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!

52 Sparks - Motivation.

Hey guys! I'm back again today, though I have a bit of a shorter post for you guys.

I have a lot of homework to do, so I'm just popping in to share a few photos.

This was for 52 Sparks. The second prompt was to create a page around what drives you. To me, drive and motivation are very much one in the same. So I decided to do my page about motivation.

I did the page on a live stream, and I collaged a bunch of pieces together to create this little owl. I came up for the design for him while doodling for one of Milliande's newest prompts. So I decided to let something become of it, and create this little guy.

I really like the way that he turned out, and I tried a technique that I never have before, which is actually trying to create recognizable pieces from scraps of magazines.

I hope you guys enjoyed, and I'll talk at you later. :)

Catch Up Art Journal Post

Hey guys!! This is a bit of a catch up post for me right now; just telling you what I've been up to the last couple of days. Sorry that I've been a bit of an irregular poster lately, but at least I have a good excuse. :P You wanna hear it? I started a private school! I've been home schooled all of my life until now; so it's a pretty big change. Today was actually my first day! It was kind of fun. I haven't really done all that much yet; we only had a half day, and there were just a bunch of introductory courses. It was pretty cool though. I hope that I'm still going to have time to keep up with this blog; it really is fun for me, and I've already had more than 60 posts, and we're coming up on the 70 mark pretty quick. :) If you look above at this watercolor picture, you'll see one of my experiments. I was playing with some kid's watercolors, trying to find out some new techniques.

I was actually playing with some Diana Trout techniques; just search her name on YouTube, and you'll probably find her channel. She has a book called Journal Spilling, and even though I've never read it, I've heard that it's pretty good. I've heard that it's mostly for people that enjoy working with watercolors, but I think that a lot of her techniques would be worth working in watered down acrylics. Now that I think about it, that actually would make a cool post. :) Maybe I'll try that out sometime. I worked on gessoed pages this time, even though I didn't very much in the past. I just recently got some gesso, so I've been experimenting with the differences between gessoed and non gessoed pages.

Here's another page that I've sort of been working on recently. I don't really know all that much about the basis around my thought process when I was working on this page, though I do know that there was a layer of journaling. You can sort of see it in the background of the page. It shows kind of a cool effect to it. Kind of a ghostly feeling. Cool huh? Now that I'm looking at it, my mind is already kind of working out ways I could use it. Both ways use black. My first way is to use bubble wrap to stamp black paint all over the background. That could look really cool. The second way that I'm considering is using masking tape to cover some areas, and then put black stripes horizontally over the entire page. Now that I think about it, it might look nice vertically as well.

The last thing I have here is a page in one of my magazine pages that I was working on. I started out with a layer of gesso as the background (you always have to coat magazine pages somehow) and then put down a layer of kids watercolor paint. I added some watercolor crayons over the surface and wet them down. Then I scraped into the background some swirls with the back of my brush. The final layer that I've done SO FAR was a layer of a background script stamp that I put down with gesso. It looks so cool! So that's all I've got for you today, and I'm sure tomorrow will be just as cool.

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.