a closer photograph of the finished football and began boxcar. So yeah. I thought it was getting pretty cool. I decided to start on the toys at the bottom and then slowly work my way up into the actual clothing and skin of the little boy. Maybe tomorrow I'll post what this thing is supposed to look like when it's finished. I'm sure I could find a good picture online if I decided to look. See you all next time!!