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!

Faces and Bright Colors (Week of 2/26/2017)

 I have quite a few pages that I ended up putting the finishing touches on this week (there are even a few that didn't make it to this post), and I'm super excited to share these ones. i feel as though I'm starting to fall into a little bit of a style after adjusting to familiarizing myself with art journaling once again.

With this first page, this was a page I had been wrestling with pretty much since I started the journal. Nothing wanted to work with me, so I eventually ended up painting over most of it in white and blending some purple into it. The blue on the left hand side of the page were some spray inks that bled up through, and the circles from a scrap of paper put the finishing touches on.

This is one of my favorite spreads in the entire journal.

Even though it isn't technically a two page spread, I like the way the two pages look sitting next to each other. I like the consistent theme of the color purple (one of my favorite colors for artwork) and the graphic doodling/collage elements that I incorporated.

The face on the right hand page is actually a face I had drawn with alcohol markers in one of my sketchbooks, and I scanned it to use as a collage element (the body is mostly painted in on this page).

This is another one of the more interesting spreads in my journal, in my opinion, and I absolutely adore the bright colors.

I've been experimenting a bit with using journaling as a design element, as well as contrasting black with super bright and exciting colors. I've also been playing with cutting out graphic, blocky shapes and collaging them in. It's a lot of fun and a good way to get myself to just relax.

 Here are a couple of close-ups of the details of this spread.

On the left, you can see that I put in a lot of detail and doodling with a ballpoint pen, which was a lot of fun. Ballpoint pens write over top of acrylic paint beautifully, in adition to being cheap. I don't feel precious about the supplies I'm using, which is a nice bonus.

On the right, you can see a close up of a couple of little houses I cut and pasted from another photocopy of my work. I had done a "collage sheet" a while back with purple watercolor and doodled on top of it with a Sharpie. I love using bits of the photocopies in my artwork.

For this face, I only had one idea in mind; I wanted to try to use primarily black and white for the shading.

I used a Portfolio water-soluble oil pastel in black to outline my shapes, then I diluted it to create the shadows. I also added a little bit of the neon pink oil past to this girl's cheeks to give her a bit of character. I'm super exciting to photocopy this one, I think it will be fun to incorporate into other pages.

This is one of those pages that I'm a little on the fence about. I absolutely love the doodling on it, but I almost feel like it's a little too busy. However, I've officially called it on this one, and I'm not planning on adding anything else to it. That doesn't mean that I never will, but for now, I'm satisfied with it.

The doodling around the title was super relaxing to do, and I never felt like it needed to be particularly perfect, which was really nice. I'm also liking the color palette of pink, yellow and blue contrasting with the almost harsh black. 

I need to stamp with bubble wrap more often, because the visual texture I achieved with it was great. 

For the final page I have to share with you guys today, we have a sort of doodled, bright colored, confusing page. I had some ideas that I wanted to experiment with (using gouache, testing a pattern for a stamp I wanted to make, cut out shapes) and I knew that I wanted to use bright colors, since I think that's really been helping with my mood lately. 

The result isn't super cohesive, but I think I like it regardless.

I've been having a lot of fun playing with cutting out shapes from scraps of paper I've cleaned my brushes on. The results are always sporadic and interesting, giving me something that I never could have planned if I tried.

I hope you guys enjoyed looking at these pages, and I'll see you next week!