Art journal pages...watercolor and mixed media

 I am sharing some of the watercolours that I have done in my journal each month this year. I got the idea from Gina Rossi Armfield's No excuses art journaling book.

This was June. I used some of the suggestions from Gina's book to decide what to draw and added some seasonal images of my own.

July was a cold month here in Australia so I drew some of the flowers that were blooming then.

August was warmer than usual so we saw the arrival of lots of flowers. It was difficult to limit myself to only a few.

I had a little fun with the springtime animal sketching in September.

A DLP page with the prompt about seeing clearly. I used the quote "...one can only see clearly with the heart. Anything that is essential is invisible to the eyes" to inspire my page. I gessoed and used pan pastels for colour. I added detail with coloured pencils.

Another DLP page inspired by the prompt "If you are going to be weird be confident about it". I glued patterned tissue paper to the page and sprayed it with ink. The characters are painted with acrylics. It was a lot of fun to mess about with the girl and cat.

Wild Art Summer wrap up.

This week is the end of the Wild Art Summer class. The last few lessons I did are:

This lesson was a watercolor of sunhats on stands. I wasn't inspired by them so I did one of the summer photos I took earlier in the class. I love Iced Chocolates in summer. 

 

This page is almost entirely paper pieced with a little shading added with pencils. It was a bit different for me but I really like it. 

Sandcastles for me have to have a little sea weed and shells decoration.  I used tissue paper and fiber paste on different towers to add variety to the textures. Painted with acrylics. 

A garden angel project. The brown wall is a new feature in my front garden so I included that on my page.  I really love the way this page turned out. 

A quick paper and acrylics page inspired by the teacher's sketches. 

The final lesson where I so of went along with the class. The birdbath is done in pen and watercolor. 

I had some extra pages in my journal so I filled them my ideas of summer. This one is watercolor.

 I didn't like the final class project called bloomers so I did beach shacks instead. It is paper pieced, shaded with pencil and an acrylic background.

I don't think you can have a summer themed journal and not put ice creams in there. 

My final page for my summer journal. I used some home made paper to do the hammock with a strip of funky wool along the side for a fringe. The background is the ink sprays and acrylics. 

It was during this class and another one I was taking with Jane Davenport that I realised that it is fine to do the classes in your own style. Sometimes I struggled with getting pages done because I was trying to do the same as the teacher.  When I let that go and did things that inspired me I had no problems at all. 

I also noticed that after doing several classes with the same teacher I sort of feel like the classes become very similar. Eventually you are not learning anything new and it is time to seek other things to do. I have reached that point with a lot of the classes I am in now. I will finish them because I don't like to have unfinished work nagging my brain but I am not signing up for more lessons at the moment.

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....

Where have I been? you might ask.

I am sorry I have been away so long. Just a couple of days after my last post we had some major family emergencies that have kept me from wanting to blog. Both are  resolved and I hope, done with for now, so I am back to the computer again. I have not stopped making art because it helps to keep me sane but I just haven't written about it. I finished off the Life Book lessons and I will share that today.

  

This last lesson was taught by Bonnie Rose and was meant to be a self portrait but I just did a girl with wings. I love the way the page turned out and can see how much improvement I have made since the start of the year. I am tempted to redo some of my earlier work but I won't. It is good to look back and see what has changed in my art after lessons with so many different teachers. 

When the teachers were announced for this year's Life Book I could see many changes had been made and it looked like another fabulous year of lessons with lots of new teachers. I signed up because it is so cheap for what you get. I will share some of the work I have done in my next post.

How to choose a new colour palette.

Kylie Fowler (blissful pumpkin) taught the latest Life Book lesson which was a whimisical angel. I really liked her style so this one is very similar to her example. I mostly used watercolour crayons with a little pen and marker. The green hearts are cut out of material.

 I chose the colour palette for the angel painting using this colour palette from Design Seeds (link on the right). It is a great way to use colour combinations that I don't naturally choose. I start by going through the palettes on the website while I am thinking about my painting. I wanted to use orange this time so this palette appealed to me the most. I then find 5 paint colours that are similar to the original photo but I don't worry too much if they are a little different. I make sure they all work with one and other then start painting. Why don't you give it a go? Choose a palette that appeals to you and make a journal page. Put a link to your creation in the comments so we can see how you interpreted the palette.

The next Life Book lesson was with Tam. It is a free hand drawn Mandala. I did use a template to draw the circles but the rest is hand drawn. All watercolours and pen.

Next week I am having surgery on my right wrist so I probably won't be blogging for a while unless I can work the mouse with my left hand. The worst part is that I won't be able to draw for a while and I am going to be so bored. See you after I get the cast off on October 4, fingers crossed.

Lifebook week 6

As I have not been very well I have fallen behind a little with Lifebook. Now that I am on the mend I decided to get my week 6 page finished. It was a little difficult to get motivated because I started the page a while ago. I always find it difficult to finish off something if I have been away from it.

The topic was to do a paint over collage about our achievements. I decided to concentrate on my children. I am very proud of them as adults.The first step is the collage and then I sketched in the bodies. I added a flap to my page because I knew the long quote I found would not fit onto the original page with the two figures on there.

Some of the paper stuck to itself when I folded the flap over but I was not worried about that as the paint will cover it later on. Next I blocked in the colours of the people with acrylic paint.In this photo I started to sketch the male face with a brown pencil.

After sketching in the faces I shaded the figures with waterbased markers. I also used the markers to add the fine detail on the faces. I painted the background with metallic inks that have photographed very dark here. In real life they are semi-transparent and I can still see some of the collage. The dragonflies are stamps. I printed the quote on the computer and then traced it onto the page. I did that because I wanted to make sure it would fit on the page.

Valentines heart challenge

The wonderful Jane Davenport emailed a challenge to all her online school members on Valentines Day. She wanted us to create some art with a heart in it and upload it to her album page. When I received the email it was perfect timing for me. I have been under the weather of late and unable to draw or use the computer for a while. On Tuesday I was starting to feel better and the challenge was all the encouragement I needed to get out my pencils again. I used acrylics and pencils on top of a gessoed background. The heart was coloured with pan pastels. A new product for me and I had a lot of fun with them.

Angels

As promised I have finished my angel pages in my journal and also the painting. I like doing the online courses, it gives me ideas on what to paint as well as teaching me new things.

The inspiration this week for M3 on Willowing was Alphonse Mucha. I have long admired his paintings and have used some of them in my crafts before I knew who he was.  I think his clean, soft style is closest to mine.

This was my first attempt in my journal. I was playing around with the layout, colours and the pattern in the frame. After it was finished I decided I didn't like the halo behind her head.

 

Then I decided to make the background more like a Mucha image with a lot more detail. I wanted to use Australian plants to make it more like my painting rather than a copy of Mucha's work so I painted some Eucalyptus leaves and blossoms with Kangaroo Paws on the ground. I liked the way they looked so they became part of the finished painting. 

 

I was very happy with the final piece. It is a watercolour. It is hard to see in the photo but the gold paint is quite shiny. I also painted the wings with white H2Os so they shine as well. I am going to frame this one.

There are angels all around...

My newest completed journal page for the Supplies Me course. What a wonderful time I am having over there. If I had tried to do this page 4 weeks ago I would not have had the courage to show you all, my drawings were not good then. I have improved so much already that I am really looking forward to the rest of the classes.

The page has a textured background with coloured pencil drawings. I used Distress Inks with stencils for added colour. I love to use some of the hundreds of quotes I have collected in my journals. They say what I think so much better than I can.

New journal page

I completed the first page in my art journal that I am using for the Supplies me workshop.  I used the angels from the wall quilt I had already cut up for the cover.  I stiffened the material and when it was dry I cut out the angels. The stiffening holds the angel together if I accidentally cut the stitching.

The background was a piece of tissue paper adhered to the page and painted with blue tinted gesso. I sprayed gold onto the page to look like stars then, inspired by Van Gogh's Starry Night painting, I outlined them with coloured pencil and added a couple of blue swirls.  I initially thought the blue swirls stood out too much but in the finished piece I now think they blend in a little more than I would like.