Graphic Patterns and Experiments (Week of 3/19/2017)

I'm back today with another weekly roundup of the art journal pages I ended up finishing up. I've been working in this same journal for six or seven weeks, and almost all of its 80 pages have been worked on to some extent. I've been working on going back to previous pages and finishing things up, covering things I don't like, etc. This is the result of some of that.

 I struggled with this page ever since I started it. I had used some Mod Podge to adhere pieces of paper towel to the surface to create a texture, but it was incredibly hard to work on top of.

This week, I finally finished it off. It's officially one of my favorite pages of the entire journal, if for nothing more than the fact that it's completely different from any of the other pages. I love what can happen when you push yourself outside of your comfort zone, and that's exactly what I did with this page.

This is another one of the pages I went back to; even though it already had a title on it, I didn't like the way it had turned out, so I ended up covering almost all of it with white paint. I decided to go simple, and some of the background layers show through (you can see this a bit better in the close ups).

Ultimately, I do like the way this page turned out. As you can see in the above deal shots, there was a title underneath the layer of pink paint that I applied to the page, and some leftover journaling I had done. There's a possibility I will go back in with some more words, but for now I'm pretty okay with it.

I really like the simplicity I was able to achieve with this page, even with all of the layers. Maybe it's funny that I call this simple, but typically I need a lot more layers than this to be happy with a page. Essentially, this was a cleanup page. I took leftover bits of paint and tape, collage and stenciling, and continued to build up this page slowly but surely. The result is bright and I like the general aesthetic of it.

In the detail shots of this page, you can see the details that I ended up putting in. This was probably one of the pages I put the least thought into - I was just cleaning off my tools and trying to create something that I liked in the process.

Maybe I need to do this a bit more.

 This is the only really side-by-side spread I finished this week, since I don't typically work over two pages, and I jump around quite a bit. However, I do like the way both of these pages turned out, even if the page on the left is way brighter than the one on the right.

 On the left, you can see some of my experiments with spray ink. I have some Dylusions spray ink that I hardly ever use, since it's reaction with water is something I haven't quite gotten the hang of yet. In this page, I tried something I had seen in a YouTube video, spraying the ink directly into wet Mod Podge; it was significantly less prone to spreading, which was an interesting discovery.

On the right, I was playing with using gray in my pages. I've always loved the color gray (most of my clothes are actually either gray or black) and the way it contrasts with brighter colors. I wanted to try that out on this page.

In the final page I have to share with you guys today, I was playing with graphic and large shapes and focal points. I find that the process of stamping and collaging and doodling is extremely soothing to me, and serves as a good way to get all of my emotions out.

In this page specifically, I was working with the idea of "doodling" with a paintbrush and paint instead of markers or pastels, which is what I typically tend towards. I like the relaxed effects that the brush gives me, specifically in my art journals.

As for the Season of Art 101 over at Get Messy Art Journal, these are my six favorite pages. I feel like they are all very cohesive as a set of photographs and it makes me feel as though my style is starting to fall into place.

Thank you all for checking out my pages, and I hope you enjoyed looking them over!

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!