Artful Journeys - Week #32

Hi everyone, and I hope you have enjoyed your weekend.  Summer is in full swing in north Texas and we are sweltering in the heat, hibernating in the A/C when we can, and suffering while we are out.


This week at Artful Journeys, our prompt for you is technique based and we're giving you a couple of different options!  Create a journal page using a watercolor & salt resist technique or rubbing alcohol fade.

I actually did both of these techniques, but ended up loving my watercolor/salt resist technique I made a full single page spread out of it.

I started with a 9x12" sheet of 140 lb cold press watercolor paper, wet it quite heavily and went to town with a dark purple, red and brillant blue pan watercolors.  I also used a little grape Dylusions spray ink.  Working quickly, this time I used rock salt as the resist.  I have used many different types of salt, but this was my first time to use rock salt.

I loved the way the rock salt left little color blobs around the area where it sucked up the color and I saw eyes. Eyes in the night.  Eyes everywhere.  Reminded me of nightmares as a child of things that go bump in the night, so I kind of went there.  Can't you just see them peeping through the bushes at you??

I drew the tree with a #3 round brush and black liquid acrylic paint and likewise with the lettering.

Hope you like it!  It was fun, as always. Can't wait to see what fun your techniques bring to you!

Stay cool, and as always, stay artful!

~~ARTY AUNTIE / Betty

ARTFUL JOURNEYS - WEEK #21

Wow! Memorial Day is here already.  The jump starter to summer, vacations, heat, swimming, family reunions, gatherings and all the fun stuff we cram into a few short months. But this weekend amidst all the food and fun, we need to stop and remember those who have gone before us and made the ultimate sacrifice for us and for our country.  I give thanks to them and remember them in my prayers. Nearly every generation of my family has served, and now the younger ones are following. From the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, WWI, Korea and WWII, my family has proudly served, and continues to do so. We had no one in the immediate family serving in Vietnam, but we are grateful to those who did and made those sacrifices.



Meet my handsome great nephew, Joseph, who is in the Navy, currently stationed  in South Carolina.  We are so very proud of him and the commitment he has made.  He was home on leave this week and present today (Saturday 5/23) for his sister's wedding shower, so he got lots of loves, kisses, hugs, "atta-boys", and congratulations from all of us. He left in December for basic training, followed by another school and now another, so we were all very excited to see him.  This great Auntie could not be more proud of this young man.  We are seeing so many wonderful and positive changes in his life and know that he is going to have an amazing career in the Navy, and all our buttons pop off with pride for his strong faith, his leadership skills, maturity, honor and integrity.  Well done, Joseph!

Let's get started on this week's prompt -- CIRCLES. Lots of circles. I had a lot of fun with this.  We love circles in our ARTFUL circle. <wink> Mostly I played with circles this week, almost always very late at night (or should I say morning) while trying to unwind so I could go to bed and try to sleep.

This first spread is all wonky circles -- perfectly imperfect.  Sure, I could have used my circle cutters or punches, or even a stencil. But I needed some down time with just me, my pen and a couple of other mediums while chillin' in the recliner.  I worked on a piece of 9x12 Bristol. The circles were all first drawn out with a Sakura Gelly pen, then I painted each circle and circular intersection with watercolor.  I followed by embellishing with Caran D'Ache NeoColor II and smudged some areas with my fingers and others I wet with a #6 pointed round brush.  I then added more NeoColor II to the background and did wet all of it with both a wide flat and a #6 pointed round.  Lettering with a white Signo Uniball.

After I finished this one, the next evening I still felt the need to make some more circles.  So I did. Again, nothing fancy or inventive.  Just focusing on the circles, the pen and the paper. The circles started by making random circle marks all over the page with a Sakura Gelly pen. Intersecting some, others not.  This time, I went with specific color families of blues and greens with my trusty watercolors and NeoColor II's.  Lettering with a #1 fine liner brush and white acrylic paint, varying letter sizes, density and style to create a little bit more interest.

Both of these pages have been tipped in to my Canson mixed-media journal.  I chose to do them independently, thinking I might actually cut them up, but decided to just include them in my journal. Looking at them makes me happy.  And they really, really, REALLY helped me to relax when I needed it the most.

ICAD-Warm Up #8

Also this week, as a warm-up to ICAD 2015 at Daisy Yellow, "circles" was one of the warm up exercises.  If you don't know about ICAD (Index Card A Day), this is a fun thing to do in the summer to force yourself to create art every day during the month of June and July.  ICAD starts June 1st, and this is my third year to participate.  We're not making fancy art. It isn't a competition.  It's more about the DOING. The CREATING.  We are using ordinary index cards, that are inexpensive, flexible and we use whatever supplies you have on hand.  This is the brainchild of the remarkable Tammy Garcia and she is quite inventive with her 61 days of prompts.....making us push the envelope and often think outside the box with technical and creative challenges.  Sure some of the prompts may be something we've done before, but for those, I try to do something different with them.  Pushing the envelope or getting out of my comfort zone. Some prompts can take just a few minutes to complete, others perhaps a little more time, but none are so challenging that you cannot complete them each day during the two month challenge.  So if you are interested, click on the linky over there on the right side of my blog and check it all out. Maybe you will play too.

ICAD 2015 - Warm Up #8

I couldn't do just one of these either, and actually my page for this week's prompt was inspired by the first one I did for ICAD, as you can see above.  This second image is a watercolor blending technique I also learned from Tammy at her Watercolor Playground workshop.   Very relaxing, blending these very wet watercolors.  I need relaxing right now.  And this week, circles came to the rescue.  For  both of these, I am using the plain manila tab-top 4x6" dividers.  I like the thickness of them for use with wet media.

So there you have it.  My circles for the week. Soft. Wonky. Imperfect.  And it's all good.  This week was more about play and less about thinking. Just the doing.

Now just do yours.  Get some relaxing done yourself, then show us your version of this fun!

Be sure and see what Melody, Tamie and Shana are doing by visiting their blogs. You can find the links over at ARTFUL CHICKS.

Happy arting!

~~Betty

ARTFUL JOURNEYS - WEEK #19 "WRITE A LIMERICK"

We're having some writing fun this week at Artful Journeys and are asking you to write a Limerick and incorporate that into your journal.

I know many of you will balk at this exercise, but seriously, it is fun and the rhyming is easy. Take a couple of minutes of your day, and look at some examples of Limericks on Google and just follow along with the strict rhyme scheme of AABBA.  Incorporating writing and words into our art journals is difficult for many people.  Often, I find myself just creating art without adding meaningful words....my words.  I actually do journal every day, but do so in a specific journal that I use solely for writing, that periodically has art incorporated into it.  Not the other way around.

When we came up with this prompt, an idea for it immediately popped into my mind and once I set pen to paper, I wrote mine is less than 5 minutes, after spending just a couple of minutes getting the poetic meter in my head by reviewing some classic Limericks on the internet.  A couple of tweaks and I pronounced it done.  Sure, I could have spent hours tweaking and refining, but as always I have to move on to other projects.

My limerick:

There once was a man named Bart

Who loved creating his art.

But when the wind blew, 

Out the window the canvas flew 

Because the wind was only Bart's phart!

Background is sponged craft acrylic in Khaki and Tan. Bart was drawn direct with a bold Signo Uniball pen and then colored with watercolor paints. Letters embellished with watercolor.

I hope you get a little chuckle and have fun playing with limericks and then incorporating your own limerick into your journal. I did.  Just looking at my wonky Bart and the limerick makes me laugh. It even made the hubs have a good little chuckle.

Make it a great week, and I can't wait to see yours!

Betty
aka Arty Auntie

Week #4 - Artful Journeys

Wow!  The whole month of January has just flown by!  We are already to week #4 and our prompts this week are:  "Favorite Sports Team" and/or "Under The Sea".

 When we came up with the initial prompt, we were thinking about the Super Bowl, the Pro Bowl and all the fun things that happen with sports in the winter time.

We aren't big sports fans in my house, unless you count the hubs' total fascination with Nascar.  Not my cup of tea (either one).  Now, if the Dallas Cowboys were playing in the Super Bowl, I would so be right in front of the television cheering them on.  But since they literally dropped the ball during championship game, the fizz went out of my brewski.  No fun for me if the hometown team isn't playing, so it is easy to get involved with something else.

I racked my brain for ideas.  No mojo.  I let it rest and went on to something else.  Tick tock. The clock was ticking and time was running short.  So just a short 3 days ago, I struck upon this idea to run with the "no sports" thing.  I finished it last night.  Nothing like waiting to the last minute, right? A deadline is a great motivator!


SUPPLY LIST

• Liquitex Heavy Body Acrylic Paint - Chromium Oxide Green, Brilliant Yellow Green
• Craft acrylic paint - White, Bright Yellow, Spring Green, Caterpillar
• NeoColor II watersoluble crayons - black, cadmium red, dark blue, pink, green, orange, bright yellow
• Watercolor paint
• Black China marker
• Copic Marker in Leather
• Chipboard letter "N"
• EK Success 1-1/4" circle punch
• EK Success small oval punch
• Sakura Gelly pens in black, red, dark brown & white
• Bold Uniball Signo pens in Black & White
• Faber Castell black Calligraphy nib pen
• Corrugated cardboard as a stencil
• Green tinted sisal twine
• Alene's Tacky Glue
• Credit card for sraping
• Medium flat sable brush & #4 filbert brush
• Vintage lady image found on Pinterest

When I initially started the background in greens, I was thinking about turf grass.  If I had it to do over, I might choose another base color. But there it was, and I just kept letting it unfold organically.  I added 3 different greens and scraped them all on this way and that with the edge of a credit card.  Then I added some stencil marks all over it with a dark Pine Needle craft paint with the inside "corrugated" part off a coffee sleeve I salvaged from Starbucks that I just painted with the acrylic paint and stamped away here and there all over the page.  I find tools and inspiration everywhere.....especially when drinking coffee!

I kept looking at that page. Now what?  I knew I had printed off some vintage ladies and began rummaging through my vintage ladies box to find one that suited my mood and attitude. There she was.  I snatched her up, fussy cut her out (she was on slick cardstock).  I used some NeoColor II's to add color highlights to her to make her stand out a little more on the page.  I adhered with Alene's Tacky glue that I spread on very thin, and used the edge of a clean gift card to spread it out and smooth it down.

How to tie in the sports?  I'm not loving this prompt at all and still wasn't much enthused about it.  Then it hit me.....what about some floating balls like my lady was thinking about all those sports and how much she detested them.  So, punch out some circles and an oval.  Baseball, basketball, soccer ball & football.  Researched Google for some images.  I found drawing the soccer ball the hardest of all.  You wouldn't think it would be so difficult until you put that pencil down.  But I managed to get something that sort of resembled a soccer ball.  I chose these because their images are so iconic and easily recognized...as opposed to a ping pong ball or golf ball, which I knew I would never get to look like a real golf ball.  LOL So I got all that going and done and affixed to the page again with Alene's Tacky Glue, smoothing out so there would be no wrinkles.

I didn't like all that dark green, so I mixed up some white and added a dot of Chromium Oxide Green and Brilliant Yellow Green together and brushed it on in broad, loose strokes sort of down the center left of the page.  I needed a place to do some slow journaling.

There.  That was better, but I pretty much covered up all of the corrugated stenciling.  Oh well.  Such is art journaling!

Still boring.  I dipped my finger in some of the leftover mixed-up paint and made some dots around the page with my index finger. Dried with the trusty heat gun.  Remember I am in a hurry now... whipped out the trusty white and black Uniball Signos and went around some of those dots with some circles and made some more.  Better.

What to say?  I wanted whatever she said to be a little snarky, a little sassy and a whole lot of me.  I don't like to sweat.  I am not good at sports that require sweating.  (I do excel at water sports!) So, I just started, thinking of a sweet southern belle sitting on the veranda on a crisp, cool evening sipping a little mint julep.  Ahhhhhh, that is heaven.  So I just started with her talking, "No, sports for me, darlin' -- I don't DO "sweat."   That was pretty snarky and sassy, right?  Can't you just visualize her sipping away and laughing at the boys playing tag football on the lawn??  I surely can.  She tires of watching all that activity and asks "Pass the mint juleps please".  There.  That's it.  That's enough, and it says it all, at least to me.

I had a big blank space left at the bottom so I doodled up some quirky little flowers and colored them in with NeoColor II's to represent her lovely garden, just a step off that veranda.  The smell of blooming flowers wafting in the air against the crisp, cool evening.  Heaven on earth.

Should I doodle a border?  No border?  Paint it?  <sigh>  Back to the stash.  Digging. Rummaging. Aha!  There's a big spool of green dyed sisal twine.  Dark green.  Perfect contrast.  Since I love swirly, swoopy lines, I made some squiggly glue lines with Alene's Tacky Glue and began to cover that with the sisal twine.  Perfect. Great contrast on the page. Texture.  A little more visual interest.

All in all, it turned out rather well, considering my disdain for participating in or watching organized sports that require sweating or large crowds (I don't suffer those well, either).

As an alternate prompt - in the event YOU don't do sports either, we give you "Under the Sea" to work with.  I have previously done some journal pages with this theme, so decided to pass on doing another.  Here's a peek at a collaborative journal page with this theme that I did much earlier this year.  The page owner, Martika Patton did the watercolor background, and I added all the fishes and creatures from stamped images I had received in Happy Mail, coloring with Copic Marker and then fussy cutting them all out and applying to the watercolor page.  I then sent it along to the next person to add their "touch"

As an alternate prompt - in the event YOU don't do sports either, we give you "Under the Sea" to work with.  I have previously done some journal pages with this theme, so decided to pass on doing another.  Here's a peek at a collaborative journal page with this theme that I did much earlier this year.  The page owner, Martika Patton did the watercolor background, and I added mermaid, the fishes, & creatures from stamped images I had received in Happy Mail, coloring with Copic Marker and then fussy cutting them all out and applying to the watercolor page.  I then sent it along to the next person to add their "touch"

Here is a padded mailer I did with an "Under the Sea" theme in acrylics with a cute (and el cheapo) little fishy foam stamp and a Uniball Signo pen in white.

Have a look at what Melody Elzy, Tamie Wilson & Lynn Jackson contributed to this week's prompts on our blog:  Artful Chicks

Can't wait to see what you all come up with this week.  Be sure and share your images on the group feed at Artful Journeys~!!

Inspiration from Kandinsky

Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky is my all-time favorite abstract painter. He was an influential Russian painter and art theorist and is credited with painting the first purely abstract works.
At Artful Mail Groupies I set up an ATC swap entitled Kandinsky with Jazz and a Twist. The idea behind it was to put on some jazz and start groovin' to the tunes and get busy making magic. The twist, well, it was a resist. They had to use a resist as part of their creation.

Lordy, mercy me, you would think I asked them all to jump off a cliff! Ha!  Seriously, abstract art is difficult for some people. And all abstract really is - is the absence of similarity to any real object. Period. Myself, I find nothing hard about that concept. A Kandinsky I shall never be. But I still love his art and his use of color. And of course, the geometic shapes.

The thing with Kandinsky is that he was clearly enamored with geometry and geometric shapes. It is evident in so much of his work. He was a prolific artist, and not everything he did was in abstract. 

This journal page in my "everyday" journal was made from what was leftover from the art I created using watercolor, with white crayon as the resist and black acrylic paint. I cut all my ATC's from this piece and have sent them out into the world to my assigned swap partners. I hope they enjoy my trading cards as much as I enjoyed groovin' to some Quentin Marsalis and playing with my paints. ~~bgr

The Stars at Night

Our prompt this week in Journal 52 was "Stars".  Being the proud Texan that I am, only one thing came to my mind, and it came immediately.  I had painted this watercolor piece a couple weeks ago and was letting it rest, deciding what, if anything I needed to do with it.  It was embellished with Sakura Gelly pen and to me, it is perfect.  Images of a clear, summer Texas sky resound in my mind and I am transported to summers as a girl, laying in the grass, with a warm summer breeze blowing while I gazed at the stars and dreamed of places far away.  The adjacent page in my journal has been left blank for recording the gorgeous week we are having here in north Texas.   Are you transported with this image to a simpler time and place?