Sketchy Valentine Sketch

 Have you tried the Generals Sketch and Wash drawing pencils yet? I don't know how long they have been out, but I didn't know about them until I got a set of two with a pencil sharpener for Christmas from our nephew and his family, amongst other art supplies. They found them at Hobby Lobby, and they are wonderful.

I have only tried them here in my Moleskine sketchbook today. It says they are all surface pencils though. The lead is very soft and black, and the feel was like a dream gliding along the smooth page. Very easy to shade with, and I hate shading. :)

I drew the heart and shaded it a little, also the bird, then I drew the outlines of the letters (you can tell they weren't planned by their positions :/). Then I took a slightly damp brush and went only inside the lines, which caused the lines and shading to blend.

This is not the greatest drawing or page, but I like it anyway, and I LOVE these pencils, and I wanted to share them with you in case you didn't know about them either. Can't wait to try a zentangle or zendoodle with them, or a drawing for that matter!

So many art supplies to try and so many new things to learn and so little time, but it makes me so happy! :)

Journal Pages and a Zen-Doodle

I've been sharing some of my background pages with you, so I thought I'd share some finished, or not, pages from my first Doodlicious Daybook. I've been learning, applying, and experimenting with different papers and techniques that I've learned in the 21 Secrets workshops. It's not a book of polished or great work, but a book where I've been playing and having fun freely, just letting myself go without worrying about the outcome.

The personal writing will come later, or I may just finish all of the pages and leave this one as is. I already have enough pages for at least three more journals stacked and ready to be assembled. Some of these pages were shared in the previous posts.

I've really taken a shine to the zebra duck tape I learned about. I recently found some cheetah patterned duck tape too, so look out! :)

I stitched two pages back to back with fuzzy fun yarn just for the heck of it!



A double-page spread-Swimming As Fast As I Can-One of my favorites!

This is a doodle on metallic gold poster paper. I don't know if you can notice the writing at the top or not. It says, "Which One Do I Chase?" Too many balls, too many goals and dreams can be overwhelming sometimes!

Hand crocheted lace, done by my mom or my Granny, off a worn out pillowcase. Look, there's a smidgeon of cheetah under the heart!

Sparkly eye torn out of a magazine ad and the skinny cow off an ice cream box. What can I say? I love the cow and the sparkly eye, so they found a home in my journal!

 

 Another one of my favorites-a double page spread. I've shown this before, but I went over the writing with a white gellyroll pen and added cat tracks to make it show up better. Behind the closed door is another cat, and on the back of the door I wrote, "Sometimes A Gal Just Has to have Some Time Alone."

 Paint doodles and paper napkins I found at Wal-Mart torn up and glued down. I may add more stuff, but I kind of like it as is.

 Swirly metallic pen marks not showing up! Neither is the writing under the strip, but they're there!

 Fun Page! The dog is also magic!

                                                          Notes to self!

 Words haven't come to me yet for this one. Still working on it!

 Glitter glue and I have not become fast friends!

 Metallic poster paper. I closed the book and the glitter glue heart on the left page shared itself with the right page, so I just incorporated into the page. Oops! There's another smidgeon of Cheeta tape!

 Zebra and regular duck tape, bubble wrap, cellophane, and scrap paper=a good time!

A page out of the second Daybook, made out of watercolor paper. More of the fuzzy yarn on the pocket. Love that stuff!

I didn't take time to crop the pictures to make them neat and tidy, because the journal is messy, and I kind of like the messy photos to go with it. :o

This page is not in a Doodlicious Daybook, but it is in my Moleskine pocket sketch book, which I took with me on a daytrip to the Toyota dealer yesterday. It was a four-hour round trip, plus two hours in the waiting room with a lot of other people, a service dog, and a baby. I plugged my mp3 player into my ears, took out my Moleskine and my Zig marker and just doodled away. The time went by quickly and I wound up with a full page zen-doodle? :/

If you're still with me, I hope you enjoyed  your visit and that you found something interesting or something that, at least, made you smile. :)

Inking and Marbling Text

I've been at it again! This time I'm learning and experimenting with acrylic inks on book pages and text. The words are Oriah Mountain Dreamer's and the pages are from her book "The Dance."

I've never been able to tear a book in any way until lately, and it is in no way a sign of disrespect for the author. I enjoyed the book, and I like the text to use in my personal journaling. These pages can be used as whole page backgrounds or torn into shapes and collaged onto pages, whatever my imagination can come up with for them.

Acrylic inks are very concentrated and bright, which I love. I am just learning to manipulate them so the pages are kind of messy, but I like them. :)

 A utube video on marbling prompted the above experiments. I put a little water in the bottom of a glass platter, layed the page in it and let it soak up the water, then dripped different colored inks onto it. The lightest dots are a shimmery gold, very pale, gorgeous. I wish it showed up better.

Too much water on the left page let the ink run too much. In fact, it ran right off the page into the water!

Too little water on the right page didn't let the ink run enough and it soaked into the page too quickly and couldn't be manipulated much. I sprayed more water onto the top and spread it a little more. The text is upside down, because the design resembled flowers that way.

 Because the pages couldn't lay flat in the bottom of the platter, I tore the middle out of a page (right) and sprayed a mist on the platter, layed the page down, the sprayed water on the top before dripping the ink. I like it! :)

The page on the left is where I decided to try marbling with the ink. I used the shaving cream technique learned in the Everything But the Kitchen Sink workshop with Heidi Dilley in the 21 Secrets Playground. I have been doing this with fluid acrylics. I like the results I got with the inks though. Each has its own attributes. I'm finding that I can take a brush handle and make different designs too. Fun!!!

 More marbling above, different designs...

 Back to dripping the ink. The left page has cerulean blue hue, metallic irridescent copper, and shimmery pale gold. It's gorgeous in reality. I'm beginning to learn how to control the water and the inks!

For some reason I decided to tear the margins off this page and just go for it. A little bit of everything thrown in colorwise. I'm learning that I can also draw with the ink eye droppers. See the squiggles in the copper paint? I love this page with the ragged edges! :)

Now I'm off to see what I can learn today! Hope something on here was useful to you or, at least, made you smile. :)

Doodlicious Daybook #3: Marbled Pages

Well, I've been playing with color, shaving cream, paper, and a credit card again! I started out making these background pages to mix in with Daybook #2, a couple of posts back, but I don't really like the way they look mixed in, so I've probably got daybook #3 here. That's ok though! One can never have too many art journals to play in! Besides, making these background pages is addictive.

I bought a new color of fluid acrylic, called Quincidine Burnt Orange (love it!), plus a few bottles of acrylic inks with some money I got for Christmas. I had painted one full sheet of cheap watercolor paper on both sides with watercolor doodles and splashes a couple of days ago, and then I tore it and a blank white sheet up into 5" x 71/2" pages, but then, as I said before, I didn't really think they mixed in too well with daybook #2, so I stacked them up for a seperate book.

Yesterday morning I decided to play with my new inks and shaving cream, so I took all the blank white sheets out, and started marbling. I used drops of the burnt orange fluid acrylics, mixed with drops of Thalo green (bluish), irridescent copper, and olive green acrylic inks to make all these varietions.

There are two pages to a picture and they are not in the order that they will be when I put the book together. The effect on the soft textured wc paper is not as sharp as it is on a slicker harder surface like cardstock anyway, but the colors are actually a little darker than they scanned. I like em! :)

Below are the pages that I had previously watercolored and drawn over with brush and india ink. I wondered what they would look like marbled over. I like it! :)

These are two of the watercolored pages without the marbling, just for variety.

Below is a page that I've been working on from book #2. The background is white with black india ink brushed on to make squares. Then I sewed a strip of scrap paper from a painted page across the bottom with fun yarn to make a pocket. The bookmark in the pocket was included in a card that I got from mychildhood friend on my last birthday. I had to tear the bottom off for it to fit, but it added to the design to place it under the bookmark at the top. Hole enforcements were added for color...and because I tore one of the holes out the side. :o

There isn't a gray strip around the bottom and side. I just wanted to show you the hairy yarn I sewed the pocket with.

Hope something on here made you smile!

Mixed-Media, Play Things, & Snow

Remember these?

This one was a rough draft drawn with a brush on a 20 x 24" canvas for a "Get It Out, Get It Down" workshop by Connie Hozvicka in the 21 Secrets Playground.

This one is how it wound up after multiple layers of writing, stamping, texturing, and pasting papers.

It was too busy to suit me, so I covered it in a thin layer of white gesso, then added more layers of papers, paints, etc. I lost track of how many layers. It now has a bit too much blue and pink to suit me, but I'm stopping while I'm ahead. Below is what it looks like now. I like it better than the other version...at least for now.

The words have a lot of meaning for me, because of the message the preacher gave at my aunt's funeral. His words really spoke to me and have stayed with me. I also wrote messages on papers, tore up, and pasted them under the layers of paint and textures. It's been very cathartic for me. I got a lot of stuff out and down on this canvas among the layers.

This is some of the art stuff I got for Christmas this year.  My niece got me a lighted paper cutter, my nephew and his wife gave me paints, canvas boards, aqua pencils, snow texture, and matte spray, and hubby gave me markers and hi-liter pens. I love it! I later took money that I got for Christmas and ordered some fluid acrylics, acrylic inks, unruyu paper, pens, markers, sketchbooks, 2 new cds, and some needle felting stuff to go with them.

I also got a lot of freebie art materials in the form of bubble wrap, tissue paper, shoe sole stamps, boxes, ribbon, papers, etc. I'm set for a lot of fun. Watch out! :)

We have 4+ inches of snow in downtown Rabbit Hop. This a picture of my grandpa's old shoe shop school bus. It was his last shoe shop, and is now parked next to my dad's work shop. The bicycle is an old one that Daddy bought at a sale before he passed away. He had plans to combine it with an old push lawn mower and make it into a novelty riding mower. He made one, but he was planning to make a better one. He had a lot of fun out of the first one. Great memories of both of them.

It's been a good year so far. Hoping it stays that way. :)

Doodlicious Daybook #2-21 Secrets

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. I did! I haven't been blogging much, but I have been doing arty things everyday. I will have some stuff to share. It's just that I've been working on multiple projects at the same time and none of it is finished yet.

I have re-worked one large mixed-media canvas so many times I've lost count. I'm still not happy with it, but I can live with it, so I'm calling it done...I think.

Most of the other art I've worked on has been tearing, cutting, pasting, and adding texture and other elements to the pages of my first Doodlicious Daybook, and I've also started writing in it. There are also lots of new background pages made with leftover paint, etc., some of them loose pages and some in my Moleskine sketchbook journals. I will show you as soon as I have time, and I will try to have some finished pages.

In the meantime, I scanned some background pages from my 2nd daybook, which I made yesterday from some very cheap watercolor paper and some gloss acrylics that I found in my stash. I had a blast painting the three large sheets of paper (15 x 22") on one side, letting them dry, then turning them over and painting the other side. The paper is kind of thick, so I won't need to fasten two sheets together for strength or to hide the backs. I've been using fluid acrylics, so I don't know how the gloss acrylics are going to work. That's what's fun about experimenting! You get surprises, sometimes good, sometimes not, but you always learn something useful.

When the sheets were dry, I measured off 5" x 7 1/2" pages, and, using the ruler to hold the paper, I tore the pages apart and stacked them. Each sheet yielded 8 pages, front and back, equaling 16 pages to add ephemera to and journal on. So my book has 48 wonderful pages, which I am going to add the ephemera, stamping, sewing, etc. to BEFORE I put them into book form. Or maybe I'll put them on binder rings so that they can be taken in and out to work on. Much easier that way! Something else I learned the hard way. :)

Here are some scans of the pages after they were torn. Sorry, I didn't make a picture before of the whole painted sheets. I'm not sure I'll leave them in this order, but it's how I have them for now. The colored pages are gloss acrylics (I prefer the more transparent fluid acrylics though) and the black and white pages are India ink with a brush. Tearing the paper gave it some deckled edges, which I love.

I will show you when I get the pages finished. I'm just now having an idea of painting a sheet of the watercolor paper in watercolors to mix in for variety. Book 2 may turn into book 2 and book 3!

Anyway, these books are a lot of fun to make, plus it's a great way to use up any old or leftover paints and papers, and it leaves you with a pretty journal for writing down your thoughts. I learned it from Tracie Hanson in the 21 Secrets Playground that Connie Hozvicka of Dirty Footprints Studios hosted. This playground is now closed, but she's planning another one in April with different workshops. I, for one, can't wait!

Christmas brought me some new and different art supplies. Now all I have to do is clean up my workspace so that I have room to play with them. Happy creating!