Thursday, May 30, 2013

Art Journal Pages

I think this is the first time this year that I've done two art journal pages in a week, so yay!

I really like this page.It started (as all of my most recent pages have) with random paper scraps covered with a thin layer of gesso., then some spray ink through stencils. The flower parts were made out of book pages and colored with a variety of media, including gel pens, colored pencils and gelatos.



This one ended up a lot better than I thought it might half-way through. I'm not sure what possessed me to use bright orange rubber stamp ink to stencil on this. Actually, I'm not even sure why I own bright orange rubber stamp ink. It was really bright and it definitely needed to be toned down, so I tried red spray ink, but I was outside and it was rather windy so instead of big splashes of red, it was just a fine mist, which helped but wasn't what I was going for. So I did purple at the top and let it drip. When that was dry I turned it over and did the same with turquoise. I couldn't think of a picture that would look good over all that, so I went with a quote, with letters cut from book pages.

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Project Life week 21

After talking last week about losing interest in Project Life, this week I feel much better about it for some reason. No idea why.

Anyway, here's week 21!


Friday, May 24, 2013

Art Journal Page

Here is this week's art journal page. The picture isn't great. I did a lot of doodling with gel pens, mostly metallic and they don't show up so well. The quote says, "My will is mine... I shall not make it soft for you.", which is from Agamemnon by Aeschylus. I came across that quote this week and it really just stuck with me. I'm not sure it goes well with the flower and butterfly look, but just because you're "girly" doesn't mean you aren't strong-willed.


Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Project Life week 20

I gotta tell you, I'm getting a bit blah about Project Life. I still love the idea, but I just don't think it's working for me. All my weeks look mostly the same. It's kind of depressing, really. I plan to continue on through the end of the year, but I think that for next year, I want to do it differently. I haven't quite decided how I'm going to do it, but I still have more than half a year to refine the plan.

For now, here's week 20:



Friday, May 17, 2013

Art Journal page: Annabelle

I seem to have stopped working on the backs of pages in my journal. After the first four pages, I started only doing a partial background on the back, thinking that I'd go back and add to it later, or if not, at least it had some color to it. The last few pages, I haven't even bothered doing that. I'm not sure why. I thought that taking the spiral out of the sketchbook I'm using would make it easier to work on the backs of pages, with them being able to lay flat. Oh well. I suppose some day I might go back and work on the backs, but who knows!

Here's this week's page. I find it odd that I'm only doing a page a week, but at least I'm doing that much. Some days I just have no inspiration or motivation at all.


This page started out rather similar to last week's page. I started with paper scraps. I stuck mostly with oranges and reds but to be honest I wasn't really thinking. I was just digging through my scraps and grabbing whatever caught my eye.


I covered the whole page with bandage/ gauze tape. No idea why- just seemed like a good idea.


Thin layer of gesso. If I use the tape again, I might skip this step, just to see what happens.


I used a stencil with large holes and put a different stencil under each shape and sprayed a different color in each section. It didn't turn out as cool looking as I was hoping and there was a bunch of white space, so using similar colored gelatos, I went around each section.


At this point I was at a loss as to what to do next, but  I remembered I had some photos left over from Project Life. Looking through them, I decided to use some pictures of my rat terrier, Annabelle. Isn't she a cutie?


To finish it off, I added her full name, Annabelle Dangermouse,  in letter stickers and rubber stamps. I like how it turned out, although I wasn't sure about it for a bit.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Project Life week 19

Well, here is this week's Project Life. I actually finished with it on Monday; I've just been too lazy to post it here.




Saturday, May 11, 2013

Art Journal Page

I thought I wouldn't get an art journal page done this week; I just wasn't very inspired. But this evening I finished up a page I started yesterday.

I really like how the background turned out. It's hard to see in the photo, but there is a fortune cookie fortune that says, "Use your abilities at this time to stay focused on your goal. You will succeed."


Here are some in progress shots:

I used lots of paper scraps. You might see more of this sort of thing in an effort to curtail my scrap hoarding. The hazy white strip on the left is a piece of bandage tape that I used to reinforce the holes I punched for the binder rings.


Very thin coat of gesso scrapped on with a credit card (mostly because I hate cleaning brushes).


Spray ink in various colors over several stencils and punchinella.


And my chick: head drawn and painted on magazine page, arms and legs from a magazine, and the dress is from a collage sheet, I think.

There's a lot of doodling that isn't really visible in the photo. I need to start scanning the pages now that I've removed the spiral wire thing and the pages are (mostly) flat, but that would involve learning to work the scanner and I just haven't bothered yet.

Friday, May 3, 2013

Art Journal Page

The spiral-bound sketch book I've been using for an art journal isn't really ideal, as it's paper is really thin - 50lb, but I'm a big believer in using what you already have on hand and spending your money on other things like paint or ink or whatever else. My husband can draw beautifully, he just doesn't anymore, he's lost interest in it, I guess. But several times since we've been married, he's bought a new sketch book and started a drawing or two and never finished them. So we've had several sketch books around that I can't stand to get rid of because hey! you never know when you're going to need a stack of sketch books (yes, I do have hoarder tendencies).
Anyway, that's my reasoning for using a journal that I'm not satisfied with. But this week, I did something that's made me a bit happier with it- I removed the spiral and replaced it with a couple of binder rings, so I can take a page out and work on it by itself. That really seems to work much better for me at this point.

Here are the two pages I've done this week.

This first one might not be finished, but I rather like it as it is. This is pieces of paper towels I've used to blot spray ink, cut up and glued down, with a bit of ink added here and there where it looked a little bare.


And this page celebrates my husbands first published photo. It was in a magazine put out by the organization where he works. It's read all over the country. We're all really proud of him. I wanted the photo to be the main focus of the page, so after painting bright colors on the background, I went over it with a thin layer of gesso, scraped on with a credit card. The fleur de lis were done with gelato through a stencil, and then blended with a make-up sponge while still holding the stencil down.