Collage in an art journal.

I did one of the lessons from my 21 Secrets workbook a while ago but didn't finish it off. It was called Media Remix and was a lot of fun. We took magazine pages and painted them. I put them together to make a journal and added magazine images for the subjects. For some of the pages I used stencils to cut shapes from magazine pages and stuck them down. It was a fun journal to make and now I am adding details and doodles with pens so I can pick it up and draw/doodle a little when the mood strikes.

Today I am sharing a few of the completed pages. Enjoy.

The painted and stencilled page. I sprayed them with the glitter sprays so they are very shiny and hard to photograph.

This page has little scrapbook gems added. The words were cut out from magazines too.

 These images come from my stash of collage pictures that I have collected over the years. I think these were from the scrapbook industry.

These flowers are from an art magazine. I added outlines as well as a few sketched ones too. This is an easy project to do, especially if you pick pictures that really appeal to you.

My little art studio.

I am posting pictures of my little studio and some of the ways I organise supplies. The biggest tip I have is to get as many drawers as you can. It is so much quicker to get supplies out of a drawer than from the bottom box of a stack. I used to have lots of stacks before I renovated last year.

 I like working on two things at once so I have something to do while one drys. I have a lot of drawers within reach of the desk so I can grab things as I need them. The yellowish drawers hold my markers.

 The other side of the room. The Ikea shelf unit holds so much stuff. I try not to overload it. It mostly has my books and scrapbooking papers. I chose a favourite colour for my room. It makes me so happy I can't wait to get in there in the morning. You can just see my computer on the right.

 This drawer unit from Ikea takes up very little floor space but holds so many supplies. It is one of the best pieces of furniture I have bought.

 I have a cutlery tray in the drawer that holds my washi tape so it sits upright and I can easily see the colour I want to use.

 This is the palette I use for my acrylics. It is a plastic container with damp sponges in it. I tuck in two layers of greaseproof paper and put the paints out on that. The damp sponges stop the paint drying out and at the end of the day I put the lid on.  Usually the next day the paint is a little runnier but I can mix in more paint if I want it thicker.  It helps a lot when I have mixed my own colours for a painting. When I finish I just throw the paper away and put clean paper in. It means there is very little wastage.

 I have my coloured pencils in plastic glasses on my desk. I put a little filler and foam in the bottom to cushion the pencils when I drop them in. Having them accessible means I use them a lot more than when they were in a drawer.

 I like to use a lot of sprays and stains in my mixed media journal pages so my husband made this shelf to hang behind the door. I sprayed each colour onto a label and attached it to the outside of the bottle so I could see exactly what the colour is like.

 My scrapbooking embellishments and beads are organised in these little tins that I keep in the cases I got from an office supply store.

 I have a lot of these drawers units that came from the same store (officeworks in Australia). I sort most of my supplies by colour. I find it easy when I am looking for something green to pull out the green drawer and look through.

 The units stack so I have all my stamps and cuttlebug plates in them too. One unit holds my scraps of paper that are colour sorted.

 This unit was made by my husband. It used to hold my son's rock collection until he moved out then I repurposed it with a coat of white paint and lots of jars.    

Being organised in the studio means I don't have to spend half my time looking for things I want to use. I love my little room. 

Make art often

 I think all artists should try to make art often. Even if you are not making art to sell, a little creativity each day can spark new ideas that you want to expand on. That is why I like the online classes because they inspire me to try things I may not have thought of.

These cards come from a 21 Secrets class with Kate Crane. It was called Journal Soup. 

 This page is done with sprays, acrylics and cut outs.
 

 Acrylics and collage. The image is one of Alphonse Mucha's designs.

I forgot to add the little red hearts to these angels. They now have them on their dresses. 

Inks and stamps on this page. 

Acrylics and hand made stamps for this one. A little home made collage as well. 

This page is transparent and stitched together. The images are sandwiched in between. 

Another 21 Secrets lesson I have done is with Jodi Ohl.

First we made a journal using an old painting for the cover. This one was my calendar picture a few years ago. Now it has a new home.

This page uses a stencil for the leaves.  The tags were printed and inked then the flowers were painted and cut out before I stuck them on here.

 This page has a tile printed background. I used scrapbooking letter stickers for some of the words. The rest were freehand drawn.  I drew the dragonflies and cut them out for this page.

None of these art journal pages is any great work of art but there are ideas here that could be adapted to larger pieces. I would really like to make a transparent journal.   Maybe soon....

Stitch and paint

Another 21 Secrets lesson I did was with Joanne Sharp. She is known as the lettering lady and taught us to stitch over our writing. We made an embroidered journal cover for a hand made journal. I love lettering and embroidery so this was a lot of fun for me. I used an old art quilt for the background.

 Ro Bruhn had us using the inside of envelopes to make flowers and backgrounds for our journal pages. I didn't have many envelopes to use but I have now collected a few more designs.

Another part of Ro's lesson was to use fun foam to make stamps. I made these daisies and used them to do another journal page.

21 Secrets 2013

I decided to join 21 Secrets again this year because there was a lot of new artists that I hadn't heard of before. I still think this type of mixed workshop is the best way to test out an instructor's teaching method and find out whether it suits me.

The first lesson I did was  with Dion Dior and concentrated on adding sparkle to your pages. We used Twinkling H2Os, silks, glitter and various other supplies.

The first page is an abstract using all the supplies. 

 

 

  The next page was a simple flower image. 

 The last page was morning glories and spiders web, designed by Dion. The web really sparkles a lot.

The next lesson I did was with Tammy Garcia. It was a watercolour workshop and had a few exercises and a completed journal page. I had fun with this and although I have done some watercolour I still learned new things.

This lesson was about blending the colours. I loved the chance to play. 

 

This lesson was about adding words to the page. I did squash mine in a little, lol. I should have chosen a smaller quote. 

 

 

This bubble writing was fun to do. 

 

For my final page I chose to do a garden theme because I like drawing flowers. I really enjoyed this watercolour playground lesson.

More 21 Secrets art works

Well my plan to share more work at once didn't work out. I forgot about all the events we had in the family over the last week or so that would keep me away from the blog.

This first picture is a fearless painting I did in the 21 Secrets class with Connie Hozvicka. It was a lot of fun and a great way to get some art done when you have no idea what to paint. I used acrylics and oil pastels. I haven't used oil pastels since I was at school and had forgotten how much fun they are to blend with. I totally loved them. 

This next painting was part of the same lesson and is a whole lot of fantasy. It is not my usual style at all but it was what appeared and it has grown on me. It is almost exclusively watercolour but there is a little bit of pencil too. When I look at these two paintings together they don't even look like the same artist did them, lol.

 These next two pages were done in a lesson with Christy Tomlinson. When I do the lessons I like to try the teacher's style to see how I like it. I quite liked the faceless style of the girls that Christy paints. It takes the pressure off and seemed to allow me to be more free with the rest of the page. 
 

I made these flowers from a mould ages ago and finally got to use them in this lesson. Very messy and great fun. I am learning to make a mess sometimes and enjoying it.

 The next two pages are from a lesson with Diana Trout. The first one was a doodle page. I like this sort of drawing, very free and relaxed. I simply draw an object with a black pen (most of them are pretty simple shapes), then go over it a second time. It looks sketchy that way and if I didn't draw a straight line the first time it doesn't matter because it looks like I meant to do it like that.

The second page involved collage on the first layer and some fish that just appeared. The words actually came out of a car magazine but they seemed to fit on the page. I enjoy doing these pages that don't really make any sense at all. It is something that I have done a lot of with the 21 Secrets course and I like looking at these pages when I want some inspiration.

21 Secrets of art journaling.

 I hadn't realised that I have been a little slack posting to my blog. I have been doing a lot of art in the 21 Secrets class but neglected to share it. Over the next few days I will try to get it uploaded.

The first class I will share was a lesson with Kelly Barton. It was a simple little journal done with any acrylics that inspired. I chose to do a little poem about a very hot summer. Keeping the drawings simple made the pages quick to do and fun to play with.

It was a great lesson and I will do it again when I feel like playing with colour. I like to have some less cluttered  pages in my journals.

The next lesson was with Martha Lever. We used credit cards to make flowers. It was not
 a technique that I will probably use again. I like painting flowers realistically and the abstract nature of these ones does not really appeal to me. At least I tried it out.

 

That is it for now but expect more from me soon.