Fearless Art Journaling - 21 Secrets

Hey guys! What goes on? 

Sorry I was gone for a couple of days, but sometimes, especially on weekends, I just get lazy.

Generally I don't do much on the weekends when it comes to art, but today I just went crazy!! 

I was really bored, and didn't want to sit around all day like I normally do.

So, I grabbed a bunch of art stuff and just started to play.

I'd say that I was probably working on art for three to four HOURS today!! 

I was a happy camper.

I worked on a bunch of art journal spreads, as well as a bunch of collage papers. 

I worked on some index cards (didn't really finish any),

and glued some pages together in my new art journal that I'm doing.

I also worked on a bunch of things from 21 Secrets.

I realized that if I didn't get to work on that soon, I'll have wasted a bunch of money.

For example.

The art journal spread in the picture above was for a course in 21 Secrets.

It was titled Fearless Painting, and I really like the way this turned out. 

She suggests getting a really LARGE art journal.

But that's not really my thing.

So I just did the same process in my normal art journal.

Because I wanted to see how that would look.

I like it I think.

Really random and free. 

I work like that a lot, but sometimes I feel like I need to just let EVERYTHING go.

You know what I mean?

I worked on a few other things today as well, including a couple of loose collage papers.

This is one that I did today. 

I started out by just putting down a layer of blue acrylic paint; just to put some color down on the page.

I had this idea for a technique, and I decided to try it out, since I was experimenting anyways.

I took a hand carved stamp that I had made out of an eraser.

And I colored in the sections with a Portfolio oil pastel.

I'm just gonna go out on a bunny trail here to talk about Portfolio oil pastels.

They are crazy awesome.

And crazy cheap.

My two favorite things when it comes to art supplies. 

They're so creamy, and rich, and smooth, and buttery.

And you can actually buy them at Staples.

Actually, as far as I know, that's the only place you can buy them.

Anyways.

So yeah. 

After I colored in the sections, I wet the oil pastel with water and stamped onto the background.

It gave a really cool watercolor effect.

And I simply love the way it turned out. 

Personally.

Of course though, I'm biased. 

:P

And then, of course; the last thing I have to share with you today.
I'm leaving all the other stuff for another day.
This right here is a type of monoprint that I've been working on perfecting.
I take a paper towel that I've dyed, and then place it in between two sheet of paper.
Then I just press down.
Depending on how much pressure you put, you get different effects.
For the above effect, press with a moderate pressure.
Lighter will pick up less paint, and heavier will pick up more.
Obviously.

Anyways, as that's all I've got for you today, then it's time for me to say goodbye.
So see you guys later. :)
See you.

Collage Fodder Pages

Hey guys!!

I'm back, and this time with some collage fodder-ish pages.

Ha. 

You guys are such enablers.

Thanks to Kerri and Dede, I ended up making about 12 paper for Dede's paper swap she's been hosting.

You basically just make a bunch of papers in an 8 1/2 x 11" size, and send them to her. 

Then she swaps them out.

You can probably contact her on her blog for details I suppose.

Anyways, I had a lot of fun doing them so please;

DON'T STOP ENABLING ME!!

:D

But to be serious, I did have a lot of fun on these pages.

They encouraged me to play and mess around and just have some all around fun.

I did some color scrapings, some magazine pages, some scrap material pages (tutorial MAY be coming soon) and some monoprints.

Monoprints are seriously my new favorite thing to do.

Link to any tutorials you know of in the comments if you would.

I would literally be eternally grateful.

Ha. 

Now we're in the Toy Story movie.

Anyways. 

Here's a second batch that I was working on.

I think that they all turned out pretty cool.

One of the ones in the first photo I actually have posted on here before, but I decided to post it again.

I used all kinds of paper too. 

I used copy paper, cardstock, lined filler paper, paper from a dictionary, and photo paper.

The ones above show the cardstock, filler paper, and copy paper.

The others I'm going to save for another day.

I did a bit of experimenting with different techniques on some pieces from a dictionary;

I have a little dictionary that I bought from Goodwill to tear up for pages.

I know it seems bad at first.

Especially for me.

I'm a book lover at heart, so to tear the pages out of one almost killed me.

But it's like anything else.

It gets easier with practice. :P

Just kidding.

But seriously though.

It's not so bad after a while. 

And the results are totally worth it, in my honest opinion.

Though I don't know how much my opinion means to you guys.

But it matters to me so...

Yeah.

That's all I've got for you guys today, but I'll see you tomorrow!

Bye!

Art Journal Progress and Pulled Papers

Hello my friends. :)

I'm back with you guys today with yet another blog post. 

Today I worked on the first page in my new art journal, and I was so happy with what I achieved thus far.

It's not as cool yet as it will be, but so far there's only three layers. 

It will progress.

And I'll probably share it here with you guys. :)

If you guys are wondering how I do layers,

Then ask in the comments any specific questions you have.

I'm thinking about doing a little mini series here on the blog about layering.

Let me know if you're interested.

Since there aren't that many layers in this page, then I might as well list them here.

Basically I just started with some yellow poster paint.

It's a thin paint, but makes really good glazes/washes.

I went over the entire base of the page with this color. I loved it.

It's a good base.

Next I took some primary blue tempera paint and sort of blended it into the still wet yellow background with a paintbrush.

It turned a sort of green color and blended into the rest of the page.

While that was still wet, I pressed two sheets of printer paper into the wet paint (more on that later), and pulled them up.

Then I added some stamping with a zig zag rubber stamp and some olive green paint.

I randomly put it everywhere.

I kind of like the effect that it gives the whole thing.

And HERE we have the pulled pages. 

Yep.

I made the spread above and got two extra papers from it. :)

I just think that's SO cool.

The thing is, the effect it gives the actual art journal is just amazing.

So the extra papers are just a bonus.

You could do any number of things with these papers.

You could cut them up and collage them into your work.

You may want to color copy them.

Or maybe do some sort of weird transfer thing with them.

I don't know.

ATC's would be cool too...

HEY!

If anybody's interested in doing an ATC swap, let me know. :)

I'll host.

But I need to know if there's interest. :)

So that's all I've got for you today;

Leave any comments/interest checks in the comments below.

Comments make me happy. :)

See you guys later.

Bye.

ICAD #4 and ICAD Backgrounds

Hello my friends. :) And Happy Labor Day! I'm back once again with some more of my artwork. I have some index cards to show you today; not any art journal pages though. Or altered book pages. Or single sheets. And I'll tell you why. Even though I worked on some of all of those things; those pages that I did are classified. :) Let's just say that they have something to do with my challenge with Dede. :) I've been doing so much for that one on one challenge, and it's going to be a lot of fun when it actually comes time for the reveal. I've been playing around with colors, layering, and lettering. Just to experiment. I might just have more than one layout by the time the date comes around. :D If it's worth doing, then it's worth overdoing, right?

Anyways, getting back to the ICAD card of the day; look above to see it. I've been working with this kind of style; the fun, technique backgrounds, with a single magazine clipped word on it as decoration. On this one I put down a strip of paper on the bottom (This was actually a color copy of a page that I'd done previously. I've been cutting them up to use as collage fodder.) and drew a dotted border with a sharpie. This was an overall easy background to make; I've gotten used to layering paints, and pulling up paint with different things, but I'm still amazed every time. :)

If you look at these index cards above, you can see some of the things that I'm talking about. You know how I sometimes talk about "lifting"? Well this is a fine example of that. I take a page that has wet paint on it and layer something on top of it; a piece of book paper, an index card, a sheet of regular paper, or even another, smaller journal. If you press fairly heavily, you can lift up some of the paint. It goes in the direction of that the brushstrokes go, so, depending upon what I want the finished card to look like, I generally brush in both directions. These are bases for ICAD, that I'll probably work on further in the future. This is just so the intimidating white background is gone, and is simply giving me a jumping off point from which to play. I love the way these three turned out, which is why I'm posting these, but I've got a bunch more sitting on my desk as well.

Something else that I'm considering doing is taking some of these before they get more added to them and simply color copying them. This is one of my new favorite ways to create collage fodder. I'd probably do some in black and white, some in color, some in representative scale and some enlarged to a full sheet or so. Now that I think about it, it might be a cool idea to start a SERIES on collecting collage fodder. What do you guys think of that? Let me know in the comments, and have a nice rest of Labor Day! :)