A little Journaling

Wow - it's been quite a while since I posted anything.  Busy, busy.  Plus any art I've had time to do has pretty much been for an art group project we have going this year that is sort of secret for now.  More on that in a few months....

I did take some time recently to work on the last two pages in a little art journal - altered book that I'd started two years ago and never quite finished.  I really enjoy the style of journaling that Teesha Moore teaches so thought I'd give that a try on these pages. It really is a relaxing way of working - no planning ahead of time.  Just brushing on some acrylic paint for the background and when that's dry, adding some strips cut from various magazine pages to make the border.  Add a little shading with some of the newish Pan Pastels and a focal figure - made up of several different pictures from magazines.  I added a saying I'm fond of and a lot of doodling with my milky pens to add the finishing touches.  I really like the result and think I'll try another page or two or three...what do you think?

Journaling (cont. 4)

Well these are some of my latest pages. Anyone who knows me knows I love the Wizard of Oz and now all the prequels to that story written by Gregory Maguire, like "Wicked", "Son of a Witch" and "A Lion Among Men". So of course, I had to have an "Oz" page in my journal. Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West is my favorite character....

The whole swine flu outbreak and the concern over it becoming a pandemic has had me really worried, so doing a spread on it helped me deal. The middle set of pages are a blatant plagarism (or is that only when it is the written word?) of a Zettiology artist/goddess - Teesha Moore, art work. I'm not intending to sell it or anything, so hopefully my "copying" won't be frowned upon. I really just admired her style and wanted to try my hand at it. I'm also NOT a fan of orange, so that seemed the perfect color for me to force myself to use. I really like how it turned out. Of course I had to do a bunch of doodling in the dresses and in the edge borders, but that is just me. Any chance to doodle.... Trying this taught me a number of different things and I love, love, love, her style of writing in her journal pages. So fun and interesting.

Art Journaling (cont. 3)

The copper cobweb page is a tip in. Something I had never tried, but had admired in other artist's journals. The delphiniums are from my garden and yes - they were really that blue Decided to try painting some on the reverse of the pages. I also tried my hand at a crackle technique on these pages too. See the yellow peeking through the navy, night sky? On the pages with the painted flowers, you can see, (if you click on the picture to see the larger size) that I glued down some tiny blue/green and copper round bits. Those bits are actually the waste left over from computer boards being created and holes punched. My sister Cindy, and BIL Kelly, kindly brought these (and other types) to me after learning that I used all sorts of leftovers to create art. They told me that what looks like copper is, in some cases, actually GOLD. Whoo hoo! Maybe I should insure my book..... :-) The lime green page is one I did after my baby sister, Carrie, told me she was considering becoming a Druid. So of course I had to investigate it and learn what I could about it. Sounds like a perfect type of religion for her. It reveres all that is of the earth - wind, sky, water, trees, animals. And it's primary tenet seems to be doing good things for and to one another. Be the good example you want others to be. Very interesting.

Art Journaling (cont. 2)

I had to journal at least one page about Obama. I had admired him for several years ever since seeing him on a talk show. He just made so much sense and was very unlike the normal "politician" that we are all sick of. Was so tickled when he actually decided to run for President and even more thrilled when he won! Hope that he keeps his word now and helps our country get back to being the highly esteemed nation it once was. The page with the lady in blue with the waving hair is my attempt at doing the style of art journaling that I've seen Susan Shie do on her journal quilts. I knew I'd never do a whole quilt like she does, so took her style to my art journal pages instead. It was fun, but (and I know my friends won't believe this of me) way more detailed and intense than I normally like to do! Give me a mindless doodle any day!

Art Journaling

I've been working on this art journal for more than two years. It started out to be a journal that I'd use for my art group and the monthly prompts we'd agreed on. That went out the window pretty quickly for me and it turned into the place that I captured cool quotes and sayings and practiced different techniques and looks that I admire from other artists. I only need to finish one more spread and then the covers so decided I'd get some of the pages scanned and shared here now. See what you think.

Susie art

Have you ever seen the wonderful, folksy quilts created by
Ohio artist, Susan Shie? She calls her art "outsider" and boy does she have a definitive style all her own! She has been "out there" and way ahead of the pack for as many years as I've been quilting (25+ oh my!) When I was doing all the traditional quilting stuff, Susie was making some fabulous pieces with super heavy quilting, thick battings, and lots and lots of embroidery, beading and mirrors. Now that I'm into some of the more "artsy" quilts, Susie has moved on ahead again and is creating huge narrative journals on her quilts. They are still very folksy in form with whimsical figures and pictures all over them. And Susie's painting them with the use of an airpen, which is similar to an airbrush, but with far more control. Anyway, I just love her journal quilts but know I don't want to invest in the equipment or time to do it her way, so I sort of improvised and created a small 8 x 10 size piece on card stock. It was my friend's birthday so I decided to do it using all the "aging" quotes I could find and turned it into a birthday card for her by scanning and reducing it to a card size afterwards. It was a lot of fun to try.

Attempt at acrylic painting

Well, I went and fell in love with Misty Mawn's style

of painting and am trying my hand at it. Not the greatest initial results, but I'm progressing a bit. This is my third one. I think what I love most about her style is the ghostly, eerie skin tones and for some reason I just cannot seem to get them right. Since taking a class with her anytime soon is out of the question financially, I'll just continue to muddle through. It is fun to do though. The background of this piece started out as a great collaged background paper that my friend, Lill Mederak created and traded with me a couple months ago. Thanks Lill!

Tribal Inspiration

Isn't it fun to get inspiration for something you love to do from the most unexpected places? I was recently looking at some lamp worked beads on line and came across some that are done using various aboriginal designs. No - I'm NOT going to try my hand at lampworking on top of everything else I can't seem to say no to! But the swirls and circles and undulating snake-like shapes really spoke to me so I just had to doodle with them. Here's my first attempt. This was done on white watercolor paper using the Faber Castell Pitt Artist pens in both the brush size and the S size for the tinier detail stuff. I think I'll have to play more with these sort of designs and I think I really want to try doing it on top of some of my hand dyed watercolor paper too.

Doodle, doodles, everywhere!

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Are you sick of seeing my doodles yet? Too bad! Because I'm having way too much fun with these! My close friends know that I love Halloween, hence the witch ATC! And along with that goes a love of the "Wizard of Oz" and now the "Wicked" series. These book pages are a great place to house some of the great quotes I've been collecting on scraps of paper for years. The black spread here started with the quote, then sort of evolved into an Oz spread. I hadn't intended it to have any color at all, but when I thought I was finished, I just had to add the red glitter to Dorothy's shoes! And I'm not a big fan of glitter, but how else do you get ruby slippers to sparkle?!

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Oh - I should tell you about the pens I've been using so far...I'm in love with this gel pen made by Pentel, called EnerGel. It goes on so smoothly and is a dream to even just write with. But alas, it isn't waterproof so when I'm going to add color over top of it, I have to resort to the more expensive but waterproof, Staedtler or Micron pens. I do like the really fine lines I get with these pens though. The Pentel is a .5 mm pen, while the other two come in a variety of sizes and I like the .01 the best. Really, really tiny lines and doodles are possible with them!

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Then of course, I had to do more bugs! I hope you can see these close up to see all the little doodling going on inside the bug shapes.

A fellow artist and new friend, Colleen McGinty, works for Faber-Castell and she kindly sent me a couple sets of their markers to try for my doodling, so they will be used for my next doodles. I'll let you know how they work! Right after I get done soldering some new pins I have in progress...are you starting to see why I called this blog "Art Frenzy"? LOL!

Doodle ATC's

Here are some of the ATC's I've been doing in spare moments. I do these in the car at lunchtime while listening to books on my MP3 player. I even keep a few blank ATC sized cards next to the phone at work for those times when I'm on perpetual hold! Now my boss won't have to wade through my doodles on the sides of all the invoices we pay! The eyes may look a bit odd and truly are not my normal thing to draw, but I saw another artist drawing eyes and thought what a good way to build your skill at drawing parts of the body...and DOODLING at the same time! The colored ATC's here were done with more of the ColorBox Cat's Eye pigment ink pads. I did find though that if I put the colored ink on last, it sort of greys out the nice black gel pens I'm using. And if you put it on the card first, you have to give it a few days to dry really, really well, or the gel pens don't want to write over it.

Doodling.....

Oh boy - don't read this if you don't want to become addicted to doodling like I have! If you love details this will be right up your alley! One of my friends, Lou McCulloch shared her book "The Humument" with our club some time ago. I fell in love with this book and all the lovely "doodling" that the author, Tom Phillips did over top of the pages of an old Victorian novel ("The Human Element"). I was inspired to try my own hand at "found text" and "found poetry" - obliterating most of what was on the pages originally and only leaving some (or sometimes none) of the original text while adding my own art on top and around it. I enjoyed playing with trying to make a free-form poem out of the original text, but for me, the big draw to this genre of art, is the doodling. I feel that I am primarily a left brained, organized, toe-the-line sort of person. I work with numbers and facts all day in my job and that organizational bent of mine follows me into my personal life as well. When I'm doing any sort of art, I feel like the right brained part of me kicks in goes to war with my left brained, tightly organized self, trying to burst free of the "rules" I impose on myself. This doodle art, as I've come to call it, allows both parts of me to meld nicely and feel right at home! And the tiny little patterns I draw on the pages is very relaxing and stress-free and sort of....well....mindless! I'm definitely addicted to this and have even taken to carrying ATC sized cardstock in my purse to "doodle" on. I'll post some of those here too for you to see. Hope you're inspired to give this a try too!