Season of Contrast + A New Journal (Week of 4/2/2017)

A new season started over at Get Messy Art Journal and this time it's all about contrast!

People that are familiar with me and my artwork (specifically my illustration work) will know that I'm a big fan of contrast. I like dark things with beautiful things, light with dark, and seeing how these contrasting elements work together to create something that is ultimately more meaningful in the end. Thus, this season was perfect for me!

I'm most happy with the page on the left hand side, which is actually the endpaper for this journal (which I also made).

Here's a close up of some of the details. I knew that I ultimately wanted to create something that was more thought out and "planned", though I still went with the flow as far as what I did next. It was a lot of fun to create something in this manner, and I think I will try something like this again in the future.

Unfortunately, I've been extremely busy lately, so these two pages are all I have for you at this time. I do hope you liked them as much as I did though, and I'll see you all next time.

Emotion & Journaling (Week of 3/12/2017)

Hey guys, I'm back with another week's worth of pages, and this time around I get a little more deep and emotional with them.

 Art has always been my way of letting out my emotion and feelings, but this week especially that sensation has been multiplied by a hundred. I'm at the end of an art block I was experiencing (and still pushing myself through) and that left me with a lot of overwhelming feelings to get out of my system.

Almost all of my pages this week took a ton of layers to actually bring to completion (I think because I already overworked them a bit), but I managed to get things pulled together in a way that was manageable.

This is one of my favorite pages, though it is potentially the most chaotic. I had already dumped a bunch of layers onto this page when I started to work with the face. I used white paint mixed on a piece of plastic with water based markers; I wanted to see if I could make my own paint colors. As it turned out, it worked beautifully.

The actual face itself was a representation of how I was already feeling when I started to draw, and there is a substantial amount of journaling on this page, both legible and not. It was a lot of fun to just let go of the fear of creating and just put layer on top of layer.

I think that the finished page is fairly busy, but that's what I love about it. It's a rather accurate representation of how I was feeling.

This page was actually an attempt at being a bit more conscious with my journaling. I tend to overthink most things in my life, so forcing myself to just sit and think tends to be a fairly dangerous thing to do. I use the phrase "stuck in my own head" to describe this sensation.

However, this was a nice way of forcing myself past that; I allowed my mind to wander, my thoughts to reveal themselves, and then I dumped them on the page. It was a relief, and something I'd love to experiment with more in the future.

 

I apologize for the darkness of this full shot, but you can see the true colors better in the detail shots. I'm not quite sure if I'm finished with this page yet (considering some neon pink oil pastel), but I thought I'd share it regardless.

 I put the finishing touches of this page on this morning, and I find it amazing just how meditative all the doodling and paint layers can be. I'm starting to find my groove, and that's a nice feeling.

I also find that bright colors and abstract shapes make me happy.

The final page I have to share with you guys today is actually the first that I finished this week (but the furthest into my journal). This was the page that I think really pushed me out of the block I was feeling last week. I got caught up in this page and pretty much completed it from start to finish in one two or three hour evening sitting.

It's not my favorite face I've ever done, but I love the effects I was able to get with colored pencils, and how relaxing and soothing it was to work on.

I hope you all enjoyed seeing my pages from this week, and I'll see you all next week!

Incorporating Drawings (Week of 3/5/2017)

 

For some reason, this week was rough as far as art went. I didn't do a whole lot of illustration, and I worked on a ton of pages in my art journal and didn't finish very many. I'm blaming it on spring break.

However, despite that being the case, I do have a couple of pages to share with you guys this week, and I hope you like them regardless.

The first page I have to share is probably one of my favorites. I wanted to do something very loose as far as a face was concerned, and I love the way this one turned out. I think incorporating neon pink into her face took some of the edge of perfection off.

She has an extra long neck and is sort of floating in space, but I like the effect that ultimately gives. I also got a bit of texture into her hair with black acrylic paint and rubbing a colored pencil over the top, though I'm not sure if I could recreate that if I tried. Maybe I'll have to give it a shot sometime.

It's only the second page in and I think you can probably see my experimentation with bright neon colors this week. I was working towards this a little bit last week; it's been bout a month since I've started art journaling again, and slowly but surely I think my style is starting to return to me.

I like bright colors and bold patterns and getting my thoughts out. Doodling inside of collaged shapes is something I've really been enjoying lately.

I actually polished off this page last night, though I'm not convinced that I'll never go back and add to it. Part of me wants to add some dark black outlines around the "flower" at the bottom of the page. But for now, I'm leaving it as is.

Underneath all of the layers of paint, there's a terrible drawing of a bottle of paint that was on my desk. I made it purposely bad, in pencil, and you can see some of the remnants of it peeking through the paint and collage and journaling. I was just trying to get some of my stress out, and this was my way of doing that. It sort of inspired the words I wrote going up the side.

It's not even that I don't consider abstract paintings or drawings art (I do!) but sometimes I get overwhelmed by the idea of everything needing to be perfect. It's an art journal and I was trying to get that feeling out of my system.

This final page is pretty busy, and has the potential to be added onto later as well. Preferably by adding some white paint and toning the whole thing down. However, this was also an attempt at getting myself to relax with my drawings, so I pretty much scribbled this figure in pen down onto the page. It was a nice change of pace to the structured "sketch first" approach I usually take.

The blue around the figure is actually a regular Crayola marker that I applied to the page on top of the paint. Because the paint was down, I was able to apply a wet brush to the marker and spread it into a vibrant watercolor look. I'm happy with that effect, if nothing else.

If you get anything out of this post, I hope you get that sometimes we just need to push through our art slumps. I feel like, for me, this especially applies to art journaling. I'm able to write out all of those "slump" emotions on the page and playing with paint typically tends to improve my mood.

I hope you all enjoyed looking at this week's art!

A Smattering of Pages (Week of 2/19/2017)

Last week, I posted on Sunday, today I'm posting on Saturday. I'm not sure where the routine is going to fall, but I finished a ton of pages this week (even more than I'm going to show in this post), so I figured I'd write this post up before it got out of hand.

The first bit I have to share with you is actually only a piece of a page. I was wrestling with this page for weeks, adding here and there, doodling and painting over and doodling again. I finally think that I've gotten it to a place where I'm happy to at least leave it alone, and this little bit of journaling and the title feel extremely accurate right about now.

The next page is a lot brighter than the last one, and I used a shimmery blue paint that I've been hoarding practically since I got it. In the end, I'm glad that I did because I think it adds an extra element of interest to the page.

With the title and journaling of this page, my secret (or not so secret) emo self is making an appearance. This is also a continuation of the page with tissue paper laid down from this post.

Now here's something a little new, at least for this journal; faces. I didn't know if I wanted to create more mixed media faces in this journal or not, despite the fact that I've done it a lot in the past. However, this just sort of happened, and I'm more than glad that it did. I love the way the two pages of this spread sort of contrast but blend into each other at the same time.

In the first photo, you can see some of the details of the left hand page. I don't use colored pencils in my art journals a lot, but I wanted to see what Crayola pencils were like to work with on top of acrylic paint. As it turns out, the result is a lot of fun. With this face, I also had a lot of fun just trying to relax about proportions of the face - it's off and I know it. I'm okay with that.

In the second photo, there is a close up of the right hand page. I've been wrestling with this page for a long while as well, and I love the place I finally managed to get it to. I didn't mean to make a point when I started creating this page, but it seemed to have happened regardless. This also inspired (ever so vaguely) a watercolor piece, and I feel like this page might evolve into yet another finished piece. We'll see.

Now, this may be my favorite (or one of my favorite) pages in this journal thus far. I like the graphic nature of it, I think it's bold, and I like the face that I drew (I used a ballpoint pen). I also love the meaning behind this page.

All of that texture in the background? That was my handwriting. I was having a really tough time when I created this page, and I felt like all of my nerves were ON. I just wrote and wrote and wrote, all about how I was feeling, and by the time I had finished writing, I felt a whole lot better. These are the times that I regret the break I took from art journaling - it really is a form of stress relief for me.

The final page I'm going to leave you all with today is yet another one of my favorites. I knew that I wanted to do some wonky little houses, and I've set some goals for myself as far as using up the supplies I have before buying more. As a result, I decided to cut out bits of paper to collage down to create the shapes of the houses and the moon.

This is done in a super quirky style, and was in no way meant to be realistic. The doodling was done with Sharpie, so fine detail went out the window. It was nice to not have to worry about it, and I love the way the page turned out in the end!

I hope you all enjoyed seeing what I've been up to this week, and I'll see you next time!

Textures and WIPs (Week of 2/13/2017)

For several reasons that have come to my attention recently, I thought it would be nice to start a blog in order to share some of my mixed media projects!

I'm Jordan, I'm 20 years old, and I've recently been extremely interested in illustration. You can see my work on my Instagram here. However, in an attempt to relax in the realm of my artwork, I've recently taken up art journaling once more. Years ago I was extremely involved in the community (I think it was 2011? Or thereabouts) but only recently have I become involved once more. I joined Get Messy, and this is the Art 101 season, which I've been having a lot of fun with. I'm here to share my texture pages from this week.

First and foremost, this is a rather simplistic page in comparison to a lot of the work that I typically do. It's near the front of my new art journal (that I made especially for Art 101), and deals with a few things that have been more emotional for me.

The pages of this book were created from watercolor experiments (which was the first week of Art 101), and that shows through in the background of this page.

This page is a little more representational of the type of work that I typically do. I tend to skip around in my journals quite a bit, but as of right now I'm calling the left hand page complete.

A close up of some of the texture on the page above. This is one of my favorite little parts of this page; the colors and textures and doodling all work together in a way that is extremely aesthetically pleasing to me. I also like the dots of my end paper showing through. 

This is another texture that I was playing with, and the work in progress page it is a part of can be seen above. This is a piece of tissue paper that I crumpled up before sticking it down with Mod Podge. I made a conscious attempt to make sure the wrinkles showed up in the dry piece. I still need to add more to this page, but since it's related to the theme of texture, I thought I'd share.

The final page I want to share is this one; it's rather graphic and vibrant, which I like, and it incorporates a lot of collage elements. I consider this page complete as well, though I'm not convinced that I'll never add anything more to it (some journaling might be in order).

I leave you today with a close of detail shot of some of the textures and doodling on this page; it feels really nice to be back into art journaling after so long and I'm excited to see what the future holds for me and my art!