Some of the last journal pages for this year.

These are the final pages for my year long journal.

 Week 42 is quite a simple page. I used acrylic paint for the background then added gesso stamped circles. I was in the mood for some doodles so I added the quote and then doodled the night away. It was fun to do.

 Week 43 was a fast page. I had previously glued paper napkins to the background so I used 2 stencils for apply paint. When it was dry I used a gold pen to add a quote.

 Week 44 is a collage over a blue painted background. I colored the rainbow with pencils to make it bolder.

 Week 45 is a collage from painted papers. I already had the flower petals cut out so that was the start of the idea for this one.

 Week 46 is yet another collage. I didn't know I had done so many collages this year. I painted all the leaves with one stroke of paint and outlined them.

 Week 47 was an attempt to be a little more free with my style but it is still a fairly neat and tidy design.

Week 48 was inspired by a picture I saw in a magazine. I just loved the black background that made the colors pop. It too has a lot of doodles. 

Week 49 is a workshop I bought from the Cloth Paper Scissors website. It was called Spirograph designs mixed media.

Week 50 is another collage but this one uses a grid format. I did each part of the grid separately and then stitched them all together on my page. I really love this one and can see I will do more things like this in the future.

I hope you enjoy these shared pages. My next blog post will be a brief demo of a doodle page and then I will share the video of how to put these pages together.

Doing my own thing

I am continuing with the Colour me positive challenge but doing it my own way. I always seem to get stuck for ideas if I use someone else's quotes so I usually choose my own quote for inspiration. Sometimes I pick my own theme too.

 Week 27 - the one you love. This week I was pressed for time so I kept it super simple.

 Week 28 - Glitter. I was looking at my colored pencils on my desk and thought I hadn't used them for a while so they became the inspiration for this week's page. I used 'Ice Stickles' for my glitter. At least that way it stays on the page and not on me.

 Week 29 - This weeks prompt was not for me so I did this quote that has been on my pin up board for a while. Sometimes I come across a quote that speaks to me and I save it so I can put it on a page. I wanted to add some mixed media tags so I made them and used my die cutting machine to cut out hearts and butterflies for a papercraft style page.

 Week 30 - I love this quote by Walt Disney. When I used my pencils a couple of weeks ago I forgot how nice it is to use them.  I wanted to do more coloring so this week I made a coloring page then colored it in.

This is the page I drew. If you want to download it for yourself just click on the image to make it larger and right click then save the picture to your computer. You can then print it out onto any type of paper you want and color it your own way. 

 Week 31 - No prompt this week so I drew some of the items that were on my sketching table. I usually sketch while watching tv with my husband in the evening. I collaged on the hearts and flowers for added interest. It was a fun page to do. I am still surprised that I can draw things that I thought would have been impossible ten years ago. Practice really does make you a better artist.

Art journalling is one of my year long projects.

This year I have become very involved with my textile group, teaching and working on the committee side of things so it has kept me busy. I have been creating art but not posting so now that my lessons have finished you can expect a lot more sharing from me.

I have been keeping up with my commitment to the Colour me positive challenge and have created a journal page a week. This year I have been experimenting with a lot of different techniques in my journal and as I look through the 30 pages created so far I can see a definite style is there in each technique. I always seem to do neat, graphic style work with simple backgrounds.

 Week 21- Gratitude. I collaged on deli papers that had been previously printed then I carved some stamps and used them to start this uneven grid style page. The stars, heart in a square and square star are all stamps I made. The rest of the page is drawn and coloured with paint pens. 

Week 22 - Creativity. I used a white wax crayon to draw the houses then filled them with india inks and let them blend together. It was a really fast, fun technique and I love the finished effect. 
 

 Week 23 - Attitude. I was cleaning up and found some cut outs I did for an older journal so I used them to make this simple page. The background is tissue paper and paint.

 Week 24 - What soothes your soul? For me it has to be music that has the most effect on my moods. There is nothing like putting a great song on really loud and singing along. It always makes a dark day brighter. I cut the words from scrapbooking papers and glued them to a previously painted background.

 Week 25 - This week I used the quote supplied and the extra challenge to create a silhouette. I still struggle when it comes to drawing the side profile.

Week 26 - Learning new things. The prompt this week was very appropriate for me as I spent the week away at a textile art retreat learning new things. I made a simple page about the retreat that was Fibres West. I will shortly do a post about the work we did there.

Index Cards galore.

I have been a little slack updating my blog lately. I think I am trying to do too much and it is making me freeze and not do anything. I take on lots of new projects and then get lost not knowing what I should do. I am deciding what is important to me and letting other things go but it is hard for me because once I start a project or challenge I like to finish.

week 9

  I did the Index Card a day challenge again this year. It will probably be the last year for me. Why? I just didn't find it interesting this year and so it will be one of the challenges I will stop doing.  Well...maybe stop doing because I may change my mind next June, lol. I would normally follow peoples links to their pages from the facebook group but as links were banned this year I couldn't connect with other artists like I did previously. It took a lot of the inspiration and discovery away for me and made it seem less fun because I didn't feel the need to check the facebook group as often.

week 1 periodic table

 I did enjoy making my cards and have prepped a few extras so that when the mood takes me I have a quick little card to do to get me in the mood for larger art pieces. I was going to do my own thing this year but when the first week of prompts were listed I was inspired to give them a go. As the challenge went on the prompts did not always appeal so I did my own art then. 

I have only shown a few of the cards here. I have loaded all 61 cards onto my flickr page so if you want to see the other cards they can be found here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/artygirl/

 Week 1 was drawing and this is a plan of our garden.

Week 2 was paint and all the prompts were colors so I did abstract doodles most of the week.

Week 3 was collage. This was route 66 in my town. 

 Week 4 was patterns. This prompt was exotic.

Another week 4 prompt - dramatic

 

Week 5 was mark making using stamps, tape and stickers. I didn't follow prompts this week. I used washi tape on all the backgrounds and stamped on them. I then colored and added details with acrylic paint markers. These cards were a lot of fun and something I will do again. 

Week 6 was to use a different color each day. I did a collage of similar colored pictures each day and doodled to fill in blank spots on each card. I really enjoyed this technique as well and got to use some of those random images I have been saving. 

 Week 7 was typography. I did follow the prompts again this week.

Week 8 - maps. I followed prompts this week so I could use the maps in various ways. 

 The last week was meant to be sketching but I found these picture cards in my stash and wanted to use them so I doodled backgrounds to match the photo colours. 

I enjoyed my time making cards this year but the fun of the facebook group seemed to be different this year...maybe because it has become so large. Or more likely because I didn't have time to keep up with the posts this year. I am thankful that Tammie hosts the challenge each year but it may be time for me to do something different next year. 

Documented Life Pages

 I have done a few more DLP pages in my art journal since my last post.

This one is sketched then painted with watercolor over gesso. I would prefer not to gesso the page when I use watercolor but the paper in the journal I am using draws the color right through to the other side so I have to use the gesso to stop it bleeding through all over the place. This is a simplified sketch of my front garden and home.

I used acrylics for this page. I stenciled the background then painted the woman. I used a magazine image to draw the woman and she doesn't look anything like the photo. Lucky for me it doesn't matter. The writing was initially green but it didn't stand out so now it is white. Never be afraid to change things in your art if they are not working.

The prompt for this page was time. I wanted to use a clock stencil I have so I first used texture paste through the stencil. When that was dry I painted the page with red ochre and yellow ochre acrylics. I know that purple on top of yellow makes a rusty color so I sprayed on some dylusions purple and also some moonshadow spray in a purple color. When it dried I used clear gel medium through the stencil again and let it dry. The clear gel makes the colors underneath seem darker because they look the same as they do when they are wet. I had to find some flat areas to do the writing which was hard on this textured page. I used tracing paper first for the writing to make sure it would fit. Then I just wrote out the quote in gold and outlined it with black.

Next time I will share some of the index cards I have been doing and I have a couple of textile tutorials too that I have been saving. Thanks for reading.

Lots of creativity is happening...

I have been doing a lot of creative projects lately but I have not got around to sharing it with you lovely readers. Here are some recent works from the documented life project.

 The challenge for this page was to use stitching. I gessoed my page then sprayed on some color. I use acrylic paint with the stencil and then used the same paints and sprays to make a piece of muslin colored. When it was dry I used the sewing machine to sketch out some flowers. I cut them out and glued them to the page.

The challenge for this page was to use cheesecloth. I wanted to do a simple blob animal so I stuck the cheesecloth to my page in 2 blobs, one for the head and one for the body. I gessoed over the whole lot when the glue had dried. I used some runny watercolor paint to make blobs and blew it with a straw to get a rough shape of an animal. I used black pen to turn the blobs into a creature with a big smile. Very whimsical and crazy but it was great fun to do. 

The challenge here was to use texture paste. I really like the way this page turned out. I first painted the page blue and sketched out my drawing.

 I used a palette knife to spread the paste over the bottom of the page. I love to use Golden mediums because their pastes are extremely light and don't make journal pages heavy. I used crackle paste because that is what I had and I knew it wouldn't crackle on a journal page. It only crackles if it is on a tight or firm surface like canvas board.

Next I used that orange texture tool to make the clouds by running it through the paste while it is wet. I left it to dry overnight but it usually dries very quickly, sometimes in less than an hour. After that I used sprays and paint to finish the page and added a quote.

My watercolor page for April that I added into my journal. My main inspiration for this month was autumn and Easter.

The watercolor page for May was inspired by Mother's Day and also some flowers that were blooming in my garden.

The challenge for this page was travel journaling. I sketched some of the places I had been that week. I also added two textile pieces I worked on when I went to the monthly meetings of my textile groups. I used watercolors over gesso.

I have also been doing the ICAD challenge at the Daisy Yellow blog but will share those cards another day. I hope you get the chance to be creative this week.