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.

Textured Art Journal Page

Hey guys! Sorry I was gone for so long, I feel really sorry about that. I'm actually going to go back and write all of the posts that I had planned for you guys. I've just been so busy with homework. I know that is starting to sound like an excuse, but it's the truth. It's up to you guys whether you believe me or not. Anyways. The page that I have for you today was actually a really fun page to make, and I really enjoy the way that it turned out. I was looking through a bunch of my older paintings and I came across one that I absolutely hated. I know. Horrible, right? But since I've talked about this situation coming up on multiple occasions,  I'm sure you guys aren't too shocked right now. Anyways, I took that page and I simply coated it with a layer of lime green paint. Then I let it dry.

After that, I went ahead and put a few squirts of this light turquoise color on the page. Now, I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with it yet, but I knew that I could come up with something unique. And so, I took my paintbrush in hand, and simply started spreading it out by dabbing repeatedly with the brush itself. It took a little while, but the end result is amazing. I love the texture that this technique created for me, and I'm sure that I'll be using it again. Anyways. That's all that I've got for you guys today, but I'm sure that I will return tomorrow with yet another post. Farewell. :)

Polka Dot Art Journal Page

Hey guys! Jordan is back with you guys today, and I've got something that's actually pretty cool to show you. It's this art journal page. Of course. Again. But I know that you guys love art journal posts, so that's why I'm back. I worked on this page a bunch today, and I really like the way that it turned out. I love the colors, and the way that they work so well together on the page, if you know what I mean. Lime green and black. Two epic colors, one epic color scheme. :D So yeah. Anyways, now maybe I can launch a little bit into how I made the page. It was actually really easy. I actually worked over top of another page, which I've been becoming more and more known to do lately. I took the page, and I painted over top of it with my lime green paint and a paintbrush. I had made some really random doodles on the base with a brown marker, and, as the lime dried, it started to seep through. I know that a lot of people might have put another layer of the paint down, but I'm the type of person who just likes to what happens happen. It happened that way for a reason, so let's not mess it up by trying to do it "our" way. You know what I mean?

Okay. So now let's go onto the next part of the page, which is pretty much the only other part there. But there's a little bit of depth that I want to speak to you guys about. First off, I'm obviously going to talk about the black dots all over the page. You guys have probably seen the stamp that I used to make them in the past, because it seems that I am becoming more and more fond of that stamp by the day. Every time I use it, I seem to create an even greater love for it deep inside of myself. ;) I actually made the stamp myself with a piece of cardboard that I found from a cereal box, and a bunch of fun foam tiny circles that I adhered to the box. I never clean it, I like to let the paint build up on it. When it becomes too much to handle, I'll just make a new one. It was super simple to do. Anyways. Now let's talk about the depth I mentioned. That's going to come to you in the form of the upper left hand corner. See how some of the dots are kind of almost white? Yeah. Let me tell you how I got that. I took my stamp, painted all over with the black paint, and then pressed it down onto the page. Then, there was something important that I needed to do in the other room, so I left it. Without even pulling it back up. It was kind of difficult to remove when I returned, but now I love the effect. Yeah. So anyways, that's all I've got for you today, and I hope to see you tomorrow! Adios amigos!!

Textured Art Journal Page

Hey guys! I'm here today with just a really short post. It's getting kind of late, so I thought that I could just post now and get this sort of over with, if you know what I mean. I just have a single page to share with you guys today, and it was a page that I was really enjoying working on. It's blue and green like a lot of pages that I do, except this one has a little bit of added black and a TON of texture. I don't even really know how I got the texture I did. It's kind of an odd thing; that I don't even know. It's also just a little bit disappointing. Because now I don't even know how to recreate it. I think what I really need to do is start keeping better track of what it is that I am making. Then maybe I won't forget how I did something. I did just a couple of layers on this today; very mundane layers. But I'm already getting ideas for more of them. But I do think that some of the texture comes from masking tape that I laid on the base of the page. I don't know why I put it there anymore, but I do know that I like the effect. But anyways. That's all I've got for you guys today, and I'll see you tomorrow. :)

Collage Unleashed - Odd Painting Tools

Hey people!! I'm back, and although it's very late yet again, I am here. I'm hoping that tomorrow I'll be able to get the post to you earlier in the day, but the way I figure it, later in the evening is better than not at all. Am I right? :) Maybe some Saturday I should just do a bunch of posts and schedule them to post. Then every day I can make a new one and schedule that one too. Huh. Interesting. That might actually work. We'll see. We will see. So today's post is another in my work through of the book Collage Unleashed by Traci Bautista. I've done these posts many times before, and I love how I can incorporate her techniques into my work. It makes me feel special. :) So anyways. Back to the topic at hand. What I decided to do today was sort of experiment with painting with odd tools. She has a long list at the end of Chapter 1 (I haven't worked through all of it yet, I just thought this would be a cool part to look at) of a bunch of different things that can be used to create new and unique textures. I picked three different things to work with, and added three different layers to three entirely different pages. Let's start with the chopstick, shall we?

The first thing that I really wanted to focus on was the chopstick. It's a plastic one, from a fairly nice set that we got at one of those chinese restaurants. I thought that it would be cool to try and use it for a page with texture, so I took out my trusty pallet, filled one of the channels with a nice turquoise acrylic and then just dipped the stick it. Then I just scraped it all around the page. It took a little bit of work to get it to the point where I liked it, but when I finally got there, it was definitely worth every bit of effort that I put into it. So I think that using a chopstick for texture was a great success. For sure.

The next thing I used was a toothbrush. Now, I've used toothbrushes before in my work, but they've definitely been becoming a lot more prominent in my recent pieces than they have in the past. For this page, I decided to use what was left of the blue paint from the last page, so anywhere that you see that turquoise color on this spread was done with the toothbrush. I really appreciate and respect the texture that the toothbrush gives, but personally I have found two faults with it. One, I find that I press too hard when I'm working with it and will often times work my way through the paper. The second problem with it is the fact that it just doesn't spread the paint very far. The paint gets caught up in the bristles, and won't come out, and I think I end up wasting a lot more paint than I'm using. Which is obviously disappointing.

And now for my last and final page. Here I have a spread where I added a layer of texture and color with a ball that I made out of masking tape. This is probably the most interesting texture that I have gotten thus far on the pages, even though this particular page isn't really my favorite. Basically I just took a long strip of tape off of my roll, crumpled it up into a little ball and used it as a stamp. I tried to use it to spread the paint around the page, but it just came across as messy and sloppy, which certainly wasn't the message that I was trying to convey. Obviously this page needs a lot of work, as do the rest of the pages I had here. But I am having fun experimenting and sharing it on here with you guys. And so, until we meet again, I bid you a farewell.

Altered Book Page and Index Card #3

Hello my friends! I've missed you all, but I'm back with you guys again with a few new things. I worked in my altered book today, just experimenting with a few techniques. I worked on a page that I'm doing for a one on one challenge (More on that later) and worked on the page you see above. The one thing I really like about this altered book is the size. It's not quite a full sized piece of paper, but it's not too small either. It's really cool The page above was really fun to experiment with, though I don't know if I could list all of the layers. I could try though. I started out by putting down a layer of purple craft paint. Then I put down some light pink student grade acrylics around the middle, and a little border of light blue around that. To blend it together, I put some watercolors over the top of it, and it put everything into place. Then I used a comb to add texture.

Here's a better close up of the texture. You can see where I scraped it in both directions with the comb. I love the way it looks.

And HERE is my index card of the day. I love the way this one turned out. Looks cool. There are quite a bit of layers on this, and I don't really remember them. I like the little work down in the corner. It looks cool in my opinion. Unique. And different. And totally my style. It seems that the more I work on my stuff, it just gets more like myself. :)

One last thing before I go; I am going to be doing a one - on - one challenge with Dede!!!! :) :) :) If you click on her name, then you should go directly to her blog. I love her work, and am so excited to be doing this with her!! We are doing a color combo challenge, but I'm not going to tell you what the actual colors are until I post the challenge. :) That's going to a week from Tuesday. On that same day, Dede will be posting her's as well. Be sure to go over to her blog and follow. :) I'm sure you'll like it over there. See you guys later!!

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!

Journal Crazy

Hey everybody!! I don't have as much to show you today, since I didn't work on as much today, but I do have one thing. You know that circles page I did a couple days ago? The one with the big blue stenciled circles? Yeah. Well, I don't know what came over me, but I ended up journaling over it. I don't know. I was just feeling weird, so I did. I actually did the journaling in three directions. Then I painted over it in white. The black ink lifted through the white paint, giving it a cool kind of texture. I really like the way it looks, even though I kind of liked it better before.

Here's a picture of it from a bit of a different angle, where you can see the text just a bit clearer. I know it doesn't look like the coolest thing in the world through the photographs, but it has a lot more texture in real life. I'll see you guys later! Peace.

Stenciled Art Journal Page

Hey guys! Guess what? I'm here for the day once again. :) I think the page that I've been working on today is one of my favorites. I know that I've said that pretty much every day for the past few weeks, but it's really true. It's really weird, but the more I art, the more I love the pages I've been working on. In the photo above you can see that I did a darkish blue background and then did a bunch of journaling on it. You can see it's rather rough, and I'm not being careful at all. Some letters are missing in a lot of the words, but for me, the journaling part is simply so I can get all my emotions out on the paper. It also doesn't really matter what it looks like since I normally cover it up later on anyways. After that I blended gesso over top of this layer with a brush.

And here's it after a few more layers. I put some stamping in there with a little bit of patterned paper that I somehow managed to blend into the background with paint. Then for the part that you really see the most of on this page. And that would be the stenciling. I cut out my own full stencil sheet on my cricut. I ended up with a nice stencil and a pretty big stack of circles that I can use in my journal. It's pretty cool. Basically, to do this, I placed my stencil on in a cool arrangement, and then painted all the circles white. I decided that it wasn't good enough, so I did some random circles in a light teal color. I love the way it turned out.

Just one last close up before I go. Here you can see a better example of the stenciling. You can see the texture of the periwinkle colored stamping behind the circles. I know I've said it before; several times in this post even; but I REALLY love the way this turned out. :P But I'll see you guys later! Bye!

Creative Experiments 1.3

Well, I'm back with another creative experiments post. Yeah. I've been having a lot of fun with this series, and I intend to keep it going for a while. It seems like it's such a vast variety of things going for it, that it makes it an almost unstoppable series. So I'm back for the third time with another post about experimentation with white acrylic paint. This time I was trying to use it as a substitution for gesso (making a good base) and also as a texture paste type substance. I started with the page on the left. I just used white acrylic paint and used a brush to stroke it on very heavily. Then I used the handle of the brush to draw swirls in the paint.

I made several notes about this one. Number one being that it dried very quickly, making it very tough to draw enough texture. It just didn't work very well in my opinion. I didn't like it so well. Also, the texture was the same as paint, then the texture drawings sort of merged into each other. There wasn't that much texture after it dried. The second thing I tried was setting the white paint out for a little while (a couple of hours) and THEN painting it on in the same way. It actually had a LONGER drying time, and it kept the texture. This one I was in LOVE with.

After I'd put on the base layer/experimental layer of white acrylic paint, I decided to use red, orange, and yellow water soluble chalk pastels to make a nice background to work off of. It turned out really good. I love the way the color blend so perfectly, and the way you can totally see the texture; especially on the right side. As you can see, the left side didn't really go that well. Even after I added ONE TRANSLUCENT layer the texture started to disappear. It was disappointing, but I really like the way the right side looks. Now I know that you have to leave the white acrylic out for a couple hours. And it works just fine.

Here is a bit of a close up of the right side. You can definitely see the texture in this piece; the swirls are the parts that I scratched into the paint with the end of the paintbrush. You can see it worked just fine.

And here is the finished page. I did a TON of layers on top of it. I like the way it looks, though I may just add a bit more color in yellow or orange in pastel on top of all these layers. You know? It just feels a little dull; not very vibrant. If you look at the title, you can see the words; Feed the Flames. The journaling part says: Summer 2011; A time to experiment, create, and EXPLORE!! This was for the first prompt of a free art journaling course. You can find that here: Art Journaling Course. It's a really cool course!!

One last picture before I leave today; a close up picture of the center of the pages so you can sort of see the comparison. See the difference? I love it, even though it's just an experimental page. I hope you guys liked this post; thanks for looking!!