Art Journal Sharing Thursday - Marrakech Sketching

Hey guys, my Art Journal Sharing Thursday this week is a travel sketching work in progress and a shameless excuse to share some travel photos from our recent amazing trip to Marrakech. Only a couple of photos, mind you, if I posted them all you would be reading this post for days!

Some of you might remember that last year I took part in a blog competition run by Cox & Kings. 

[My competition entry - a handmade sketch book]

The prize was a two night stay in the Mosaic Palais Aziza in Marrakech and much to my complete and utter amazement I won and we took the trip a couple of weekends ago in March.

Obviously we took a lot of photos, I mean A LOT of photos and as I didn't really get an awful lot of time to do a lot of sketching, we were just too busy sightseeing, I've printed some of the photos out to use as source materials for some sketching studies that I want to do.

I plan to fill up the sketch book I made for the competition (the first photo in this post) with sketches and memorabilia from the trip. So it will be a sketch / scrap / journal book for our weekend in Marrakech. At the moment the book is with the other competition pieces on display at the Cox & King Headquarters. But once it is back I will set about filling it up.

I'm a bit of an architecture freak and love all the windows and doors. The fine details and decorations are just so stunning and complex to sketch out, especially for a novice sketcher like myself so I'm looking forward to filling the book with all these details, plus perhaps a selfie or two of us...

and of course some pictures of markets, I mean you can not go to Marrakech without some market pictures...

Then there are the tiles, seeing as it was my love of the tiles that got us there in the first place...

Oh and did I mention the markets?

With all the sightseeing and shopping all that is left is a relaxing cup of tea by the pool back in the oasis of the Mosaic Palais Aziza hotel.

We loved every minute, massive thank you once again to Cox & Kings, the Mosaic Palais Aziza hotel and my fellow artists (Vandy Massey, Jenny Keal, Concetta Perôt and Alan Reed). 

And to you guys for popping in today to share my Art Journal Sharing Thursday project this week. Let me know if you have any art journal pages you want to share too, I would love to see them.

Kim

Some Amazing News...

If you visited my blog on Monday you would have seen my final piece for the Cox & Kings Art competition inspired by their rather lovely looking Morocco Tours. 

You can see the whole make, and some of the process if you hop on back to Monday's post.

Each of us voted, which was really, really hard as all the work was amazing and very diverse. So you can imagine my shock when I got the email to say that I had won!

I'm somewhat flabbergasted and would like to send a HUGE thank you to my fellow participants, it was fabulous to be able to see all your work and get to 'meet' you and share in your artistic journeys.

Please go visit their blogs to see their art and follow/connect with them - Vandy Massey, Jenny Keal, Concetta Perôt and Alan Reed.

Also a BIG thank you to Cox & Kings for the opportunity and the wonderful prize which is a two-night stay in Mosaic Palais Aziza in Marrakech which just looks amazing. Neither David nor myself have been to Morocco so it will be an enormous treat and I can not wait to do some sketching whilst I am there.

Nope, it still hasn't quite sunk in.

Thanks for popping in and sharing my amazing news.

Kim

Moroccan Travel Journal For Cox & Kings

If you cast you mind back to last Thursday, all those days ago, before the weekend and everything, you might remember that I'm taking part in a competition being sponsored by Cox & Kings. Myself and four other artist / bloggers have been asked to make something inspired by the Cox & Kings Morocco Tours. We all got to choose a photograph to take as our inspiration and here is the one I chose...

[Photograph from Cox & Kings]

I wasn't really sure what to make, but then it hit me, what do artists need when they travel? A travel journal of course!

I was very glad I had a photo with Moroccan tiles, so I thought I would try to reproduce them in my make.

I used a French Link stitch to bind the journal, which was fun as I hadn't used that particular binding before.

The signatures are made up of a range of different papers so there is lots of choice for sketching, painting, journalling in this travel journal. You can pop photos in it too and there is a folder in the back to store all your travel ephemera.

[There are some affiliate links in this blog post, so if you buy through them I do get a small amount of money at no extra cost to yourself. Thanks for your support!]

I even found some paper in my stash that had a map of Morocco too!

If you don't want to know how I put the cover together then skip down to the bottom now to check out the websites of my fellow participants.

The cover is a mixed media piece. I thought I would do a little experiment, I've been meaning to try designing some stencils and masks with software to then cut with the Silhouette Cameo, so this seemed like a perfect opportunity to give it a go.

I started in Photoshop Elements with my inspiration photograph and selected the elements that I wanted in the tile portion of the photograph.

I also changed some of the elements to get a full tile and to add a bit more symmetry in the places where the picture wasn't complete. Once I had my new tile I opened the file in Inkscape.

As you can imagine, working from a photograph in Photoshop meant that the elements of the tile were quite pixelated and I used Inskape to clean up the edges of the shapes so that I could then use the file to create a cutting file in Silhouette Studio.

I then used the cutting file to cut a mask from oil-coated card which I then used to paint the tile onto the cover with acrylic paint.

I had already prepared the cover with a collage of paper printed with my Thursday blog post translated into Arabic with Google Translate, fixed and then painted with Gesso.

Once I finished the stenciling I used the mask again to put a layer of clear texture paste over the pattern to give it the look of tiles and a bit of dimension, then lightly distressed the edges of the covers to bring the whole book together.

It was a great learning process and a big thank you to Cox & Kings for the inspiration and motivation to try out my little experiment!

Going by their blogs I know that the other guys, Vandy Massey, Jenny Keal, Concetta Perôt and Alan Reed, will have some amazing and different pieces to show you and I am looking forward to seeing what everyone has done. So pop on over to their websites to take a peek.

Thanks for popping by.

Kim

Check This Out - Going All Space Age

Yesterday saw the new issue of Simply Cards and Papercraft, 117, hitting the shop shelves and I have to tell you, when I got my copy it put a HUGE smile on my face!

Love it to bits! Check out the photos of my Galaxy-themed makes, Tym Leckey and the Simply Cards & Papercraft team have dressed them brilliantly! I'm sure they will make you smile too! Tee hee!

Ok, well I am a BIG science nerd so this was right up my space avenue! Sooo want one of those astronauts!

I've got two cards in the Cardmaker's challenge too, just love what all the guys have done with the New Year theme, all so different and inspiring. I went for a sort of hot and fiery sunshine look with the sunrays from the Paperbabe High in the Sky Stamp set.

There is an amazing Kaisercraft cover gift too with a stamp, papers and luggage tags, and lots of beautiful inspiration from everyone, so really - you NEED to get this mag!

Before you rush out to your newsagents you might want to check out the Creative Expressions Facebook page, they have their regular Friday before 5pm giveaway. Go sign up!

(I'm being so bossy today aren't I?!)

Ok, I'm out of here, still have lots of work on my Cox & Kings Competition piece - Gulp!

Have a fun Friday.

Kim

Some Moroccan Inspiration From Cox & Kings

Time for something a little different today, myself and four other bloggers/artists have been asked to take part in a competition that is being run by the travel agents Cox & Kings to promote their rather gorgeous looking Morocco Tours.

Well, I'm up for a challenge and thought it would be a bit of fun. Each artist has chosen a Morocco Tour photograph as inspiration. 

[Photograph from Cox & Kings]

This is the photograph I've chosen. I've always loved Moorish tile design and colour, then there are those lovely doors in this picture too...and look at the great cobbled pavement. Lots of texture to inspire! Don't you just want to walk down that street?

The other guys taking part are Vandy Massey, Jenny Keal, Concetta Perôt and Alan Reed I can not wait to see what everyone does for their final pieces. All of them do wonderful things, so go and have a look at their websites.

There is a prize, for the lucky winner there is a two-night stay in the rather lovely looking Mosaic Palais Aziza in Marrakech up for grabs! Wow, what a treat for the winner!

Come back on Monday to see what I come up with. I'm kind of intrigued on how it is going to turn out myself - Yikes!

Catch you later.

Kim