Collage Unleashed - Odd Painting Tools

Hey people!! I'm back, and although it's very late yet again, I am here. I'm hoping that tomorrow I'll be able to get the post to you earlier in the day, but the way I figure it, later in the evening is better than not at all. Am I right? :) Maybe some Saturday I should just do a bunch of posts and schedule them to post. Then every day I can make a new one and schedule that one too. Huh. Interesting. That might actually work. We'll see. We will see. So today's post is another in my work through of the book Collage Unleashed by Traci Bautista. I've done these posts many times before, and I love how I can incorporate her techniques into my work. It makes me feel special. :) So anyways. Back to the topic at hand. What I decided to do today was sort of experiment with painting with odd tools. She has a long list at the end of Chapter 1 (I haven't worked through all of it yet, I just thought this would be a cool part to look at) of a bunch of different things that can be used to create new and unique textures. I picked three different things to work with, and added three different layers to three entirely different pages. Let's start with the chopstick, shall we?

The first thing that I really wanted to focus on was the chopstick. It's a plastic one, from a fairly nice set that we got at one of those chinese restaurants. I thought that it would be cool to try and use it for a page with texture, so I took out my trusty pallet, filled one of the channels with a nice turquoise acrylic and then just dipped the stick it. Then I just scraped it all around the page. It took a little bit of work to get it to the point where I liked it, but when I finally got there, it was definitely worth every bit of effort that I put into it. So I think that using a chopstick for texture was a great success. For sure.

The next thing I used was a toothbrush. Now, I've used toothbrushes before in my work, but they've definitely been becoming a lot more prominent in my recent pieces than they have in the past. For this page, I decided to use what was left of the blue paint from the last page, so anywhere that you see that turquoise color on this spread was done with the toothbrush. I really appreciate and respect the texture that the toothbrush gives, but personally I have found two faults with it. One, I find that I press too hard when I'm working with it and will often times work my way through the paper. The second problem with it is the fact that it just doesn't spread the paint very far. The paint gets caught up in the bristles, and won't come out, and I think I end up wasting a lot more paint than I'm using. Which is obviously disappointing.

And now for my last and final page. Here I have a spread where I added a layer of texture and color with a ball that I made out of masking tape. This is probably the most interesting texture that I have gotten thus far on the pages, even though this particular page isn't really my favorite. Basically I just took a long strip of tape off of my roll, crumpled it up into a little ball and used it as a stamp. I tried to use it to spread the paint around the page, but it just came across as messy and sloppy, which certainly wasn't the message that I was trying to convey. Obviously this page needs a lot of work, as do the rest of the pages I had here. But I am having fun experimenting and sharing it on here with you guys. And so, until we meet again, I bid you a farewell.

Collage Unleashed - Color Scraping

So today I started my run through of Traci Bautista's "Collage Unleashed" book where I left off. Color scraped pages. I love the way her pages look, but I took a break from all of my series I had going. But, I'm trying to start some of them back up. This is one of them. Something that Traci does with her pages is use a lot of color through color scraping papers that she then uses to create unique, one of kind journals. I thought that it might be fun to work on some of these pages. I've tried them before in the past, but they have never really turned out right. Anything I do that's inspired by her either ends up too light or too dark. But this time, for some strange reason, these turned out great! I love them so much, and I'm glad. I guess, like they say, practice makes perfect. Though these certainly aren't perfect, I'm really happy with them never the less. I used a lot of acrylic paints, stencils and stamps on these pages, as well as scraped some stuff around on the page.

Here are the two pages that I did that I really liked. On the right, the base of the page was a little bit dark for my liking, so I ended up just lightening it up with the paints I used on top of it for the stamping and the stenciling. Using light colors on a dark background makes it look better, especially if you don't enjoy the way the background is looking. On the other side, I really liked the color scraping below the stamping, so I had to be very careful that I didn't ruin it with the excess layers and stuff. I used a foam flower stamp with a brown paint and a piece of bubble wrap with some white paint.

The rest of the pages that I have made are just basically made from the leftovers from the other pages. Take these two for example. I laid these pieces of paper behind the originals to catch the paint that I was scraping off the edges. That way I didn't get paint all over my desk. That was just the solid color that you see in the background. The redish/pinkish color that you see over top of that is a wash that I did when I had some red paint leftover on my brush from doing some of the original painting. I dipped my brush into my water and just spread it all over the top of my papers.

And here are another two. These were done pretty much the same way as the ones above, but they don't have full washes on them. The one on the left actually doesn't have one at all, and the one on the right is only partial. I'll probably work on these gradually as I do other art journal related activities. Because that's the way I roll. ANYWAYS, that's all that I have for you guys today, but I have something really cool planned for tomorrow. I hope you come and check it out!

Collage Unleashed Progress + A Challenge!!

Hey people of earth!! I'm back in the blogosphere with another daily blog post for all of you. Today I worked a little bit in Traci Bautista's book "Collage Unleashed" and did the first project out of it. It was dyed paper towels. I'm not really sure how she gets hers to be so vibrant. Mine are always muddled and so dull. I need to experiment and try to get some better color. If any of you have any suggestions for my epic fail of paper towel dying, then I'd be happy to listen to any advice. Even if you're not sure the suggestions would work, please tell me about them in the comments, since I am always looking for new ideas. Even if it doesn't necessarily work for the original purpose that it was thought up for, with a little editing, we might have a new technique on our hands. :) That's the way I think of it.

With these paper towels I mostly worked with pinks and reds, but I used a bit of a blue and turquoise in there as well. And some metallic copper. I think my problem is that I'm using too much water. Or not enough pigment. Because you have to mix your paints with some water to make these towels. I used a bunch of acrylic paints, some sumi inks, and some watercolor paints (liquid). I love the way these turned out, but, as I said, I just wish they were more vibrant. Oh well. You win some you loose some.

Here was my basic setup/collation of supplies for this project. I just collected all the supplies that I thought I could use for this. The thing it, I always love pictures like this; you know, just a picture of the supplies, so I thought I would try one for a change. That's why I love Traci Bautista's blog so much though. Especially because of her "Snippets From the Studio" series. They are just so cool. Anyways, in this picture, I had just culled a bunch of acrylic paints, poster paints, tempera paints, higgins inks, glitters, gesso, canning jars, some syringes, and a few other things. And after I set them up I photographed them. It's as simple as that.

And here I have an index card I worked on today. I didn't finish it, but it didn't turn out half bad if I do say so myself. It's a technique that I've been experimenting with (I've been designing it myself). One of my favorite things to do actually is come up with my own techniques. It's so much fun to think of something that nobody else has ever before. You know what I mean? How about today I challenge YOU to come up with your own technique today? Post it on your blog if you have one, and link to it in the comments. I'll make sure to give it a look see. And I'll probably try out every single one in there. Let's do that! You post a link to your technique in the comments, and I'll try them out and post them as I do them! And, if you don't have a blog, then just type it out briefly in the comments section. :) So I challenge you today to post something for me. :) See you guys later.

Collage Unleashed Project. Week 1.

Hello all! Welcome back to yet another day of my blog. I hope you guys aren't getting tired of me yet! Cause I've still got a bunch more tricks up my sleeve... :) Okay, so today, I'm giving a type of update post on my Collage Unleashed project. A few weeks ago, I started working my way through the book "Collage Unleashed, by Traci Bautista". I haven't done that much yet, but what I have, I would like to share with you guys. I find that even though Traci's style is gorgeous, it just doesn't fit with my style in the very first try. If you look at the picture above, you'll see my very first color scraped piece.

I don't like it. I think the colors are just a little too muddy. Plus, they're just not as bright as my normal colors. I feel like it just doesn't represent my style. I don't really do too well with my art that doesn't represent ME. That's the purpose of my art. To express myself.

I tried it again. I did pretty much the same thing, just used different colors, and sort of interpreted it in my own way. I really like this one though. The colors aren't really my kind, but I like them anyways. I'm going to try this same technique (scraping and stamping) with some brighter colors. This just feels a little bit dull. But I'm still going to use this in my art. What I'm going to do with it is probably cut it up and then use it just as collage paper. That seems like a good enough idea to me. :)

The last thing I'd like to share with you guys is a piece of scraped fabric I did. Normally you do the scraping on paper or cardstock, but Traci recommends also doing it on a plain white muslin. It adds amazing texture, plus it's just really cool looking. I used yellow, orange, and red. That always reminds me of fire for some reason. And I love fire. It's just so cool. Of course, I don't like it when buildings get burned down. But campfires are just so neat!!

Anyways, just one last thing before I leave you guys today; I was thinking about maybe doing an art journaling course. An online workshop. With videos and PDF forms and everything. Maybe about different techniques and prompts. I just think it would be cool. But really, I don't want to go to all the trouble of putting something together, and then nobody buys it. I don't know how much it would cost or anything - just throwing the idea out there. Maybe if I did a short, 1-2 week course or something for free, then you could get more familiar with my teaching style? Tell me what you think!!

Oh, and just a bit of a side note... this morning my blog hit 1,000 hits!! I'm so happy! And excited! I'm just kind of wondering where the blog will go next. Who knows, really? So anyways, see you all next time! Bye!