Art Journal Sharing Thursday

My Art Journal Sharing Thursday this week has two painty pages to show, so this post might be a bit picture heavy. I'm back in my A5 flier journal again, I think it keeps drawing me back because it is just a perfect size for a quick page and the printed pages make wonderful surfaces to build on.

These two pages sit next to each other in the book but apart from the fact that they both centre around paint and I made them at the same time, they are quite different.

First up is my 'Find Your Way' page.

I know, I know, I said I wasn't going to fall back on easy motifs but the heart was just screaming to be on this page.

I've started with a layer of gesso and gave it some texture by pressing the pages together when they were still wet and peeling apart to get those lovely 'rivers' of gesso.

If you remember back to the 'Full Bloom' frame from last week, I used some orange-tinted molding paste through a polka dot mask, well the orange here is the orange-tinted molding paste covered mask pressed into the page and left to dry. Waste not, want not!

I then added the heart by spreading this wonderfully vibrant Golden Permanent Violet Dark paint over a heart mask and adding the marks with a marker pen once the paint was dry. 

The second page I wanted to share with you today is far more abstract and a lot more 'journaly'.

The starting point for this page was already red and you will see a small touch of gesso and the same orange polka dot molding paste as you saw in the first page today.

I added some extra bits of paints which were all left over splodges from other pages I was doing at the time. You can spot some of that vivid Permanent Violet Dark from the first page and touches of Golden Phthalo Green (Blue Shade) mixed with a bit of white as well.

I then collaged a piece of paper torn from a magazine and did some continuous stream journal pouring over the top of the page and the collage piece. 

The finishing touches were that polka dot mask again covered in black paint this time and pressed into the page and some touches of the wonderfully sparkly Golden Interference Blue (Fine) which just adds a glorious shine that changes colour and the look of the piece as it catches the light.

The Interference shine is far more noticeable on the real project than I've managed to capture in the photographs, so you might have to just take my word for it.

So there you are, two Art Journal pages which share some similar elements but are very different pieces.

Thanks for popping in today and I would love to see any art journaling you have been up to this week so do leave a comment so that I can pop by to have a look.

Catch you later Artinators.

Kim

Art Journal Sharing Thursday

I have a new, fresh off the press, double spread art journal page to share with you on Art Journal Sharing Thursday. 

The inspiration for this double page spread was a little haphazard. I knew that I wanted to have a figure shown as negative space on a page and I had all these plans to do a collage based page and then I opened my journal.

I'm working in the A5 flier again so it already had the lovely printed pages to work on. I'd coated a few pages with gesso a few weeks ago and this double page just happened to have some extra bits and pieces from previous projects. I had used it to mop up some blue ink and I had pressed a mask covered in tinted clear texture paste into the pages a week or so ago.

So it just seemed ready for a bit more work, I used a mask and a watersoluble graphite pencil to add the figure of a jumping woman. 

The theme sort of appeared as I was making the page, the thoughts in my head were about working. I'm one of those people who just can't stop working. Even when I'm supposed to be relaxing I'm either worrying or thinking about work which isn't entirely productive I can tell you! 

There is always the underlying feeling of guilt associated with downtime for me so even though she looks like she is having fun I'm sure she is thinking 'I Should Be Working'.

Of course you could interpret it the other way around, she could be gleeful that she is playing hooky from work. I'll leave it up to you to decide which interpretation you prefer!

Thanks for popping in today and please do share any art journal pages you have been playing with this week.

Art Journal Sharing Thursday

It's my favourite post of the week, time for a bit of Art Journal Sharing Thursday.

My Art Journal Share this week is all about another habit that I'm trying to turn into a regular thing and that is sketching. I've shared a couple of sketches here on my blog in the past, but I would say that I'm not a confident sketcher, I'm trying to change that with regular practice.

I'm trying to do a sketch a day in one of my handmade books and a managed in January but it has got a bit spotty in February, naughty girl! 

I must say that I really enjoy it, particularly if it turns out even the slightest bit decent!

If you happened to have had a copy of Issue 91 Papercraft Essentials from February/ March last year you might recognise the sketch above. I made two Easter-themed altered sardine tins for that issue and this was one of them. I sketched it in January this year for a bit of fun.

Finally this one is a sketch of a mini-stapler, just in case you weren't sure!

Are you a sketcher? Do you keep a sketch book as one of your art journals? I would love to see it so do leave a link if you have posted about it on your blog.

Thanks for popping by and sharing on Art Journal Sharing Thursday.

Kim

Art Journal Sharing Thursday

Hey Gorgeous Bundles of Arty fluff, I've been a little distracted  recently. If you read my home-themed Art Journal Sharing Thursday post from last week you will know that my partner and I are in the midst of the house buying rollercoster ride that is the crazy London market at the moment. 

Think over-priced rabbit hutches, things rarely coming to market but when they do there are a huge amount of buyers chomping at the bit to view them and that is if you actually get to view the property before it has gone and you might have a clue at the madness of it all. 

We have the blisters and phone-fatigue to vouch for it. Thank you so much for your lovely comments and commiserations, it is early days yet but we might have had a bit of luck so keep all extraneous appendages crossed for us! 

Well, I need some stress release so I thought it might be fun for my Art Journal Sharing Thursday to share with you some workings out I did for my article in the March issue of Craft Stamper which is the current issue if you haven't seen it yet.

It isn't a pretty page but it was a really useful experiment for the finished article. There are aspects I went on to use in the article and some that I didn't or changed a bit, but that was why I did the journal page first.

The colour is from paint and all the masks are commercially bought, you might recognise them. If I remember correctly the chevrons and the dashed lines masks are from The Crafter's Workshop, the dots are a Prima Marketing mask and the red peacock feathers are made using a That Special Touch mask.

I used a marker pen through a stencil for the letting and the stamping is with Ranger Archival ink pads. The Rays are from the Rays and Clock set from SCACD Susana Loves Stamps range and you can find them over at Quixotic Paperie for UK/EU or at SCACD for US/Canada.

I can't really show you the whole make that came from this journal page, if you want to see it you will have to check out Craft Stamper. But here is a small peek at one edge of it to whet your appetite...

The texture is chilli flakes in clear texture paste in case you were curious!

Thanks for popping in today and please do share with me any art journaling you have been doing this week, I could do with thinking about something other than house hunting!

Hope you are staying dry and well.

Catch you later Artinators.

Kim

Art Journal Sharing Thursday

One of the things I want to do with my Art Journal Sharing Thursday is to show some works in progress as well as finished pages, a bit of a 'warts and all' share. For me I'm hoping that it will be therapy to help me get over my 'everything has to look perfect' mindset and for you I'm hoping it will be helpful to share in a journey that I'm sure you are going through in your art too. 

So today I'm being brave and sharing this cathartic work in progress page. 

It is very home-themed because my partner and I are in the horrendous game of trying to buy a house. It is horrendous because we love living in London but the London market is completely crazy for all sorts of reasons. We have already had our fingers badly burnt and are back at square one, but in a worst position than we were 4 months ago when we started this game. But hey ho, them's the breaks and you have to move on - no pun intended. Part of my trying to move on is to work some of it out in my art journal to let it go, well that is what I'm hoping anyway. 

This home-themed work in progress page uses water-soluble graphite pencils, Golden Acrylic paints used as washes and a marker pen over the top. You can see that I got a bit impatient and didn't wait for areas to dry, so there is a little bit of bleed from the red roof into their next door neighbours. But I'll fix that later if I decide to keep the page, the page may never become anything at all, I might even paint over it at a later date. 

Another reason for this page, other than working through some stuff, was to play with the Golden Regular Gel Medium. I wanted to use it as a resist so I've used it in several places on the page, over the word 'Home', the messy dots in the end of terrace house and the circle clouds in the sky all use the gel medium.

The page was heavily influenced by the Face Mask video from Pam Carriker for the Cloth Paper Scissors Art Journaling LIVE 2013 event and uses a lot of the same techniques because I wanted to see how they felt first hand.

So that is me this week, feel free to share any Art Journaling you have done this week with links and comments and if you also happen to be house hunting in London at the moment I really feel for you.

Catch you later.

Kim

Art Journal Sharing Thursday

Time for an art journal page share I think? How about it? Do you fancy a journal page?

In my quest to get into the art journaling habit for real this year (remember I mentioned about it in last week's Art Journal Sharing Thursday blog post?) well, I've started around 5 or 6 pages this week, although some of those were just preparing pages with gesso, is that cheating? Maybe I shouldn't count preparing pages with gesso? Ok so I've started 2 pages this week, both in an A4 sketch book, but I'm kind of sitting on them a little bit and letting them mature as works in progress.

 I do have a finished page to show, this one came purely from wanting to try using the Golden Polymer Medium (Gloss) in some different ways to how I usually use it.

I had not actually intended to do a journal page at all but as I was playing with the medium, which is one of my favourites by the way, I just grabbed my repurposed A5 flier journal and so a journal page was born.

I wanted to use the Polymer medium to glue some old book pages to a gessoed page, I've not really used it to glue things before as I usually turn to the Golden gels for that purpose.  Then I used it to make some paint glazes to use on another old book page which I then started to tear and weave, once it was dry of course. 

The woven papers looked like a mini nest to me and the centre of the weave was just shouting for a word. I thought 'Found' nestled nicely in the paper nest so next I used some India ink and a dip pen on a book page sealed with the Polymer medium.

The 'Found' just needed a 'Lost' and you could almost miss it as I slipped it in at the top of the page.

The India ink works beautifully on the Golden Polymer medium and it makes the line a lot thinker and ink flows smoothly onto the surface which is handy to know and I really like the thicker look.

So my Polymer medium play was quite productive, I used it as a glue, a glaze medium for my paints, a sealant for porous materials and finally as a surface to write on. Not bad for one A5 journal page.

Thanks for popping in for my Art Journal Sharing Thursday this week.

Kim

Art Journal Sharing Thursday

I both LOVE and HATE Art Journaling.

I LOVE it because it is a chance to try out new materials or techniques without the pressure of having to have a finished piece or a beautiful make. Then of course it is also a safe place to express myself without fear or judgement. But this is precisely why I HATE art journaling too.

Expressing yourself can be scary, even though there is no pressure to make something beautiful, I mean you don't have to show it to anyone now do you? But still what if it all turns out ugly? You still have to find a way to forgive yourself for making something nasty don't you? And yes, I know you have to let it go and there will be a lot of ugly things to work through before you get to beautiful, you are better off getting it all out of your system and purging it.

But it is still scary and difficult to do. So I am making this year my year of getting into the regular art journaling habit. I dabble, and have many pages in various forms of completion, some I've shown you guys, more that I haven't. 

But this year I've promised myself that I will get into the regular Art Journaling Habit. Of course telling you guys all about it will help won't it? If you want to make something into a habit aren't you supposed to tell lots of people about it so you have no real get out clause and they can hold you to account?

Ok so that is the theory, let's see how it spans out shall we? 

This page is all about colour. I was doing some colour organising onto swatch cards of some Tsukineko Memento ink pads. I was leaning on some paper and the leftover marks on the paper where too gorgeous to not use. I stuck the paper into my journal and added the black 'Graffiti' marks with the Tuxedo Black ink pad and the writing with a marker pen.

Last week I shared an art journal page I did for a DT make and told you a little bit about the book I'm using at the moment. The book is a repurposed flier that was actually picked up for me by David, he knows I like these types of fliers and things, isn't he lovely to me? It is A5 and is full of some lovely pictures which will turn up in other makes I'm sure.

I haven't done the cover yet as you can see, but I will when the time is right.

Ok, so that is more than enough from me today. 

Hope you are all having a totally creative week.

Kim