Sunny Flowers

I had started this background a number of days ago and this past Wednesday evening I couldn't help but go outside onto the deck to start filling in the colour.  It was 8:00pm and the sun was still well above the horizon so I took my book, paints and tunes and had a very pleasant evening.

I did end up coming inside to finish things up and put the words on.  I think I need a lot of practise blending colours - some of the colour changes on these flowers are pretty "square" and abrupt.  Oh well, practise, practise, practise!

Create something everyday - even if it's something you've created before.

Joan

"Art is a natural as sunshine and a vital as nourishment."

MaryAnn F. Kohl

Journals and Canvas

 Today is Inspiration Wednesday with Donna Downey, and I haven't even posted the last page spread that we did.  We used paper napkins to cover the spread and then embellished it just a little bit so the napkins weren't covered too much.  I added a few punched butterflies with glitter bodies and a canvas tag which I stamped a sentiment on and then sewed little metal letters of my "word of the year".

I've also been taking an on line abstract flower painting class with Donna Downey.  I have probably posted the "practise" pieces I did - but this one is on canvas.  It's a wee bit lopsided, but not too bad.

With the paint that was left over from the above flowers, I covered a canvas for a background for ….something.  I haven't quite decided what yet - zentangles, a mandala, a garden.  I'm not sure.  I'll just be leaving it in view in my art room until something hits me.

Create something everyday - even if you don't finish it right away.

Joan

"Drawing is exercise for the restless mind."  Tim Burton

Journal Work

I worked in three different journals one day over the weekend.  This page is in my Lyrics Book and is the lyrics to a song by Mercy Me called Flawless.  I didn't intend the title to be the focal point - it's just the main part of the chorus.  I do like how this page turned out especially the gold leaf on the sides of the cross.

I know that I want to put some writing on this page - but I'm not sure yet what I want to say about these ladies in relation to me.  I love how the spiral just to the right of the middle of the page came into being.  I didn't notice it until I had posted the picture and was looking at it.  There are a lot of layers on this spread - spray ink, paint and molding paste.  Lots of fun.

Create something everyday

Joan

"Art is the most intense form of individualism that the world has known.

Inspiration Wednesdays

I'm always excited for Wednesdays to see what new things we'll be doing with Donna Downey - and to watch her very entertaining videos.

I liked the layout for this page - brown paper along the bottom, "bleeding" tissue paper on top with the colour extended into the white area.  I also got to use some of my specialty paper to and text to collage a bit.  

The stencil we were using was about perception, so I found some big eyes in my stash to add to the ephemera.

It was fun "breaking up " the stencil - separating the words onto different areas of the page.  I had to work on other things in-between applications of the molding paste - I've learned for bad past experiences that it's better to be patient than to rush.

Once the molding paste was dry I added some acrylic paint mixed with a glaze medium to cover the words and help bring out their texture.

This portion of a spread was done prior to the one above.  I was happy to use the lotus stencil because I had used it on a canvas and wanted to see how Donna worked with it.  I like the gold on these pages, but I need work on the lotus!

Create something everyday,

Joan

"Art is never finished, only abandoned"  Leonardo daVinci

Greens and Blues

I do have a hard time with NOT using this colour palette - blues and greens, especially bright green and turquoise just make me happy.

Anyway - This spread is in my lyrics book - a book I'm creating with song 

lyrics from songs I enjoy and mean something to me.  This one is by Toby Mac and all the little banners fit well with the lyrics.  Now that this part is done, I will put in an inclusion with all the song lyrics on it.

A couple of weeks ago I went to a scrapbook store, Urban Scrapbook, and took one of their art journal painting classes.  It's something I have never done before and I had a good time doing it.  I had to adjust my little vase because everyone else's books were rectangular and mine is square.  I looking forward to going back.  Making those little flowers - or the flowers in general was a bit nerve wracking - so it was good for me.

Create something everyday.

Joan

"I think that one's art is a growth inside one.  I do not think one can explain growth.  It is silent and subtle.  One does not keep doffing up a plant to see how it grows."

Emily Carr

Time...

I had a lot of fun working on this piece, although it took a while before I knew what was going to evolve.  The canvas sat for quite a while with the collage of watches on a white canvas.  I finally added a dark wash over the watches and the canvas and left the huge black watch out of the mix.  As soon as I stuck it in a "Rule of Threes" spot, things began coming together quite quickly.  I added the black molding paste of clock pieces and "punched out" the gold pieces.  Once I had picked out a quote and decided to use my Big Shot to cut out letters it was a done deal.  I used my Stampin'Up! gold foil paper for the word "Time" and for the gold pieces.  I'm very happy with the way this one turned out.

Create something everyday.

Joan

"Art is not what you see, but what you make others see."  Degas

Mission Inspiration for February

I've been enjoying doing these little missions with a list of 10 prompts to go through that need to be incorporated into the piece.  So far I've read the requirements and then watched Mike Deakin's video and I haven't veered much from what he's done.  So, I think for the next one I'm just going to read the prompts and go from there. It's always up to personal interpretation anyway - right!

Create Something Everyday.

Joan

" If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced."  Vincent Van Gogh

More Doodling...

A couple weeks ago I was working with Dylusions Spray Inks, but I was painting some lines (dribbles) with the inks.  So I had squirted a little of each ink colour into a little plastic container.  When I was done, I didn't want to waste the ink, so I dribbled it down the pages of a journal and spritzed it a bit with water.  I then decided to do zentangles on the pages - but on the left page I doodled only in the white spaces, and on the right page I doodled in the coloured spaces.  White space can be a good thing - although it's a hard thing for me to leave along.

These flower prints have been waiting in my Paper Bag Book for a long time.  I had extra paint one night, so I put the saying on - and then I decided just to doodle (scribble) around the petals of the flowers.  You may notice that there are different layers of paper on this spread - so some where along the line, some of those flowers will be incorporated into another doodle spread.  Fun, fun, fun.

Create something everyday.

Joan

Inspiration Wednesday….on Thursday

I wasn't feeling all that great today, so I pretty much hung out in my art room doing a couple of projects.  This is for the Inspiration Wednesday class that Donna Downey is putting on right now.  Lots of layers, lots of paint and molding paste - and lots of drying time in-between.  I didn't have the gel that she used for her numbers, so I was able to get ride of a couple of numbers in my stash of chipboard!

Here's the flip side to show the rest of the quote and the second page.

I've decided I don't want to over use this treble clef, so I think I'm going to have to carve one!

Create something everyday.

Joan

Spray Inks and Stars

I sure had a battle with this particular piece!  The word Music has been put on with molding paste, so it's raised, and picked up the colours of the inks as they dripped down from the top of the canvas.  When I started working on this I had painstakingly stencilled the words with black molding paste.  However, some letters came through cleaner than others and by the time I got to the beginning of the word Problem - I had had enough of smudges and such.  So, I took a paint scraping blade and took all the words off, re-stencilled them onto paper with a sharpie, placed them over their "original" spots and highlighted them in white.  Once the words were on, then I took a painted with someMedium Matte gel from the top to the bottom so that the spray inks flowed down the page and over the words.  Believe me, this is not how I had first envisioned this page, but I'm happy with it - especially since the gel helps the colours to pop!

For this piece I painted the background with two purples and a metallic silver by dragging the colour with a card. Once it was dried I added strips of some current Designer Series Paper from Stampin'Up! at different lengths.  The original paper was a silver marbled look, but by the time I highlighted the pieces they turned purple and blended in with the background.

To be honest, the choice of orange and pink stars was really a matter of begin lazy at the time and not wanting to make a matching gelli print - which is just as well because I really like how these stars pop off the page too.  It was a brave choice to go with, but I'm glad I did.

Create something everyday - and be brave!

Joan

Butterflies finished; and more….

On my last post you saw a pile of butterflies waiting for their antennae to be put on.  This is a piece that is now on canvas, but it started out on one of my journal pages.  It's fun to make things bigger, although it can be a challenge. My journal page had only one bigger butterfly, where this canvas was big enough to hold three big butterflies and a bunch of smaller ones. 

This piece is a replica of one I did a number of years ago with only one bird on it.  That bird was also done in a patchwork of scrapbook paper.  I like these guys better!  And that's what should happen as you work each day with different pieces; learning new things and growing.  I used a number of Stampin'Up! products for this canvas also - the flowers are still current, but the letters and the bird die cuts are retired…..I'm glad I do keep some of my purchases.  The stamped words are also a retired Stampin'Up! set - and I'm a bit annoyed that I lost my "create" word!

I did "this piece" once before on a canvas, but it has evolved quite a bit because of the larger canvas board.  I'm happy with the way that the letters turned out, and the addition of the tiny heart at the bottom of the treble clef.

Don't be afraid to re-work something you've done in the past - or to add right to it.  Keep it fun!

Create something everyday.

Joan

Listen to your Heart

This is my rendition of the Artist Gang exercise this past week.  I didn't have exactly the same paint colours that Jennifer Engle used, but they were close.  I did have the same Donna Downey stencil for the circles but not for the script.  I didn't have the butterfly stencil that she used, but I have tons of butterfly stuff in my Stampin'Up! stash.  

Finally, for the circle, I didn't have the same acetate sheets, so I used the Big Shot to cut out a circle from one of my window sheets, stitched around it with the pink thread, and then covered it with the Candy Dots that I still have, but are retired from Stampin'Up!.  I did have the Tim Holtz Small Talk stickers.

For the butterflies, I used the Swallowtail, which I cut out by hand, and Papillon Potpourri so I could use the punches that matched the stamps. I added little pieces of wire for their antennae and for the body of the Swallowtail, I strung some beads onto a wire along with a pearl for it's head.

So don't be afraid to do a project just because you don't have EVERYTHING the artist has used.  When you use your imagination and use what you have on hand, it truly becomes your piece of art.

Create something everyday.

Round, and Round, and Round…

I've noticed I've been working with a lot of circular shapes lately - not sure why.  The above is Prompt #59 - Textured Stamp.  I took a retired Stampin'Up! stamp and chose pieces out of magazines that had a lot of texture.  Some were stamped in black and the others were embossing in white.  I'm a bit sorry that I made the circles so close in size to the medallion because the texture in the photograph is lost.

I saw a similar painting done with spheres, so I thought I'd give it a try.  Some of the circles have texture added to them with either molding paste, glass bead paste, fiber paste or crackling paste.  The crackling paste didn't work well at all - the surface wasn't hard enough for it to do it's thing.  It was fun to do and I found the painting very calming.

Create something everyday.

Releasing…twice

One of our projects for the Novel Approach workshop was to create a grudgy background using NeocolorII crayons and covering it with bits of acrylic paint - you can see the scribbles in the background.  Release is my word for the year - so I decided to doodle it onto the page.  I ended up misspelling it - but I was able to sneak the A in and incorporate it into the doodle.  Yay.

I quite enjoy doing these grids with the little pictures I am forever cutting out and keeping.  This was an exercise for our Novel Approach workshop, but instead of just leaving the painted background, which was green in this case, I did a favourite zentangle over top and I quite like the effect.

Try something new from time to time when you create something everyday.

Joan

Busy, Busy, Busy

I have been doing a number of pages or projects in the past little while and apologize for not having posted them in a timely fashion!

On the above piece I painted the background with  a variety of different colours.  After the paint was dry I drew circles all over the pages and then took Payne's Grey to cover the background except where the circles were drawn.  Because the background was drawn beforehand, I could choose where I wanted the circles to be based on how the paint looked; thus choosing my favourite spots to highlight.

               

I'm really not sure how I feel about this one - I like the process, just now how my bird turned out.  I created the background with yellows, pinks and greens.  The bird was created using a stencil, but only colouring in the sections that would create the birds wings and body.  You wouldn't be able to do this with a stamp - getting the reverse image for the two wings.  I then drew around the stencil to get the image of the bird, highlighting it with more paint.  The words were added with molding paste and a stencil.  A stencil was used for the white squares in the background, and I used the edge of an old gift card for the blue stripes.

These are the pages I did for my last "Inspiration Wednesday" with Donna Downey.  There is always a little "page" included in each spread which makes it interesting when building the spread. I used spray paint for the random numbers on the page - that was a first and sort of fun because you get the "faded" look to some of them.

This is not a page I'm completely pleased with.  I attached the little tags onto the pages a long time ago, then  I covered them with blue paint after highlighting some words on the adjacent page….which  then covered lightly with orange.  Finally I decided to do a zentangle in each of the tags and multi-crossthatching in the background.

Prompt 59 was mail ephemera so I covered the background with corners of envelopes I ended up with after soaking off stamps. I then covered the page with old postage stamps and added a bit of colour around each on in the end.

Prompt 56 - Fortune or Horoscope - well, I guess I actually opted out for using Zodiac since I'm an Aquarian.  I had fun using inks and alcohol inks on the left page  to create the different waves/drips of blue to write the characteristics of an Aquarian.

Prompt 60 was simply - Scribble.  Children scribble all the time as they learn to hold writing/drawing tools and before they learn to control the tool to create a straight line.  I think once we've learned to control the tools, it then becomes a bit difficult to let loose with the tools and just scribble.  It took me a while .  I kept doing "repeated designs" until I just let go and scribbled.  The circles were done on purpose with the different pen colours.

This is a mandala I did in a new little book.  It's a bit different than then other mandalas I've done because I alternated designs within a "round".  I like the way it turned out - except if I was to do it again, I would not add the swirls around the edge…..sort of took away the effect of the rest of the mandala.   Try and learn.

Well, back to work….

Create something everyday.

Joan

Some Past Work...

Prompt #48 for Prompt 60 was Rainbow Spheres.  In my book, I was dealing with two different kinds of paper next to each other:  the left page is regular drawing paper and the right side is watercolour, so I know my spheres would turn out differently.  Acrylic paint was used on the left side after covering the page in Black Gesso.  I left the watercolour paper as it was and painted my spheres.  Adding the opposing dots came at the last minute because I thought the pages looked a bit empty.   This was a good exercise to practice blending both types of paints.

I was just playing around with paint, stencils and chalk pastels for this mixed media piece.  I added some script from a rubber stamp - embossing it with gold; stamped and punched out some circles and cut them in half before attaching them to the page; and I added three little watch faces that I took apart….which is not an easy task!  I like this piece, I think, because I've used colours that I don't usually use - it's quite a soft page.

Go out of your comfort zone and create something everyday.

Joan

Masking Rainbows & Leftover Paint

Painted rainbows colours and masking was another assignment in the "Novel Approach" workshop I'm taking from Tammy at DaisyYellow.  We used an index card as a mask on our page and painted the vertical stripes and then removed the index card.  Next we masked all the vertical stripes and painted the horizontal ones.  This project was exceptionally fun because we did the painting with our fingers.

I had a bunch of leftover paint on my table after completing my rainbow - and we never want to waste supplies!  So I opened up on of my art journals that has pictures in it, punched some circular "masks" and finger painted the leftover paint onto the page.  Removing the masks uncovered the images underneath.  I must remember this technique, because there are times when I'm working on a page in a book with images that I may want to keep within my work.

Get messy and create something new everyday.

Joan

Mixed Media with Glass

This is another canvas piece that I've been keeping under wraps for a while until I gave it to it's new owner.  It's sort of a joke between a friend and I that he gives me assignments to complete - shadow, reflection, and on this occasion he wanted me to "art" the bottles lined up on a bar and lit from below.  It took a long time to come up with what I wanted to do.  When I did the melted glass ornaments at a Nina Haggerty Art Night - I made the little square piece in the middle.  It wasn't quite what I expected but it grew into this piece which I am quite happy with.  I was very thankful that I was able to purchase small pieces of glass from the Nina in order to fill the "counter" of bottles.  

I drew "stones" below and filled them with zentangles and surrounded them with black molding paste.  There's a lot of texture going on.

Is there a piece of art you can create for a friend or family member?

Joan

Texture, Texture, Texture

This page added a lot of weight to this art journal!  I followed an old Donna Downey Inspiration Wednesday video.  I didn't have the same kind of flowers, so I used up the retired Stampin'Up! paper flowers that we used to have, and some fabric brads.    Once the layered  flowers were created, I glued them to the page and covered them with gesso.  When the gesso was dried I applied molding paste in-between the flowers.  Next I added paint that was actually left over from another project I was working on today and I finally covered the page with Versa Mark and Clear Embossing powered.  I may end up having to reinforce the spine of my book after this page!

Be brave - do something new.

Joan

Novel Approach Prisms

The next assignment in our Novel Approach Altered Book - from DaisyYellow - was to paint a prism on two pages while holding an index card in place - this way the space underneath was masked and provides a place to write something - PLUS - those painted index cards will definitely be used this summer for Index Card a Day!

I really thought that the pages would be brighter because I was using yellow and orange, but when you add black into the mix and you're not washing off your brush, you do end up with interesting mixtures. I'm not altogether disappointed - I just thought it would be brighter.

Here are the pages with the index cards removed.  I have since painted the empty space with white paint and things have brightened up!  I would be fun to use a variety of different shapes for this sort of exercise…circles, hearts, stars.  Fun, fun, fun.

Create something everyday.