Category: Art Journaling

I did a sketch this weekend for a new Halloween themed illustration, which will be used on the cover of the October issue of Country Pleasures magazine. We were going to use my pumpkin man, but it turns out that the magazine photo I took him from wasn’t actually that of an antique figurine, but a 2003 August Moon design by Lang! It was by complete chance that I discovered this – last weekend I was at Sumner for the second time in my life, and one of the shops had my man sitting right there on the counter. Imagine my suprise! She said it is broken, so she only puts it out as a decoration. Well, that took care of that – no using it in any publication! So I sketched this funny little troup out last night and just finished painting it up today. I’ll post a photo of the completed work later this week.

Hope you all had a good weekend – Have a nice night!

Labels: Artsy Fartsy Stuff

This is what I managed to accomplished while at my conference in Anaheim this last week – just some pen and ink drawing done inbetween workshops. The doodle started with the single swirl in the bottom left cluster – it is the shape of one of the pieces of iron making up the lamp in my room at the Marriott. It just went from there. This is just .01 & .005 sized black micron pen and mechanical pencil on drawing paper – I plan to add in colored pencil when the drawing part is finished. It doesn’t mean anything, it was just fun.

Now this, on the other hand, is why I’ll be doing very little art this weekend. Boo hoo.

Sigh.

Today I worked on the first page of my little art journal. More Pitt pen drawing, with some water-soluble pastel and twinkling H20 watercolor paint added. It is easy to just do a quick doodle as my daily art when it is late and I’m tired!

Another doodle for today’s installment of the Daily Devotions Challenge, using a Pitt pen on a page in my journal. Notes are from a class I took at Artfest from Keith LoBue.

So tonight, despite the hectic day and the late hour I finally got home, I did manage to do some art. We wound down late this evening by finally watching Mirrormask. We have been waiting to watch the movie until we were in just the right mood, in case it was really bizarre and weird instead of just imaginative and cool. The last thing we want to do when we sit down for some relaxing entertainment is feel like we’ve just spent two hours letting someone mess with our heads. It turns out we both enjoyed Mirrormask very much. Yes, it was weird, unexplainable at times, and wildly fantastical, but it was very artistic, creative, and had a lot of fun and mysterious character. I’m having a hard time believing that Teesha & Tracy Moore didn’t do all the drawing! (Check out their websites, and you’ll see what I mean – www.teeshamoore.com www.zettiology.com). Anyway, it really put me in the mood to draw, so I spent the latter half of the movie doodling all around a previous written entry in my journal.

I think I mentioned in a previous post that I signed up with a group that has committed to do something creative every day for a year. It can be anything – doodle, write a poem, do an ATC, an entire painting, whatever. Unfortunately, shortly after I signed up I had two classes and exams, a vacation, house hunting, packing to move, yadda yadda yadda, so although I did bits of art during much of that time, it was in no way consistent or even tracked. I don’t do well with commitments like this unless I have some sort of system or routine, and a way to track my progress. I considered starting a separate blog just to list what I’ve done each day, as many people have done, but then I thought why wouldn’t I just add that to my blog now, and use the title of the blog entry to indicate the entries that are speaking to my daily art…thing. I don’t want to be regimented and legalistic about it, and make it more complicated than it is, but I’d like to be able to look back at everything I’ve done, what I created during certain times in my life, and how far I’ve come. So, I think I’ll consider tonight my Day One.

Front and back photo of the single signature journal mentioned yesterday. I wanted something simple and small to carry around with me on a daily basis, for doodling and such. Cover is a collage of hand painted found papers, using various acrylics, inks, hand-carved and purchased rubber stamps. Edges are lined with embellished aluminum tape from the hardware store. The inside pages are 140 lb watercolor paper.

What have I been up to with my journals lately? Recently, I worked in an art journal that I called my Fall Journal. Really, it was just play time in celebration of Fall, though I actually did very little writing in it. My plan is to do a mix of collages, journal writing, copied poetry and quotes, pressed leaves, even yummy autumn recipes in it. Whatever is celebratory of that season goes in the book, is just my way of experiencing my favorite time of year in another wonderful way. Like the Lent Journal, I’ve worked all over the place in it, rarely finishing a page in one sitting. Now that fall is over, I haven’t used it very much.

Also, I’m currently reading The Artist’s Way, which involves writing three pages of non-stop "stream of consciousness" writing each morning. This is basically all of the journal writing I’ve been doing for a while now. I do that in a plain boring notebook, and I hardly ever do it in the morning. In fact, I hardly ever do anything in the morning besides roll out of bed and rush to work, making sure my teeth are brushed and my socks are matched. My journaling ends up being late at night. I really would love to do some in the morning, as I think it would better prepare me for the day, but I just can’t seem to get out of bed that extra half hour earlier.

Finally, I just recently started altering one of my old date books. Since 1999 I’ve used a really nice leather-bound date book to keep track of my life, and I couldn’t ever bring myself to throw them away. Lately I’ve been feeling very depressed (for no reason really, our life is really great right now – I think its my serotonin acting up again in my brain), feeling the kind of emotions you can’t put into words, so I took down that first old date book and I’ve been altering one spread each night. So far I haven’t written much, I’ve just been giving myself some good art therapy cutting words and pictures I like out of magazines (I treated myself to cutting up a really GOOD new magazine! It felt so deliciously naughty!), painting and gluing onto the spread, and doodling. I think the theme of the book is going to be "do whatever the hell I want." (Sorry, it is unlike me to say such things, however it perfectly sums up the theme of the book). When I get like this I feel like I’m losing myself, and I over-analyze everything and start to feel like I’m going completely crazy, so being able to do whatever I want in this book really feels good and freeing. I’m giving myself permission to draw badly, say stupid things, be sappy, be angry, use colors that look terrible together – basically completely letting my hair down and not trying to impress anyone. With this particular book, so far, I’m veering away from my usual work-all-over-the-book and instead am sticking to one page or spread per day and leaving it at that.

That’s about it right now! I will work next on getting some of these photos online – still not sure how to get the pictures from the digital camera to the computer….