{{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!

Resize It! Challenge Update

Hey guys! How's it going? 

If you didn't see my earlier post about the Co-op Youtube Channel that I'm trying to start up, you might want to go check that out. :)

However, let's get back to today's post.

I had originally recorded a video of me creating this two-page spread in my Resize It! Journal. However, a lot of the audio was lost, and the recording itself was very glitchy; entire segments are gone completely.

I'm very confused as to what happened there. However, I am going to ask you guys what you want me to do about that. I can try to take screenshots of the broken footage, as I obviously don't need audio to do that. And I'll do a step-by-step post tomorrow.

OR

I can piece the footage together as best as I can, and put music in the background. The audio would take hours to try to piece together, and I don't really want to do that. Just let me know, and I'll go with the most popular vote. :)

Here's a bit of the detail on the left page of the spread. I did the same type of journaling as I did yesterday, with the graph paper and typewriter. I just love the way it looks, and I think that it is very effective. 

It's almost a part of my style in and of itself. 

Also, here are a few details of the right page of the spread. I did a little cluster of collage elements on these pages, and I really like the way it turned out.

My journal is already starting to get a bit thick, even though I only have 3 pages done. :P

So yeah. Let me know what you guys want me to do about the lost footage. Either way, I'll post the challenge itself tomorrow, along with whatever is decided upon. 

Thanks for looking guys! And I'll talk to you later!

Color Challenge #2 Reveal: Barbara

Hey everybody! I'm here with my first post of the day. I may have another one for you guys coming up later tonight, with the rest of my art (My ICAD, 30-30-30 Challenge, and In The Sun post). But for right now, what I have for you guys is my color challenge REVEAL!! I've been working on this challenge pretty much every day since I announced it here, and have really enjoyed it. The colors were lime, light purple, red, pale yellow, and white. Barbara and I decided to do this in a bit of a larger scale than I did last time with Dede. With that challenge, we gave ourselves a week to create one art journal page. And that was cool. But for this challenge, we gave ourselves two weeks to complete five projects. It was a little more time consuming, but I love the results! So let's get on with it!

The first project is a page in my art journal. This is my big, fat art journal with the black cover and green spine. I don't know if I've ever put a picture on here of just the journal, not the pages inside of it. Maybe I should think about doing that. And perhaps a flip would be in order. That way you guys can see about how much I have left to do before the journal itself is done.

Anyways, focusing more in on the journal page itself, let's look at a close up of the page. You can probably see that in the very back of the page is a background that was composed solely up of dictionary paper that I tore up and then collaged down to the background in all different directions using Elmer's School Glue. It actually works just as well as Mod Podge from what I've done so far. Which I think is impressive. Though it could just be me. Anyways, with this page, I actually decided to blend the concept of this page with another challenge. A Year In the Life of An Art Journal. I really wanted to do all of the prompts for this part of the challenge, but I simply ran out of time in the month. That's okay though. There's always next month. :)

And here you can probably see the stamping a bit better. I used my circle stencil, along with 3 found stamps to create these circles. Something that I find popping up again and again in my work is circles. Whether it be deep inside of the layers of a page, the main focus of a page or accents ON a page, it seems that everything that I make these days has at least one circle on it. And if I don't want to use circles, it takes quite a bit to pull myself away from them. It's crazy. However, I have learned to accept it for what it is. Part of my art. And I'm not going to try and change that.

Here is the second project that I did for this challenge. I decided upon a spread for this portion of the challenge, and tried to do a portrait. I don't like it as much as some of the other portraits that I have done in the past, but I believe that to have something to do with my limited color pallet. I couldn't deviate too much from the colors Barbara and I had picked together, so I just went with what I knew would most likely work. However, this did inspire me to work more on my portraits, as this is certainly not my favorite. So I guess it was kind of a win-win situation anyways.

Also, just a question. Does this background look familiar to you guys at all? :) I slipped you guys a sneak peek a few days ago, I just didn't tell you. If you are still wondering where it is, you can click here to see. :)

One of the other projects that I decided upon was a series of ATC's. I decided to count this as a single project, instead of three. I suppose I could have done it either way, but I had some other ideas that I had floating around in my head, so I decided to go with those as well. So I created these three ATCs, simultaneously, as part of a series. They are not identical, but they go together. I would LOVE to trade these! One of my goals for my DayZero Project is to trade 101 ATCS. I am currently at 0. Even though this is only three, it'd be cool to have a few at least.

Here's a bit of a close up of the first ATC. It is titled "TAKE ME TO THE LAND OF JAZZ." As you can see.

Here is the second ATC.

And here is the third. They are composed of many layers of media on top of one another.

Here is the fourth project I came up with for this challenge. I decided to do a mini collage; it measures 6" on each side. I made most of the papers that this collage was composed of as well. The only one that I didn't make was the red grid with the lime circles showing through it. I painted the papers specifically for this challenge, and I still have a whole bunch left over. I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do with them, but it could be one of many things. Something that I love about this collage though, is all of the little details.

For example, this layered circle that was composed up of multiple layers of paper and paint on top of one another. I love the way it turned out, and is was so much fun to work on. Plus, I love the way the stamped title looks when it was layered with the circle.

Here's another part that I love. I laid down a stripe of lime green paint down onto the page, then punched circles out of the red graph paper. Then I glued it on top of the green. Then, of course, I added the red to the green, and the layer of red stamping along the side. And the lettering. Can't forget that.

Finally, we have the red circles that I added to very bottom to accent the pale yellow and purple background. I tried to go without putting something in every spot, but I just didn't like the way that it looked. So I filled it up. And I quite like the way that it turned out.

And then, for my fifth and final project for this challenge, I have a little mini "canvas". If you follow me on twitter, you might have seen this picture. I was giving you TWO sneak peeks. ;) I wanted to see if anyone would notice, and then put two and two together. Anyways. I was greatly inspired to create this "canvas" by this post. And, the reason that canvas is in quotes, is because it's not actually a canvas. It's a box. A little cardboard box.

You can see that a little bit better here. It has a bit more depth to it than normal canvas. But I really like the way that this one turned out for me. I used pink words on this, instead of one of the colors, but only because I couldn't find any that matched. And this just looked good.

And THAT my friends; that was my color challenge reveal! I hope that you guys enjoyed it! Make sure to check back later for another post. :)

Balanced

So I'm back with you again today, a little earlier this time. I was off of school today, since I exempted most of my exams. The way they do them at my school is that on Wednesday they do 1st and 3rd period exams, and then Thursday (tomorrow), they do the 2nd and 4th period ones. I exempted all of my exams except for 4th period, as that is my math class, and my teacher doesn't allow anyone to exempt, no matter how good their grades. So tomorrow I have to go at 10:10, and then get to leave at noon. It's nice. And today I didn't have to go at all.

Yep. Today I was working from yet another prompt. This one begged the question. Are you more child-like or childish? I spent quite a bit of time considering the answer to this. I eventually came to the conclusion that I thought I was a little bit of both, especially depending upon who I'm talking to or hanging out with.

The idea for this page initially sprung from the primary colors. I was going to do my page with just those colors and see what happened. As you can see from the pictures, a lot happened. Not a lot of any of those colors actually show up in the finished piece. 

You see, what happened was, I had just started the page and I thought it was looking okay. I thought that it looked a little weird, but I decided to continue on anyways. Bad idea. The more layers I added, the worse it got. Seriously. It was really bad. So I just went over the entire thing with white paint. Some of the red from my previous layer got caught up into the white, and gave me a pink tint. I decided to just go with that and start over. Let's just say that my journaling in the first layer is extremely secure. Nobody's going to be reading that sucker. 

In this picture, you can sort of see a close up of the texture I used in this piece. Since I've started working in my journal a few days ago, this is probably the most texture I've gotten on a page. I simply love the way it turned out. Even though pink is definitely not my favorite color in the world (it's blue, in case you're wondering), I do seem to love pink paint. I don't know why. I just do. 

The journaling in this page, like in my previous page, really means a lot to me. I don't know where I get some of this stuff from, I just pull them out of the air. I seem to love taking cool words and merging them together into deep, meaningful sentences. To me, writing is seriously an art in and of itself. As it is to many other writers. 

I'd like to leave you with a link. This is where I've been getting all of my prompts from. They originally weren't supposed to be for art journaling, but the moment I saw them, I knew that they would be excellent art journal inspiration. It is called the 5,000 Question Survey. 

Some of you may have heard of this before, and others may not have. That's what this blog is for. For me to share with you guys new things. And new ways of reusing old things. And with that, I bid you farewell and an excellent evening.

Art Journal Layers

Hey guys! I'm back with a few more art journal pages that I've been adding onto lately. It seems like the more that I work in this journal (the big, fat one that I started first), the more i start to skip around. I'll flip to a random page, and, if it is unfinished, I'll see if I want to add something to it. Maybe some doodles or some paint, or a few pieces of paper as a layer. On this page right here I used some new oil pastels that I bought at Michaels (Cray-Pas) to do some doodling. I used the light blue to do the circles around the punched out papers, and the red lines with the half circles.

This is just a more close up picture of this same page spread. You can see the doodles that I did.

And this pages right here is just another page that I've been working on lately. I had the background here for a while, and then I added int the blue paint, the black crayon swirls, the clock printout, and some sumo ink mixed with water that I sprayed over the page. That's a bit of a new technique that I've been trying to experiment with a little bit. It's still in progress, but I'm starting to try and perfect it. :) Well, that's all that I've got for you guys today, and I guess I'll see you guys tomorrow. Bye!

Watercolor Spread

Hey guys! I'm here again with you guys, and so far I've been doing pretty good on the whole daily posting deal. I know that I generally have been posting later in the day than I have in the past; maybe when we have breaks at school and stuff it will be a little bit earlier. I know that I don't have that much to share with you guys today, but I'm going to give to you what I have. I only have a single spread. On this page I used a bunch of stuff that I bought yesterday; some of the watercolors and acrylics, and I did a lot of experimentation with different brush strokes and scraping some white paint over top of the page. I'm sorry that today's post isn't all that long, but that's all I've got for you guys today. TOMORROW however, I'll come at you with a nice and long post. :) See you guys then.

Art Journal Spread and TEXTURE!!

Hey guys! Sorry that I'm so late getting to today's post, but trust me, I didn't forget. I was doing homework. Yes. Until 11 at night. I know. The first days back to school after a break are absolutely BRUTAL, and the fact that we're getting ready for our final semester exams doesn't help anything. It's almost like we're cramming for the exams. Yeah. So anyways, I did manage to work on a few pages today, but that was very difficult. I managed to take a short 20 minute break from doing my homework to do some art. I really missed it, even though I only skipped one day. I was really frustrated though, and the page above began to take some sort of a shape. I really like the way that it's coming out, even though there's only three layers down there currently. I'm already coming up with new layers, but I definitely don't want to ruin it. Maybe I should make a photocopy before I add more layers to it... that might work.

But it was really a very simple page. I started out by mixing a very deep, dark green color from just blue and yellow. I just used barely any yellow, and that made a much deeper green. I painted over top of my whole page with said color mix, and, on top of that, I layered a yellow Fresco Tempera Paint. Then, I pressed some papers on top and pulled them off. The paper caught the color and lifted some of it up, thus creating the texture that you see here. Then I pulled out my trusty stencils and stenciled some red hearts all over the page. Yet another example of what you can do with stencils. I promise you guys that tutorial will be coming up, as soon as they stop overloading me with homework at school. But I still love school anyways. Just sometimes the homework can be a little bit overwhelming.

This is the second page that I worked on today. It was a nice page in the first place, but I really didn't have any idea whatsoever of where I wanted to go with it. So I decided to do this. Some masking tape was already on the page. I was thinking about bailing on this page forever, and just put the layer of orange tape on top. But the masking tape was calling out to me. So I pulled it up, and I personally think that it looks really good, probably better than it did in the first place. This type of layout also gives me a good place to put a title and journaling when I actually get to that point in this particular page. :) And although that's all I have for you guys today, I'll be back tomorrow with another post here on The Creative Artist. TTFN. Ta Ta For Now.

Art Journal Pages/Spread?

Hey guys! I'm back with you guys for the second time in a row, and I'm glad that I'm actually getting around to devoting some time each day to blogging. I think that the whole "new year, new slate" deal has sort of helped me out a lot over the time. So today I was just working on some backgrounds and such, just trying to experiment with some different things on the page. These two pages are right next to each other in the journal, but I don't know if this is going to turn into a spread or not. Sometimes when I start two entirely different pages, they somehow evolve into a spread, even if I didn't initially mean for them to be like that. For some reason, that's what this page is saying to me. Doesn't it sort of look like it might turn into that? Oh well.

So basically what I was doing was some experimentation with Portfolio oil pastels and some paint scraping. On the left side, I wanted to it look like the blue in the corners and the red in the middle were mixing at the overlaps to make purple. It did end up looking somewhat like that, but instead of the two colors mixing like I wanted them to, I had to put some purple crayon where the colors met. Eh. It still works. And I do like it. On the other page, I'm not exactly sure what I did. I think I did some color scraping with a credit card as the base layer, and then added some circles/dots with the oil pastels. After that, I mixed some Mod Podge with water, and spread it over the page. While that was still wet, I added some watercolors into it. Yeah.

I would have had something a bit more awesome for you guys today, but I wasn't close to finishing ANY pages today. I started a bunch of backgrounds, but didn't complete any. Plus, I've been busy stalking the internal workings of the interwebs to find some ideas of what I want to buy at Michaels. For my birthday (Which is today! Yay!! I'm 15!!), I got a $50 gift card. But I don't really know what I want to get. If you have any ideas, leave them in the comments, and if they're not too expensive, I might consider it. I was hoping to go tonight, but I'm still not sure. Crossing my fingers over this way. :) I'll post my finds when I get them. And yeah. That's pretty much all I've got for you guys today. I wish you all the best of luck with your artistic endeavors, and wish you a good night. :D

Art Journal Spread

Hey everyone!!

I'm back here on the blog again for the next day in a row. :)

Today is just a sort of add on from yesterday's post.

I added more onto the first spread in my journal.

Actually I finished it.

It took a bunch of layers to get it this way, but I'm good with it now.

The colors didn't seem to work at first, but with enough work, anything can work really.

I like the way it works in this page.

It's pretty cool.

I had a bunch of layers already, but I like the way this looks.

I added a bunch of collage layers, and some paint.

Here's a close up of the title.

I used orange paint to stamp the title "Clueless"

I love the way the orange compliments the green of the rest of the page.

And here is a close up of my favorite part of this spread.

I had glued down a photo, and went over it a couple times with different acrylic paints.

Then, I put some paper over the top and pulled it up.

Doesn't it look cool?

I thought so.

Anyways, that's all I've got for you today.

See you guys later. :)