Joy: Daily Art Journal Page

Hey guys! What's up? Hopefully you had time to get done everything that you wanted to today, and, if not, I hope you enjoyed yourself anyways. :P

Today I had a half a day of school, so I got home at noon. However, I was exhausted, and passed out on the couch, not getting up until around four-ish. So it was like I had a full day of school anyways. I managed to push that aside, and got to doing some art, using a concept I had come up with yesterday. You see, for Valentine's Day, I received a red carnation from someone at school, and a whole bunch of white ones from my dad. So I put them together in a vase, and I really liked the way they looked; the red contrasting the white. So I decided that I wanted to paint them. Which was strange for me, as I'm not much of a realistic painter.

However, I really like the way they turned out. Somehow, even though they barely even resemble carnations, I still was able to express the emotion that I had wanted to through this page. I also was able to document a moment in my life; one that I would have written down in a journal if I would have had one instead. That's what I love about art journaling. It's a documentation of your life through pictures and art. That's cool to me. It gives me a chance to keep a consistent journal, without having to forget about painting, which I also really enjoy.

Something else I love about this page is that I was somehow able to keep true to myself in the creation of this page. Just by looking at it, I can tell that it's mine. That makes me happy. And definitely gives me confidence; a desire to move forward in my work. 

I had a lot of fun in the creation of this page, and was glad to see it through to the end. In the beginning, when I first started it, I wasn't sure what was going to become of it. I wasn't sure if everything was going to work out in my favor or not. But I had to be willing to try. That's the thing about art journaling, I think. You cannot be afraid to try new things. To try to incorporate new and different things into your work. You just can't. If you are intimidated, then you can never proceed. You can never grow as an artist. That's why I keep working in areas like this. And in the area of painting faces. Because I'm not good at them, I try them anyways. I was actually considering doing a face page tomorrow. We'll see.

Anyways. I hope you guys enjoyed looking at today's art, and I'll talk to you all again soon! Goodbye everyone. 

Linking to Art Journal Every Day and Paint Party Friday. 

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!

Medley

So I worked on another page today. Today's prompts was to consider where you think you are in your life right now. I had a good, long think about this topic, and finally came to my conclusion. I think that I'm in a place where I like to think about things. I want to make sure that they're right. And, most of all, I want to have an opinion. That's something that many people don't know about me. And that is, that I am a very opinionated person. I like to consider all of the possibilities, and then come to an overall conclusion. I like to know that I'm being accurate in my decision, and make sure that I'm correct in the way that I'm thinking.

This is an overall page view of the whole layout/page that I did today. When I started out, I thought that I was going to be using mostly red. That gradually changed into pink, which turned into brown with pink accents. And orange. Orange accents.

There were a lot of layers to this page, and I love how this turned out. One of the problems that I will sometimes have are all of the colors in my page muddling together. I don't like that. However, sometimes, on some days, on some pages, I think it's okay. And I think that this is one of these pages. The way that the different shades of brown and pink merge together add a lot of texture and depth to the page, and I love the way that it blends together.

Also, I thought that I'd share with you the finished spread in my journal. I know that these two pages are two separate pages, but I just thought I'd share something with you. Some people, when they are new to art journaling, struggle with single pages. Their reasoning for this is that they don't like having to make sure that the two pages go together. But here's the thing. With an art journal, it honestly doesn't even matter. In this spread, one page is on the cool side of the color spectrum, and the other page is on the warm side. But it's okay. It looks fine. And nobody's going to judge me because they don't go together. Even if they do, I wouldn't care. My art journal is about what makes me happy! The same should be true for you.

I'm going to leave you today on a rather thoughtful note. I'm going to type out my journaling. I really like the way that it turned out, and I think that the thoughtfulness aspect of it truly represents me.

I have a very unique style. I am composed of a variety of things that make me happy. Me. Not anyone else. Actually, I could care less what other people think. I am a medley of all things me, not a collage of all things everyone else. Some people might consider my style eclectic, while I prefer to consider it mine. The point I feel I am in right now, in my own life, is a time when I think everything through to the extent that it needs to be. I am always thinking about my own take on things; always considering a new aspect to life. To my style. To my medley of me.

And that would be that! I hope you guys have a good rest of the day, and I'll talk to you later!

Stencil Tutorial Introduction

Hey guys! I've been wanting to start doing some tutorials a little more often around this joint, but I just seem to get so caught up in recording my new creations that I forget that you guys probably want more content than just pictures of my art. :) Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get to that today, and, in fact, I couldn't do any art. I'll probably try to do a little bit later, but I don't know about that. I didn't get to go to the craft store yesterday like I had hoped, and I'm going to have to wait until Saturday I think. It feels like it's going to be taking forever, but I guess that I can wait it out. But basically this is just an introduction to my tutorial that I'm going to do for you guys ASAP. The picture above shows some of my favorite stencils with my absolute favorite on the top. It's a nice, simple flower shape, but it has practically endless possibilities. And what I like about it is that it looks cool without looking too girly. Depending on what colors you use of course. I've used pinks and purples and it does look rather girly. So I use colors to decide the theme of my page.

A good example of this would be if you look at the picture above. This is the cover page of one of my homemade magazine/catalogue journals. I think you may have seen this before, but even if you have, then you can still see a lot in it, I hope. You can see that I used the flower stencil almost right below the layer of magazine clippings. I used this with gesso, but you can also use paints, glitter sprays, spray paints, watercolors, and lots of other mediums! I'll be showing you a few different ways to do this, and we'll hopefully have a lot of fun! So continue checking in here and I'll get it up soon! See you guys tomorrow!

Art Journal Prompt Page

Hey guys! I'm back here with you guys today with a page that I was working on today. I started another journal (I know, again. I need to stop that. But I'm out of blank journals now, so that should help) a few days ago, and I'm filling it using the questions from the 5,000 question survey as prompts. I think that it's really cool, and I'm really enjoying the process. This is something I just started today, and I love the way it looks. I'm not sure if it's done yet or not. I think I'll add a title and some journaling yet. This is the fourth page in the journal. I worked on this for about an hour today, and already I'm this far. :) I think it's pretty cool.

I kind of like the color combination, even though I didn't have any type of idea for the page when I started it. It just sort of evolved on it's own. It's cool. I don't really have all that much to tell you today, but I just wanted to share this one page with you. And I'll see you tomorrow. :)

Stenciling and Experimentation

Hey guys! I'm back here with all of you once again, and this time with yet another journal page that I worked on today. I did quite a bit of journaling today, even though I spent about four hours sorting through all of my stuff and tidying up my space. I spent a lot of time cleaning my stuff and messing around with techniques as I went along. That's normally how I clean. I'll be sorting through a lot of stuff, and all of a sudden I'll come across some random thing that I really like. And then I'll be forced by myself to play with it. I'll mess around with that for about 5 minutes, then get back to cleaning. Above is pretty much the only page I was working on today. Adding on layers. I started with a layer of journaling in Sharpie, which I seem to be doing a lot of lately, and then I put on a thin coat of gesso.

I followed that layer with some Portfolio watercolor crayons; I drew a bunch of swirls over the whole page, and then I wet it down with a brush and spread it over the whole page. I really was liking the way it was turning out, and so I decided to keep a few of swirls only partially saturated. So in some places you can see a bit of a swirl here and there. :) Over top of that I ended up taking some dark blue dye ink and stamping a whole layer of a handmade triangle stamp I made with an exacto knife and a cheap eraser.

Finally, I finished off the page with a bunch of cute little stenciled flowers in white. I made the stencil myself with my cricut. It's pretty small, but I just randomly stenciled them in, not really caring much about where they fell. Underneath the first layer that I described in this post, there were a bunch of other layers too. A base layer of paint, some washi tape, a couple layers of stamp and painting, a layer or two of tissue paper; all below the journaling. :) So you can see how many layers I use in a single page. It's defiantly not just a couple. That's my style. I've been developing my style more and more lately; trying out different techniques by different artists, and incorporating them into my PERSONAL style. As you have probably seen from the last couple of posts, I've been experimenting with stencils in my journal. I love using them and they're so fun! So the only way to learn is to experiment. :) See you guys tomorrow!!