Collecting Collage Images

One of my favorite things to do in mixed media is sift through all of the images. I love to collect them too. They're really fun to find too. When you start mixed media, you'll find images everywhere. It's just bound to happen. This post is for those of you who are just beginning mixed media, and are trying to find pieces to use in your artwork, OR for those of you that just want to find NEW places to find images. As you advance in your artistic journey, you will start to open your eyes to the things all around you. This is just a short list of suggestions for image locations, and don't be limited to these. Here is a short list however:

• Magazines. This is the most common place that people will look for images. This is the most referred to reference, and these work well for larger, glossier photos.
• Junk Mail. This doesn't sound like a good idea, since a lot of this stuff is JUNK after all. At least that's what they'd lead you to believe. I love a lot of the images you can find in the junk catalogues.
• Catalogues. These have tons of textures and images of people in them. Amazing for mixed media.
• Online Collage Sheets. These can be free or paid for. Either way, these are excellent sources. Sometimes they have color images, and sometimes they have black and white sketches. A lot of the images shown above are from free collage sheets.
• Old books. A lot of books in general have really nice, vintage looking images in them. A lot of them are black and white.

These are all I can think of right this minute, but I hope they help you with finding some things to use in your artwork. Remember. Images are everywhere. You just have to find them.

One Day at a Time - My Artistic Journey

I posted briefly in my last post about my life as an artist and a few of the things that I may or may not do in only a single day. I thought that today I'd go a little more in depth into some of the other parts of my creative journey. What is a creative journey? You may be asking yourself that very question. Though, on the other hand, you may not. It's all the same to me. Anyways, everybody has their own description or feelings on an artistic journey. Or a creative journey. See, there's an example right there. Some people call it a creative journey, while others refer to it fondly as an artistic journey. Some might not even refer to it as anything, but it's there just the same. I know it sounds strange; having an opinion on something, but not necessarily being aware of it. But it happens every day, in almost all aspects of our lives.

I call it an artistic journey. Because I'm an artist. And this post is to introduce you to what I think it is. Everybody has their own opinion. This is just mine. So here we go. Three. Two. One. My idea of an artistic journey are the goals that you go through to become a greater artist. Think about it. We all have creative goals. Whether they are small things, such as finishing sewing the buttons on a jacket we've just created, or if they're something huge, like one of my goals is to make and trade 1,001 ATCs, which are small (2.5"x3.5") pieces of art. Yes it's a big goal. But it's a good one. It gives you something to work towards. Something that, in all, will actually make you that much better as an artist.

These goals are important in everybody's life as an artist. If you don't have goals, then there is nothing for you to complete, thus, nothing to do. I'm not going to share all of my goals here with you, because there are far too many to list. And most of them wouldn't be exciting to anybody but me. Let's take for example, some of your goals. Depending upon what type of artist you are, you will have different goals than the next, or the previous person reading this post. For instance, if one of your goals is to cross stitch a pillow, then great; that's good. It's a goal of your's and that makes it special to you. However, to someone else, specifically artists that don't cross stitch, that may seem like a meaningless goal. At least it is to them. Since they don't know what it takes.

That's another benefit of my style of art. I do so many crafts and different types of art, that there probably aren't many that I haven't tried, or at least heard of. So I learn to appreciate all types of art, and all the goals that come with them, no matter how small they may seem to others less interested. That's my opinion. And I'm sticking to it. Perhaps tomorrow I may be able to share some of my work with you guys. I'd like that. I'd like it a lot.