Summer of Color - Blue Blue and Green

I'm participating in Summer of Color for the first time  - it's a huge challenge, run by Kristin Van Valkenburgh at Twinkle Twinkle.  Every week there's a very loosely defined color palette.

For this week's challenge I used Pthalo blue red shade, Utrecht paint Aquamarine (a lightened Pt. Blue-green it seems) and to complicate things a bit Hooker's Green hue. A little gesso, a little white, and inktense pencils, in Chrome green and indigo. (which I think match in with the hooker's green and the blue pretty well.) Also I think green gelly roll pen which near-matched the aquamarine for some reason..

I did a journal spread in a smaller Moleskine that I've been keeping. I think my secondary challenge with these palettes is to loosen up and doodle into my work more - I want to get a bit more raw here. I like the way this one worked out.

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don't forget, you still have a couple of days to sign up for my fun summer class at Uthrive!

40 - lost your way? Art Journal Page - Art Journal Every Day

A good time to reflect on your mortality. Keeping it upbeat and valentine-ish though. Vintage label scans, acrylic, distress inks, tattered angels mist in some kind of pink color. I included a wry little reference to "The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock." The meanderings of the narrator as a contemporary list.

1. part hair from behind
2. eat peach.
3. mermaids. wth?

A is for ALOUETTE - Simon Mondays

Paperyum presents: A is for ALOUETTE.

I knew right away I wanted to do ALOUETTE for the letter A project over at the Simon Monday blog!

It's such a funny thing, that a song about plucking songbirds has come to stand for all things charming and Francophile. Trouble is, ALOUETTE is literally a Lark and I couldn't find a great lark image at the vintage source blogs - I settled for this random songbird from The Graphics Fairy as the starting point for what was going to be a stamped, painted and embellished mini cushion.

The first step: A little painting. A little stamping! I used lumiere inks and a fiskars border to create a distressed swirly texture to work on, in a copper on cream colorway:

Netxt: print the bird graphic directly onto some June Taylor cotton and heat set that puppy with my heat gun.

Then embellish, layer, stitch - basically I put the project into an embroidery hoop and treated it like I would a mini mixed media canvas! Everything is hand sewn.

Et Voila!

Alouette, gentil Alouette, Alouette, je te brocherai!

Bon Appetit : Digital Collage

Quick and dirty digital collage for the Collage Circus group on Flickr.  The size is smallish, as the images were for online resolutions.

Click and visit my photostream

Collage Circus posts a collage sheet for the group on a weekly basis, and everyone can submit a digital or analog version of what they choose to do with the elements.  Digital collage for me, is a good playtime, just a low-key visual push-up.  Experienced designers will probably find my Pshop skills really poor, but I'm really a rank amateur at this part of things.

 I loved the perversity of the crowned pig right next to the ham loaf recipe in this case.

Credits:

Pig in crown - kellyKautz
Mushrooms - art-e-ology
Background - magpiearts
Hamloaf recipe - sassyarts
Background - magpiearts
Wild roses- t42goller

Rosewood font
Open Source brushes and Custom shapes

Journal page - The Garden of the World

Some stamping and stenciling with abandon, and a quote. And --- green. Finally broke 40 degrees here!

Simon Says Stamp and Show : Quotable Challenge

Color this Quote Challenge

The fine folks at Artists in Blogland featured my work as part of show off saturdays! Check them out.

For the Color this Quote challenge over at Artists In Blogland 

This is a paper collage, featuring multiple  hand alterations to a print of one of my paintings, some collage with decorative papers, some stenciling, some lace, some vintage book pages,  and some hand stamping. The wings are from The Graphics Fairy.

Postcard Art - Now He Knew What Shalimar Knew

“For now he knew what Shalimar knew: If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.”

― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon 

Over at Collage Obsession, the theme this week is "I can Fly."  I was doing some online digging and this young man's image really grabbed my attention, suggesting a less whimsical interpretation of the theme. I don't remember exactly how Song of Solomon bubbled up through my consciousness, but I'm glad it did - it puts everything here into the perfect context. If you haven't read it yet, do so, certainly.

Images and patterns are from The Graphics Fairy and Vintage Printable.
My own collection of vintage millinery flowers.
Decorative papers, walnut ink, distress stain, white posca, doily.

6"x4"

For:
Collage Obsession I can Fly :  So Artful Shades of Brown

From my surface journal and about stamps in mixed media

All the pages in this journal start with surface treatment. I'm trying to do things I normally don't - in this case really vibrant color and stamps, which I'm generally opposed to. They're great for applying text - my own lettering capabilities are awful - I'm left handed and it shows. So stamped in are some letters.  the rest is watercolor, acrylic resist, Distress Ink, a cut up moment of artistic FAIL in inktense and artbar and acrylic, some inktense pencils, blickcrylic gel (it is a journal page after all.)

Ok, I'm about to drop a snob bomb. Please don't be hurt - if you create with stamps, designer paper, inkjet printouts - more power to your badtastic artistic self - but it's hard for me Momma. HARD. I have hangups.

I know this will sound snobbish in the extreme, but there's something I don't like about using the same imagery as other people, readily available, just ink and press.  I don't like it. I love other people's work that uses stamps sometimes - like any medium, some is great, some is good, some is less so but as long as people are creating, yay.  I don't generally like mine. I've never felt enough connection to the imagery.

Buying a lot of the repro "ephemera" and designer papers feels to me like solving a visual problem by throwing money at it.  It's not that I don't spend money on vintage papers and books that I'm willing to give the chop - and I'm lucky to be near the ULTIMATE source (more on that later) - I find that I think harder and more about what I'm buying.Limiting myself to really having to hunt though things and decide which old things are right for repurposing - which feel "too good" for being remade into art, which have an interesting backstory - this is part of my art process.  I can't get that from a digital collage sheet.

I've even been resistant to using the distress inks - it's not a dis on Tim Holz, whose work is great, I just don't like the whole thing of "and now I shall make a Tim Holz project" that follows from grabbing up the whole line of offerings.   There's a ton of distress ink in this though, the greens and some tea stain tones.  Yes, they're fantastic to use!

Overall, this is probably something I should get over, but it's definitely something I find I think about a lot.

So for me I guess a good challenge piece would be to use only materials from designer lines or something.

Illustration Friday again already

Prompt: "Whisper" for illustration friday. 6x6 acrylic and inktense

Gingersnaps Random Redhead challenge

This is for this Gingersnaps challenge

I've been working hard and saw this challenge and could not resist playing along - the theme is "growth." This is a 4x4 on canvas - vintage papers, a clipping from a vintage sixties placemat (yes the sparrow's registration was very poor) clippings from 60's kid's book, ink, acrylic, an ad for barkcloth (also vintage) and brass wings. The only new paper is some Japanese chiyogami and my text. Which I'm not sure about. I love the font Nashville though.

Just a quick little down and dirty piece. I'm unsure if I'll resin coat it.