Normal: Daily Art Journal Page

Hey everyone! How's it going? Hopefully you all had a good Tuesday; I know I did. However, I do happen to be exhausted. Today I had open gym at my school, and I basically played basketball for at least two hours straight. Like I said, I am very tired. I almost fell asleep on the floor.

Anyways. Enough about that. Let's get onto the art!

Today's page feels quite a bit more graphic to me for some reason. I'm not exactly sure what caused me to go in this direction with the page, but I quite like the way it turned out. To me, it really seems quite reminiscent of Traci Bautista's work. The minute I thought of that, it reminded me of all the old series I used to do on the blog. The work through of the Collage Unleashed book, even though I stopped and started it a million times. And I also brainstormed some ideas for a couple of new series.

I will still be continuing my own challenge, Resize It!, even though I need to sit down one of these days and record. It just seems to be such a hassle. I like doing it though. It doesn't feel like a chore, while, at the same time, it does. It's difficult to explain. It also has a lot to do with the fact that I'm lazy. However, the fact that I started brainstorming a bunch of new ideas means that you guys aren't going to have to simply see my work every day. You get to see my work with some sort of structure. And I hope you'll enjoy that. :)

Here's a better look at the quote I used for this page. I love it. So much. I saw it on Pinterest, which just so happens to be one of the most useful tools I've had for art journaling thus far in my life. And that's saying a lot. I can find inspiration for pages, as well as clipart, free collage sheets, and quotes to put on the pages themselves. I just think it's cool.

Anyways. I've had this quote pinned for a while now, and thought that it would make a good page. This describes me perfectly. I'm not normal, and I'm 100% proud to admit it. I don't have a problem with being different, and perhaps just the slightest bit weird. I consider myself slightly eccentric, though I think my sarcasm trumps all. 

I thought that I would leave you guys with just a few detail shots of the background. I did a collage initially, using a bunch of pieces of paper and things that I normally would have thrown in the trash. That's something else that I've been experimenting with a bit. Keeping all of the things I'm tempted to throw away. And USING them. That's the key word. If I don't use them, then there is no purpose to it, at all. It's just clutter. However, if I do use them, that's just more fodder that I can use in my collages and art journaling. 

Just one last thing; I used all kinds of shapes in today's piece; hearts, flowers and circles. Though they normally don't go together very well, I like to think that it works. You can't be afraid to play. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. If I would have stopped at the precise moment I thought I should, only because I was scared of ruining it, then I would have missed out on this great page. If I didn't like the way that it turned out, I always could have tried to cover it up in some way. There are no mistakes in art journaling, only opportunities.

Anyways. I hope you guys enjoyed today's post, and I'll see you all next time. :)

"Extreme" and "Artfest - Cover"

Okay. Today I have two pages for you guys to see. And they are both very, very different. That's the way I like to work though. I feel that if I'm not limited by just one style or medium, then I'll always have countless ideas running through my head; endless miles of ways that I might be able to roam. I love that aspect of it. It's so inspiring. Anyways. The first page I have to share with you is from a prompt, like the last few pages have been. 

Today's prompt asked me the last thing I had said. And that was a single word. Extreme. I know it's kind of weird. But then again, I'm kind of weird too. And I'm proud of that. I kind of took this word out of context however, when it came time to work on the journaling. When I had actually said it, I had used it in the context that the case of hiccups that I had just got over was kind of extreme. But in the journaling, I focus more on the aspect of my personality that forces me to go to extremes to get things done.

For example, I was supposed to leave my math exam at noon today, but I wasn't finishes. So I stayed two and a half hours afterwards so that I would be able to finish. My teacher didn't mind. She said that she liked the company.

I wasn't super fond of this page personally. I like the way it looks, but it really doesn't seem to scream me - not the way the rest of my pages do. It's too subtle. Too delicate. Plus, I think the title "Extreme" kind of calls for something more bold and edgy. But it's too late now. I do think it's pretty. I just don't think that it goes with my style.

 Here you can kind of see, on the right side page, a little bit of what MIGHT be coming tomorrow. Since the flowers are in the very first layer, they could very well be covered up by the time I get to the blog. However, I do have a little bit of a plan. So we'll see. Those flowers, by the way, were made up of the excess paint around the edges of a stencil I used. Just flip the stencil over, and you get a negative space image. Pretty cool, huh?

And here we are. With yet another page. Actually, it's a cover. But that's beside the point. I made these magazine journals a little while ago, and I posted them on the blog back in August. And they have just been rediscovered. By me of course. The moment I saw them, I knew that I had to work in one. A new one. Brand new. From the start. And I wanted it to be interesting. I had just finished the previous page, and I knew that I needed to do something bolder. Edgier. More me. And this certainly accomplished that for me.

The colors are a little bit darker than I've been using lately, but I really like the way this turned out. I love how the circles are so imperfect and wonky - I dislike everything being even and perfect. To me, this is just more appealing to the eye. More interesting and intriguing. If you think otherwise though, that's fine. Not all art journals need to be messy and put through a lot of wear and tear. If you want your art journal to be even, pretty, and have everything to a tee, then that's part of your style. This is a small part of mine.

And I'll leave you guys tonight with a bit of a better view of the title for this journal. I printed this out from an online source; it has the title "Artfest" being signed out in ASL (American Sign Language). I just thought that it was cool, and it really jumped out at me when I was searching through my little box of collage goodies to find a title for this page. And with that, I wish you a good evening, and many more happy, arty days!

21 Secrets and an All Paper Collage

Hey guys! I'm back with you guys, and am sharing with you a couple of things. Two pages in my art journal and an all paper on cardstock collage. But more on that collage thing later. Let's get things started here with a couple of art journal pages that I've worked on. These two pages here are from two entirely different courses on the 21 Secrets course (which I am still working on BTW, just without the videos), and aren't eve supposed to be a spread. I thought that I would show you in one picture and just talk about them as separate pieces though, and I thought that it would be quicker and take up less picture space if I did them separately. Okay. So let's start with the one on the left. This is from the daisyyellow course on the thing and she called this a Layer Cake. I really enjoyed making it, and it turned out very grungy and spontaneous, which just happens to be the way that I tend to work anyways in real life. I thought it very cool, and I loved that it seemed to just be a good technique/idea to add to my repertoire. It isn't quite finished yet; I still have to add the title and journaling and stuff, but I still like it a lot.

The second page there is actually another page that I did for the Fearless Art Journaling course. I love her techniques, and the way that it looks it just amazing any way that you end up looking at it. She talks about being very spontaneous with your work, and especially just going with your gut feeling instead of stopping every second or two to think over what you just put down on the page. This two is very much the way that I work, and I really enjoyed working on this page. By the way, I do know that the actual saying is "Less is More", NOT "More is Less." But I thought that it sort of worked vice versa as well, and went along with the same train of thought. I just thought that it might be an interesting thing to work with to see how it turned out.

And here I am showing you an ALL-PAPER collage that I did. As you've probably seen so far on my blog, I am very fond of paint in my collages, so the mere THOUGHT of doing a collage with nothing but paper was kind of stressful to me. But the thing is, you can sort of use the same guidelines as you do with paint. You can be spontaneous and quick, and try not to worry about what you are doing. I've done two so far; the one above is my second that I started yesterday, gluing down a couple of pieces, and finished up today. I did most of it today, so that's the date that is on the back. I found it very fun and a sort of interesting mix up from what I've done in the past. If you tend to use a lot of paint in your work, and find yourself stuck in a sort of rut, where you feel like you're doing the same thing on every page, I highly recommend this. But that's all I've got for you guys today, and I'll see you tomorrow!!

Stenciling Tutorial!!

Hey all! I'm back with you guys again today, and a lot earlier than yesterday, if I do say so myself. :) I'm really excited to share this tutorial with you guys, as I've sort of been keeping you guys in anticipation. I guess I've left you hanging long enough. Let's get started, shall we? We're going to start this tutorial off with a background. For the purposes of this tutorial, as I wanted it to be mainly about stenciling, I did not walk you through the steps of making said background. But this can be anything. Personally I like to look for very simple, linear designs that just look like they could use a little bit of spicing up. I looked through my journal, and this page really called to me. Very simplistic, but I love the colors of it. They're so cool.

The next thing that you're going to do is to try out a couple of different stencils. I flipped through lots of my stencils, and laid them over top of the background so I could sort of get a feel for what the finished stenciling would look like on the page. I looked at two stencils; a sun looking one, and my favorite; the flower. I would have used the flowers, but I really liked the way the suns looked. They sort of worked with the whole color scheme of the page. I know that sounds weird, but shapes CAN relate to the color scheme of the page. If you stencil the wrong thing, then you could EASILY end up "ruining" the page, or, at the very least, ending up with an ugly layer. And I tend to like to avoid those layers if at all possible. Now you're going to choose a color to stencil in. I didn't photograph this part, mostly because I didn't know how to. I thought about using a black, but it ended up it would have looked too harsh. Then I looked at a burgundy color, but that was too bright. I ended up mixing a bit of black with the burgundy to come up with mahogany.

Next you're going to take a paintbrush and paint around the edges of the larger segments of the stencil.

Then you can fill in the rest of the space with the paint.

And then the rest of the large areas.

After that you can simply fill in the rest of the spaces with the paint and peel up the stencil. This is a really grungy method of stenciling, and since that's my style it doesn't really matter to me. If you want, you can be a lot more careful, but the steps are done exactly the same way. I hope that you guys liked today's tutorial, and I'll see you guys later!