Power: 52 Sparks Page

Hey guys! What's happening?

I'm back with you guys again today, with yet another art journal page. Personally, I've really been enjoying the daily art journal pages I've been doing, and it seems that every time I create something, yet another idea pops up into my brain. I just love it so much.

 Today's page is just a bit different than what I've done in the past. Today's page is composed of a ton of layers. I'm not exactly sure what got me to that point, to be completely honest, but I did what I was feeling. And apparently I had a lot of pent up emotions stuck inside of me. Every time I would add a layer, I would love it just that much more. I started with a layer of collage, then the layers of paint, ink, tape, stenciling, and other things followed soon afterwards. 

The 52 Sparks prompt was this: How do you feel when you are alone?

I didn't exactly know how to answer this question, but I decided to give it my best shot. For now, I decided to just put down power. However, I think I may add some letters later on to make it say "Empowered." I feel like that might be a little bit closer to the truth. However, at the same time, I also will feel very frustrated if I am by myself for too long. I think that might have part to do with my personality, and part to do with the fact that I'm a teenager. Not quite sure.

Anyways. Yes. That's what I have for you guys today. I'm so glad that I'm back into art journaling daily now; it just makes me feel so good. I don't even know how to explain it. One of the things that I love the most about it however, would have to be when I'm working on a page and remember something that I used to use all of the time, but have forgotten about. That's what happened with this page and the flower stencil. I forgot I even had it. Then, when I was working on background, I remembered it. And then I went to seek it out.

Overall, I had a lot of fun working on this page. Make sure you check out Dale Anne Potter's 52 Sparks, and I'll talk at you guys later!

Forgiven - Daily Art Journal Page

Hey everyone! How's it been going for you guys today? Hopefully good.

For me, it was a Monday. For the most part, I don't have a problem with Mondays for the regular reasons. Most people wake up, not wanting to go to school. Or work. Or whatever it is that they have to do on that day. For me, my biggest problem is just the getting up. I don't mind school. Not at all. In fact, I quite enjoy school. I just don't like an alarm going off in my ear at 6:30 in the morning.

Anyways. Enough with the complaining about getting up. Let's move onto the art.

For the most part, I've noticed that art journal pages I create during the week are generally quite a bit simpler. For example: Peace. I created that page in the middle of the week because I didn't have hardly any time at all to get anything else done. And I wanted to collage. However, art is still art.

Today's page is fairly simple as well. The original idea for the page started when I thought it would be interesting to work with watercolor on top of newspaper text. I used much bigger pieces to collage this background; a total of three pieces in total. Generally, I work with smaller pieces, gradually working up to a nice collaged background with lots of depth. However, today I wanted to try something different. And different I did. 

I used another heart on this piece today. I'm not exactly sure why, but they seem to keep showing up in my work. I'm not doing it on purpose, I swear. I know it's a bit coincidental, as it is February, and Valentine's Day is this month. However, it is not on purpose.

I think it might have something to do with my 31 Hearts project. Even though I didn't finish it, I think it might have leaked into my everyday art style. Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me. And I'm not sure that I actually have a problem with it. Maybe I should try doing a personal 31 Hearts project. I know I wouldn't mind experimenting with it a bit more. However, I am interested in doing the 29 Faces challenge this month. I know I'm a little late to the party, but I know I could still do it.

Anyways. That's what I have for you guys today. I was just messing around with paint, trying to see what would come out of it. I personally like the way it turned out. Even though I initially intended for the heart to be a bit brighter than it is, I think it just adds to the page, seeing that it is a bit darker. 

So I thank you guys for looking, and I'll talk to you next time! :)

Resize It! Prompt #3

Hey everyone! Glad to "see" all of you here today. ;)

If you've been with the blog for a while now, you'll know about my Resize It! challenge. Every now and again, I'll post a video of me working in this little journal of mine. It's a smaller size than I'm used to working in, thus the "Resize It!" part of the challenge. 

There's also another prompt every time I post one of these videos, that you can use to work it. Then, you post a link at the end of the post. I hope you'll join me!

Today's pages were done quite a while ago; I just got around to editing the video today. I've been super busy with school and everything, and it's been near impossible to get anything done. I'm hoping that things will be a bit easier here in February.

Anyways. Here's today's prompt:

Use some kind of paper you've found in your everyday life on your page/spread.

That's it. It's that simple. For me, it was a scrap of paper that had Chinese style dragons on it. I found it lying on the side of the road one day on my way to school, and it was just way too cool to pass up!

Here's a couple more details from the page; when I went to collage my words/journaling down onto the page, the word "memories" bled a bit more than I wanted it to. I was hoping to achieve a slightly grungy look, as you can see on the rest of the page.

However, you couldn't even read this one word.

So, I pulled out my typewriter real quick, and typed the word memories. Super simple. Super basic. Then I just glued it over the top of the messed up word. I personally enjoy the way it looks. I mentioned that yesterday. That's one of the things I love about art journaling. Fixing mistakes.

Calm - Daily Art Journal Page: 52 Sparks

What's happening everyone? Jordan here, with yet another daily art journal page for all of you. Today I actually worked one of Dale Anne Potter's 52 Sparks prompts; the third one for me. She is currently on five. I'm hoping to catch up eventually.

However, today's prompt was to document your favorite color.

Using this page as your example, I'm sure that you can very plainly see that my favorite color is blue. I felt the need to add little bits of red to the page however; I don't think that really pulls the focus TOO far away from the blue. 

First off, I would like to comment that I created this spread in my magazine journal, rather than in my daily art journal for 2013. Or, perhaps, as is probably more realistic, my not so daily art journal for 2013. In other words, just my 2013 journal. This is created in what was once a Delias clothing catalogue. I love the layers that it adds, and I'm recycling. Always a good thing.

For the body, I actually just whited out/colored a body outline that was already there in the catalogue. So I just added my colors and layers on top of that. As you can see in this photo, I didn't really try too hard to keep the girl separated from the background. I like the look of it better when it sort of blends in. That kind of makes it feel, at least to me, like it was actually meant to be there, instead of just being an afterthought. 

Also, I tried, at the very beginning of this page, to add some facial details to this figure. However, I decided that I liked it better without those details, and just painted over it again. That's another thing that I love about art journaling. It's so easy to fix your "mistakes", if you can even call them that. 

Here you can see some of the smaller details of this page, where I added a couple more tiny red hearts to the bottom of the left hand page, to try to tie everything together just a bit better. 

Overall, I really like this page, and I think that it's kind of cool that everything works so well together. I didn't have any idea, at all, going into this, about what I wanted this page to look like. So, taking that into consideration, I think this page extremely successful.

Thanks again everyone for visiting, and I'll talk to you guys later!

Linking to 52 Sparks and Try it on Tuesday!

Life - Daily Art Journal Page

Hey guys! What's up?

I know that it's been a while since my last post, but I've been trying to make time to do art in general. Since my weekend away from home, I kind of got out of the swing of things. However, now I'm back, hopefully for all of February. That's what I'm hoping for at least.

On Thursday, I gave blood for the very first time, through my school. I had a whole lot of fun doing it (though I don't think it was supposed to be fun), and I thought that it was a very interesting experience. It only took me a total of three minutes to give a pint of blood, and the lady who was doing it seemed surprised. Not sure what that means, but hopefully it's not a bad thing. XD

Anyways. I was inspired to do a page based around that concept. The fact that I did give blood.

 I had a sort of idea in the back of my head that I wanted to come into fruition, but I could only BARELY see it in my mind's eye. What I had to end up doing was just starting in the first place, and not being afraid to mess up. Really, all that I had for the concept was the fact that I knew I wanted to use a lot of red, and I wanted to have the red drops coming down the page.

Even the heart was something that kind of came to me in the moment.

That's one of the things that I love about mixed media art. About art journaling in general. You don't necessarily have to know what you're doing before you do it. I know that, at least for me personally, the actual process of working actually prompts more ideas in my mind. Makes my vision clearer.

After every couple of layers, I get a few more ideas for the next few layers. That's just the way I like to work.

Anyways. I hope that you guys enjoyed seeing this page; I feel like it has a lot more personal meaning than a lot of the other pages that I do, and that makes it unique. And that's a good thing.

Linking to Paint Party Friday, Art Journal Every Day and Try it on Tuesday. :)

Peace - Art Journal Page

Okay guys. I am here with you guys again today, though I really doubted I was going to be. I had a ton of homework in Anatomy and Algebra II, and, from that, I wasn't even sure if I was even going to have time to do any art at all. 

I ended up finishing all of my work around 9, then sat down to make something. I didn't know what I was going to do, but I decided to go with it anyways. I took my journal that I used for the In the Sun prompts this last summer, and flipped to the next available page.

It was painted yellow, and there were quite a few layers underneath of it.

That's part of what I love about this kind of journal. Since the pages are already half-way done, they go together super quickly. So I can actually make something that looks respectable on a day like this. When I literally have no time. But still want to create art.

Then, I added the collage. The piece of chevron type paper was actually made for my first 52 Sparks page. If you look in the background of the page, you'll see what I'm talking about. It's under a ton of layers, but it's still there. This piece was left over from collaging that. I saw it on my desk, and felt it went nicely with the background. So down it went. The heart, which was also lying on my desk, followed soon after. 

I grunged up the background a bit with some RoseArt crayons and chalk pastels, then added a title and some journaling. Then I was done.

Going back to the concept of stopping when it's finished. Even though there weren't many layers on this page, as there are with the majority of my work, I liked the way it turned out. I didn't want to force it to be something that it wasn't. I would have ended up ruining it, though I'm perfectly satisfied with it right now. I like letting art develop on it's own. To me, that's what makes it special.

So that would be that! As a side note however, it is highly unlikely that there will be a post either tomorrow or Saturday. I had meant to get some posts stocked up to post on those days, but I was so busy, I didn't have time to. I'm going to a sports tournament type thing, and I'll be gone until 9 P.M. on Saturday night. I'll be so focused on sports, I probably won't even think about art. I might bring a couple of things to mess around with, but I probably won't be posting. Just a comment. 

Anyways. Thanks for visiting! And I'll see you guys next time!

{{Face Your Fears}} - Art Journal Spread

Hey all! Jordan here. 

I've got a couple of pages to share with you today. Or rather, just a spread. I guess it could technically be considered a couple of pages if I wanted it to be. Personal preference. That's what I'm going with.

With this page, I would like to make a quick note. I actually started this page a couple of days ago, during a live stream I did. This was on Monday. I loved doing the stream, and I think I was on for about three and half hours. I did quite a bit during this stream, and I got fairly far into this page. However, until today, I hadn't touched it since.

Then today, I walked into my room and saw it sitting on my desk. And I knew that I had to finish it up. It was staring at me, and was calling my attention to it. The only problem came when I didn't know how to continue on with it.

However, after a bit of experimenting, and flipping through magazines, I finally decided to glue an image down, throw a wash over it, and add a title and some journaling. Then I would call it done. And I really like the way it turned out.

Here's a close up of some of the detail on the left page, where the title is located. This is one of my favorite parts. I love the ironic quality it has to it, even though it was completely unintentional. I put the "face" part of the title over the face of the girl.

I'm not really sure how that came into being, but I'm not complaining. I'm really loving it.

Also, here's just a bit more detail on the journaling. Again, I did it on my typewriter, except here I took one of the words and stamped it out. I love the way that turned out as well.

Overall, I am very satisfied with this page. Very satisfied. Quite frankly, I love it. There's a possibility that it's my favorite page since I've started up art again. However, that's arguably happened to me every time I've sat down to create a page. 

Anyways. I hope you guys enjoyed, and I'll see you tomorrow!