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!

In The Sun, 30-30-30, and ICAD2

Hello everyone! How are you all doing today? Well. I hope it's good. But you know I can't really hear you from my living room. However. If you answered me out loud, you are officially awesome. If you want to answer me out loud right now, then you can still be considered awesome. If not, then I guess that's okay too.

I had quite a bit of fun with my art today. And this my friends, is the reason that I love prompts. I'll get to the reason why in a moment. At least one of the reasons.

The first thing that I worked on today was my second page for the In The Sun Class. Today's prompt told us to write some things about summer. Or to summer. And then we were prompted to doodle on our magazine page. Or photo. Whichever thing it was that we happened to choose. Well here's how it went down for me. I decided that, for this particular page, I wanted to use an image from a magazine. i wasn't really sure which photo I wanted to use, or even how many magazines I was going to have to look through before I would be able to start.

But it just happened that the odds were in my favor today. Ever in my favor. I was looking at the pile of crap to my right. Don't question the pile. Just leave it alone. And right there, at the very BOTTOM (of course) of the pile, I saw a magazine page. I didn't have a clue in the world what was on this page. But I was so tempted to pull the page out from underneath the teetering stack, that I didn't even try to resist. And as soon as I did, I was glad that I had done so. For this image is what stared back at me. I was so excited about it, mostly because this journal is supposed to be celebrating summer. Well. In my opinion, there's nothing that screams summer more than lemonade. Besides a pool. Or cookouts. Or basketball. But that's beside the point. The point is that this photo was absolutely perfect for my page. AND I loved, and still love, the colors.

I cut a portion of the image out, making it purposely smaller than my page, so that I would have room to journal. Which was one of the prompted things to do. I wrote my little notes about summer around the page, and I loved the way that it turned out. I had just enough to say, and just enough room to say it. Don't you love it when that happens? I know I do.

Then I added the title. I wasn't quite so sure what I wanted to do about the title, but I decided on a very simple "I Love Summer". One of the reasons that I love summer is that school is out. But I'm sure that before long, I'll probably be ready for school to start back up again. We'll see. I seem to be keeping pretty busy, with the blogs and my business and all. If you think about it, perhaps consider visiting my business blog here. I've been posting little snippets about the upcoming fashion line, and today I started a "What I Wore Today" series. And my partner Sarah is starting hers tomorrow. I think. 

The final thing I did to this page, which I absolutely LOVED was doodle. I had been prompted by Natalie to doodle on my photograph. Well. I started out with just a little bit of doodling around the top of the cups. But the more doodling I did, the more I just couldn't stop it. I ended up doodling around the entire outline of the photograph, and I love how it turned it into an almost cartoon - esque photo in and of itself. I really love the way it turned out, and I'll probably try it again very soon.

Actually, I was so inspired by the doodling on that page, that I continued that on my 30-30-30 page today. I'm not really sure WHY there's a photo of lemonade (or limeade, or whatever it is in this picture) on a page about sports. But we'll go with it. I think it might have something to do with the fact that sports make you thirsty. I think that's probably it.

But yeah. I continued the theme of the doodling on photographs over to this page. And again, I love the way that it turned out. I did journaling on this page though, which isn't something that I did on my other pages. I think that had a lot to do with the fact that I didn't have a clue in the world what I was going to do in that blank space. But I had some red paint on my pallet, and so I painted on some journaling lines and got to work.

This page was a little more difficult time-wise than the other two pages have been. You would think that it would keep getting easier and easier. But it's not true. Not at all. At least not for me it isn't. The journaling took up quite a bit of time, as did the doodling. I was getting to the point where I thought that I wouldn't finish. It was kind of a race against the clock. But it felt good. Almost like adrenaline. A rush. Who knew you could get a rush from doing art. Ha. But I always do when I do math, so I don't know why this would surprise me.

Here's a bit of a better photo of the doodling that I did on this photograph. I was a little more free than I was on my other page, but the time constraint really fed into that. I had to work a little bit quicker, so I couldn't be nearly as neat as I was on the other page. But I like both of them. Both of these pages turned out quite nicely in my opinion, and I love the way that my art seems to progress as I work on it. Sometimes I look back at my old scrapbook pages and wonder what the heck I was thinking. But then I come to two realizations. One, these were my very first attempts at paper crafts. I can't expect them to be as good as what I'm doing now, or as good as what I want to do now. I'm sure that a younger me would be shocked to see how much they would improve. Two. I was seven.

Here I present you with ICAD #12: Experiment. Now this card; I tried a few techniques that I haven't before, and a few that I haven't done in a while. It seemed to be a nice little refresh of some of the techniques that I had almost forgotten about. Anyways. The idea for this card sprung from an old technique that I'm sure a lot of you probably haven't thought about for a while. Drawing on a piece of paper with a white crayon, then going over it with watercolors. Or markers. Or a wash. I used to do that when I was really, really young, and all I did was color. All day. Every day. I thought it was fun. But I was thinking the other day. 

It's the wax that resists the mediums you put on top of it. Not the color. So would it work the same way if I did the same thing with colored crayons? What would happen? Well, I tried that out. I took some crayons in yellow, orange, and red, and drew dark, waxy swirls all over the base of my index card. Then I went over it with a reddish-orange watercolor paint. And it did work. And it looked pretty cool. A couple layers followed after that; red artist quality paint applied with a pallet knife, followed by a layer of yellow poster paint, which blended with the not yet dry paint. And this was the result. I added the caption and was done with it. And I like it.

That's all I've got for you guys today though, and I hope to see you tomorrow! Bye!

Paper/Fabric Collage Fodder

Hey guys!!

What's going on with you guys today?

I haven't done much crafty stuff today, but I did take a few pictures for the blog.

I pulled a bunch of stuff out of my pile of supplies, and made a few piles. 

I've now officially decided to start a sort of series on collecting supplies for working in an art journal.

In other words, an series on collecting art journal fodder. 

For now, I think I'll just share with you guys what I've found so far.

Then I'll do other occasional posts about how to find and collect these things.

Are you guys ready for this?

Okay then.

Let's do it then.

Let's look up at the picture above at the first little collection I found.

I just pulled a few of the first things that came to my hand. 

I have a piece of magazine picture.

Some apple stickers.

Some printed black and white borders.

Some color scraped fabric.

Some watercolored book paper.

And a strip of colors.

There isn't as much in this picture, but I still like this selection.

I have a dyed paper towel.

A butterfly die cut.

Some pink polka dotted tissue paper.

A pulled photo paper.

And a homemade stamp that I made using craft foam and a toilet paper tube.

This was so much fun finding all of this stuff out of my stash;

So far I've just stacked it all up in a giant stack,

But I'm planning to start organizing soon.

I'm gonna try sorting by color in some type of horizontal paper storage.

But that's all I've got for you guys today.

And I'll see you guys tomorrow. :)

Found Paper Pile

Hey guys! I'm here with you guys again with another single photo page. I didn't really know what to show you guys today, but I walked into my room, and found this pile of papers. My desk is such a mess ALL the time, but this little pile is about my favorite thing of all time. Seriously. It's about 5" tall, and has all kinds of AWESOME stuff in it. I have a ton of different papers in it, stamped papers, and all kinds of text papers and stuff. A bunch of random pieces of card, and I'm pretty sure there's some foam stamps stuck in there somewhere. It's an awesome pile that I dig though for all my collage fodder and other stuff.

It's been sitting there for a month; actually I started it a month ago. How crazy is that? When you're actually working on it, or are like me, and are just plain addicted to collecting collage fodder, the stuff really grows into a huge pile REALLY quickly. I say that everyone should try it. :) Anyways, if you start a pile or a file, make sure to send me a picture. :) See you guys later!

Art Journal Collage Papers

Hey guys! I'm here. What's happening? It's been so long since I posted. At least it seems that way. In reality though, it's only been a couple days. Trust me when I say that I'm trying, but it's just getting harder as school goes on and I keep getting more homework. But I seem to keep trying to work in my art journal each day. Sometimes on loose pages, and sometimes in a bound journal. I used to be ADDICTED to doing only a bound journal, and finishing a page before I started another. But, as I've went on, it seems I've gotten better, and am a whole lot less strict when it comes to working on art. Now I use loose pages and bound journals, and I have about 5 or 6 art journals started/planned. As it goes on, it just seems to get crazier!

In the picture above, you can see what I've been working on today. Loose pages. These I normally copy and then use in my work, or just collage onto my pages. I made my own little collection of paper. Four sheets. So far I've done about 12 of these sheets and you've already seen 3 of them. here are four more, and these are like the only ones that actually go together, but I think that as I create more sheets, I'll be able to create more little collections that work together. These are really cool sheets, which I start out with magazine pages, then prep them in different ways. Then I do stamping with found objects on top of it. So far I've done a bunch, and I LOVE working on them. :) That's all I have for you guys today, and I'll talk to you later! Bye!

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!!