The final ICADs for 2014

The theme this week was paint. I decided to go free and not do prompts this last week. I did use book paper on most of the cards as well as acrylics.

 I highlighted a few words from the bookpaper and then quickly painted a few birds.

Another simple card made with strips of book paper.  I used Golden paints (yellow ochre and diox purple) and then finished off with mica spray. 

Angel was one of the prompts for the week so I sketched a quick one for this card. 

I used a stencil over the green paint to do the flowers, and outlined them with gold pen. I added a little gold embossing for interest. 

I used the stencils I made for the mono printing course to print my final card for the year. It turned out a little messier than I wanted but that is ok. It seems I have forgotten some of what I learned already. Lucky I have the videos to watch again.

ICAD has been a fun challenge to take part in again. It has been good to do small cards while I have been under the weather. I now want to do a few more random things so keep an eye out for more postings about that.

ICAD week 8

The overall theme for this week was doodles in markers or pen. I am not a keen doodler because it always takes so long to do. I did challenge myself to give it a go this week.

 Prompt - elephant. A simple elephant sketch surrounded by doodles. I used water based markers for most of the cards this week because the alcohol markers spread on the index cards.

Prompt - octopus or monster. I drew an octopus then filled it in with zentangle patterns.  I added shading with a lead pencil.

Prompt - rainbow.  I used fine liner markers for this card and filled them in with Tombows.

Prompt - mushroom. I have a set of three glass mushrooms that are this shape. I love it so much that I used that outline for my mushrooms that are filled with more zentangle patterns.  I love the look of zentangles but they take so long to do.

Prompt - fern leaf/tree/feather.  I picked a fern leaf out of the garden and drew a simplified version of it. I decided to experiment with different borders this week as well. I think most of these cards could be expanded to make great journal pages.

Prompt - jewel.  I had trouble thinking of something to do for this prompt so I just did some jewelry.

Prompt - turquoise.  I used a letter stencil to write the word and filled it with my last zentangles for the week or probably year, lol. Not sure why the card looks dirty here because the photo shows it with it's white background. I used to doodle this border when I was at school on a lot of my homework pages. Final week is looming. I will miss this challenge but I need to do other things too.

Week 7 ICAD

I have some more index cards to share with you. The theme this week was animals, fish and birds. It was a fun week trying to incorporate one of those things with each daily prompt.

 

 Prompt - cello, violin.  I decided to use acrylics this week and do more sketching.

 Prompt -  Kokeshi Doll. I didn't know what a Kokeshi doll was until I looked it up.  I gave her a Kokeshi style pet as well.

 Prompt -  Dala Horse.  I am using the acrylics very thinly, almost like watercolor.

 Prompt -  recipe, formula.  I forgot to add an animal to this card. This recipe has been on the net for a while. The US version uses a packet of Angel food cake instead of Pavlova Magic which is an Aussie thing.  They both contain a lot of powdered egg white that binds the cake mix together. I am not sure what you could use in other countries.

 Prompt -  purple.  I did a unicorn like this in my journal a couple of years ago so I decided to do it again. I had to make it a lot smaller for my card.

 Prompt -  Matryoshka Doll. I own two sets of these dolls so I copied the faces of one set and simplified their clothing.  The penguins must be their pets.

 Prompt - pretzel or knot. I used pencils to add some shading on top of the acrylics for this card, as I did on the previous 2 cards.

After this week I looked at my cards and thought I really should be doing things like this in my art journal. In fact I should be doing anything in my journals. It seems I haven't done any pages for a long time. After ICAD ends I am going to challenge myself to get some more fun stuff done.

Week 6

The theme this week was nature, earth, universe. I liked this theme and found lots of ideas to fill the cards especially using nature.

 Prompt - tag. I sketched a card with some flowers on then coloured it simply with watercolours.

 Prompt - lollipops. Another sketch and watercolour, this time of a lollipop tree.
 

 Prompt - green.  A very quick sketch of limes. They are so easy to draw and colour. A great idea for a beginner.

 Prompt - diagram.  I watercoloured the butterfly from a photo in a book and then added the words.  I like using watercolour on the index cards. It doesn't soak into the paper straight away and allows some movement of the pigment.

 Prompt - kaleidoscope.  I wasn't sure what the image really looked like in a kaleidoscope so I went to a toy shop and looked into one. The one I used had a triangle set up of mirrors so I could see the reflections were 6 sided, not as I thought 8 sided. I folded a piece of paper into 6ths and cut it out like a snowflake. I traced through the holes onto the card and used that as the base for my pattern. It was fun and I will do something similar again in my journal.

 Prompt - the moon.  I used acrylics to paint the background, then traced around a tree stencil. I coloured it with watercolour and added a couple of birds. Simple to do but I love the way it looks.

 Prompt - text.  I sprayed a card with black dye spray (dylusions). When it was dry I sprayed several different colours of mica sprays (moonshadow sprays). I let it dry and then used a white pen to do the writing. It looks very sparkly in person.

I have enjoyed doing ICAD again this year. It has been hard to see all the work that is being produced because there are so many people doing it this time. I look forward to catching up on all the flickr postings in a couple of weeks. 

Week 5 Index Card a Day

The theme this week was texture/stamps. I concentrated mainly on texture but also used stamps where I could. Sometimes I forget about using all the stamps I have.

 Prompt - California. My first thought was beaches but then I remembered I had these textured backgrounds I made on index cards a couple of weeks ago so I sort of did my own thing.

Prompt - red.  I used texture paste through a stencil for the background and then cut hearts out of the first card I had stamped and colored. I accidentally got green ink on it from the next card  so that is why I had to cut it up.  

 Prompt - flower bouquet.  I stamped two bouquets of flowers and colored them with markers.  I cut them put and put them together as a single bunch on another textured background.

 Prompt - coffee.  I used a coffee cup and real coffee to stamp some rings. I used a rust embossing powder on the rings. After I heated that I stamped some more rings and splashes onto the card.

Prompt - tomorrowland.  The first time we went to Disneyland we went straight into tomorrowland and got onto the Space Mountain ride. It was very scary because we had no idea that it was a pitch black roller coaster.  If we went again it wouldn't be so scary now. 

Prompt - Independence day or flag.  I was too lazy to draw the Aussie flag so I did some Tibetan prayer flags instead using embossed papers. 

Prompt - postage stamp.  I used a punch to make the butterflies from old postage stamps. I did feel like a naughty child defacing stamps at first but quickly got over that when I saw how pretty they now looked. 

Week 4 Index card a day.

The theme for this week was rainbow.  I decided to do one of the colours of the rainbow on each day. I started the week using twinkling H20s so I also used them all week to.

Prompt Beach umbrella. After I sketched and colored the umbrellas I sprayed the bottom of the card with water to make it run.

Prompt - Star Wars.  I used a stencil for the stars in the background and lightly sprayed them with water. I outlined the writing with white gel pen. 

Prompt - brown.  My favorite brown food and drink are coffee and chocolate. 

Prompt - maple leaf.  I used a gardening book to sketch some maple leaves then colored them with the paints. I only sprayed a few spots this time. 

Prompt - magnifying glass.  

Prompt - album cover. 

Prompt - robot. 

Some people doing ICAD are having trouble with the prompts. I like the prompts because usually I get an idea after a couple of minutes.  If I don't, then I think of something else to do.  If you want to join the fun with the prompts visit the Daisy Yellow website. 

Art prompts are meant to inspire but they don't always work for everyone.  If that is the case then find what does inspire you and use that to get creative. Maybe a walk outside will make you want to use flowers, birds or trees in your next project.  Keep a notebook handy so when you see something you want to try, you can write it down and remember next time you are blocked.  Have fun getting creative.

Week 3 - Index Card a Day

The overall theme this week was maps. I haven't really played with maps before and this week I got to see that is a great creative tool.

Prompt - stickers.  I simply used letter stickers on a map of the area where I live. After I did this card I realised that almost all of my adult memories are contained within the area shown. I think it will make a great journal page with a lot more highlights.

 
Prompt - roll the dice.  This card didn't work out the way I imagined but I didn't want to do it over.   I drew a lot of dice on the card then covered it with a stencil of a map. There wasn't enough black so I did the stencil twice and now wish I hadn't. It is a bit dark for me. I will try something like this again though.

Prompt - polka dots.  I punched dots out of a map and stuck them onto an acrylic painted background.

Prompt - orange.  I used watercolors to draw an aerial map of an imaginary orange farm.

Prompt - was Harry Potter but I wanted to do a map of my street.  I did rough sketches of all the houses and colored them with watercolors.

Prompt - candy wrapper.  I used chocolate wrappers glued to stiff paper. I traced the states of Australia and cut them out.

Prompt - repeating pattern.  I used punches and maps to make my repeating pattern.  I added a watercolor shadow around each shape to make it 3D.

This was a fun week and great inspiration for several art journal pages in the future.

ICAD week 2

 The overall theme for the second week of ICAD was collage. It is something I like to try occasionally but not really a favorite technique for me. I do like using these challenges to force me to try different techniques, otherwise I would just sketch or paint everything.

Prompt - mandala.  I have never been a fan of mandalas so this was a challenge for me. I used punches to cut shapes out of magazine pages. Some of them are layered. I put the tiny star shapes on top of some of the circles and also used them for the centers of the orange flowers shapes around the edge. The centerpiece is two cut out stars over a circle cut out.  I used a little white pen to add some extra details. The hardest part was gluing down all the pieces.

 Prompt - alphabet. I was making soup last week so the idea of alphabet soup popped into my head.  I cut a picture of soup from a magazine and put it onto a plain background. The letters were added with rub-ons. I did color some of the letters with marker to make them look like they were in the soup. 

Prompt - The Beatles.  I scanned a strawberry painting I had done years ago and printed it out several times.  I cut out the strawberries and glued them to the card.

Prompt - toy camera.  I imagined the photos you might see taken with a toy camera. I used magazine images to make the pictures and added childlike writing.

Prompt - paisley.  This is probably my least liked textile pattern. I think it has to do with the paisley quilt I had as a child.  I kept this card simple and used scrapbook paper and letters.  Another thing gone from my stash.

No prompt for this one.  I just felt like doing a torn collage landscape.  I have been using an old Somerset Studio magazine for most of my collage this week. It is great to get pieces of paper that look like I have painted them. I colored the edge of the torn paper with a brown watercolor crayon, it helps tie the whole thing together. 

Prompt - magenta.  I tore out petals and centers from my magazine.  To get the petal shape I tore around my finger at the top and then tore the sides in a bit. For the centers I used a pencil to draw an oval on the back and tore along the line.  I added a little fine-liner around the centers and for the border. Simple but interesting to look at. I may turn this one into a series of journal pages in different colors, it is my favorite type of collage.

If you haven't started Index Card a Day it is not too late to join in the fun.