Life Book 2015 Week 3: The Artful Wordsmith

I love Joanne Sharpe’s work.  She is an artful lettering expert, in my humble opinion.  Her book, “The Art of Whimsical Lettering” has all the tips and tricks you might need to learn to hand-letter your own artwork’s quotes and mantras using your own embellished handwriting.  In week 3 of Life Book, Joanne provides a set of videos demonstrating exactly how to turn our own slopping writing into something artful and how to use watercolors to create a painting from our letters and a simple drawing.

Okay, I’m still not comfortable with watercolors and I have horrible, shaky, slanted handwriting . . . but I’m game.  I watched the videos and, while sitting in a chair, I created a small practice painting using her techniques.  All I had with me was my 5″x8″ watercolor Moleskine notebook, a black Sakura 03 Micron pen, a black Sakura Identi-pen, a few water soluble Tombow markers and a water brush.  This is what I produced:

Not too bad!  I was surprised how the Tombow markers actually emulated regular watercolors. Plus they are nice and bright, to boot!  I was rather proud of my little practice piece.  Much more confident than when I started out,  I decided to follow up with a larger piece on better quality 9″x12″ watercolor paper using a new set of gouache (opaque watercolors) that I had not yet tried. And I used quality watercolor brushes too.  This is the result:

I am not so pleased with my efforts here.  I used too much water in spots and too much paint in others. My lettering AND the borders are uneven and oddly crooked.  The right side of the composition is too crowded and the lettering on the left side is too small and bland.  Sigh.  It’s not ugly but it is not what I had hoped for.  I will have to try and try again to master both lettering and watercolors but I’m willing to keep trying, even if it’s an uphill battle.  That’s how I learn.

I hope you did something creative this weekend and that your inner critic is not screaming at you the way mine is at me!

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An Artful Adieu to A Year of Art

The last two weeks just flew by.  In fact, the whole year passed in the wink of an eye!  Now, on the last day of this year, I wish to post an artful farewell to 2014.

On January 1st of this year I wrote and posted a bucket list, things I wanted to do, to see, to accomplish.  One of the items on the list was to take an online acrylic painting or mixed media workshop.  I had always wanted to paint but had not picked up a paintbrush and put any kind of paint to paper or canvas since I was ten years old.  I wanted to get past my fear of trying painting.  So, on someone’s recommendation, in February I took a mixed media e-course by Kelly Rae Roberts.  I watched her videos, I collaged, I painted, I came up with mantras, I tried some more.

Around April, I decided I wasn’t very good at painting on canvas. I became embarrassed to post my paintings alongside the ‘true’ artists in Kelly Rae’s e-course Facebook group.  Even though the people in the group were supportive of me, I was not supportive of myself.  It appears I thought I should go from knowing nothing to being skilled over night.  In any case, I switched gears and decided to focus my efforts on art journaling instead.  That seemed less precious, less threatening, and more experimental.  The groups and workshops I joined for art journaling had artists of all levels and I felt comfortable.  I then did two months of index card art:  quick and easy and not threatening at all.  Then I took a watercolor class.  And a workshop on creative funky journals.

But on December 12th I decided I wanted to create a mixed media piece as a gift for my daughter for Christmas.   She had told me earlier this year that she wanted me to paint a ‘Day of the Dead’ painting for her because her tattoo-artist boyfriend liked a few early paintings I had done.  So out came my better-quality paints and a 16″x20″ canvas art-board and my Muse.  This is what I created for her:

The background is colorful, with a design reminiscent of Mexican art.  The way I painted the face  reflects the closing out of a year which has been extremely challenging for my daughter (the skull half of the face) and the beginning of a new year of possibilities (the celebratory-woman half of the face).  Endings and deaths always make room for beginnings and births, which is why we celebrate on New Year’s Eve.

I am grateful that my daughter loved her gift and that I left my fear of painting behind me.  I am grateful to have fulfilled a wish on my bucket list for 2014 and to have learned art from some very talented artists.  2014 has been a wonderfully creative year for me and I hope 2015 will be even better!  Tomorrow I will post what I would like to focus on in the coming year.

Happy New Year and new beginnings to you all!

Last Bit of Holiday Art Journaling for a While

Things are starting to get busy for me.  Christmas is less than two weeks away and I have shopping to do, wrapping to do, baking to do, and gift-making to do.  I have decided to put aside my holiday art journal until at least the day after Christmas.  I think there will still be time to fill it up by the first week in January when other art commitments will take its place.

I did finish two pages today.  Both were quick and easy.

 

This started out as Christmas paper that I had folded and sewn into my hand-made journal.  It is slightly redder than the photo makes out with a faint pink texture in the background and 3 tiny pink elephants.  I outlined the little elephants and then laid a large elephant mask on the paper and outlined it.  I used a different stencil in a Marakesh pattern over the outline and pounced frosted pink paint through the stencil.  Once the paint dried I outlined the pattern using the same Signo Broad pen in blue-black.  I added the words using the blue-black pen and tried to fill in the puffy letters with a light pink souffle pen which didn’t quite work.  It reacted with the blue-black pen so it is not as clean as I would have liked.  But I do like the page.  It is rather non-traditional but the frosty pink adds some holiday zest.

For this one, I drew and collaged various Christmas trees onto a page of Bristol paper in the journal. I had previously dripped Adirondack ink in red and teal on the top of the page.  I decorated some of the trees using Pitt Big Brush pens and Sakura souffle pens.  Others, specifically those collaged from colorful papers, I left as is.  It was a simple page to put together and I wish I had not used a page with the ink at the top.  But it is colorful and full of Christmas tree cheer.

You may not see me on the blog again until after Christmas, but rest assured I will be creating daily.  I hope to show you some of my hand-made gifts after the holiday itself.  I hope you find time in your busy holiday schedule for creativity too.  Good wishes to you all during this holiday season!

Easy Peasy Collage, Stamps & and Lettering

I’m still playing in my holiday art journal.  There are so many pages in it that I will have to do more than one page per day to fill it up.  And that’s fine with me.  While I have time, I’ll play . . . and when it gets busy with the holidays, I’ll focus on family.

I finished 3 more pages today (no prompts). All were done using simple collage, stamping, and lettering techniques.

I added a small cracker box into the journal simply by taping it into a section with designer duct tape.  I stamped all over the inside cardboard of that box with red snowflake stamps to use as backgrounds for two different pages.  The color of the snowflakes reminded me of a reindeer that I had sketched and painted for an art journal page a couple of weeks ago.  I made a copy of that page and cut out the reindeer (and the words “Deer Santa,”), collaging them onto the stamped background.  I hand-lettered the rest of the words on the page using a Posca paint pen in white, a Signo Broad pen in white, and a Fude ball pen in black.  Easy-peasy!

The next page I did over a scrapbook paper page in the journal.  I had cut Christmas ornaments out of a Pottery Barn catalog and I simply collaged them, overlapping a little, onto the middle of the page. I outlined each in a different color of Pitt big brush pens to make them pop. I added ornament stamps using black archival ink at the top and bottom of the page and colored bits of them in with Pitt big brush pens.  Since both stamps had the word “Joy” in them, I hand-lettered various versions of the word all over the page using a black Sakura Identi-pen and highlighted certain letters with the Pitt big brush pens.  Another page, easy-peasy!

For the next page, I used a gelatin plate monoprint that I had created several months ago and was saving because it had such a Christmas look to it with its colors of gold, yellow, green, and burgundy.  I collaged it onto the back of a cereal box in the journal using Tombow permanent adhesive then, picking up the gold in the print, I taped all four edges of the page with a goldish-copper glitter fabric tape.  I’m not sure that the glitter of the gold paint or the glitter tape shows up but they really add some sparkle!  I had a page of 7 Gypsies old-fashioned letter rub-ons that I thought would look good on the page.  There was only one of each letter available and I had a difficult time deciding on what song lyrics or saying I wanted for this beautiful print.  I settled on “O, Holy Night” which is my favorite of all Christmas carols.  The only problem was there was only one H in the sheet of rub-ons and two H’s in the title of the song.  I laid out and rubbed on the letter, leaving a space for the 2nd H which I hand-lettered using a black Fude ball pen.  It is not as ornate as the other H but I think it works.  I added the next line in the song in smaller plain letters using the black Fude ball pen.  I think the whole page is gorgeous and I wish the glitter of the golds showed up better in the photo.  Another page, easy-peasy!

I did all of this in about one hour … or maybe a little more.  This blog post probably took as long.  I found time in my schedule to be creative and I hope you see that you can be creative with very little time in your own day!

2 for 1 Fun ….

Today I did two pages in my holiday art journal.  That’s not exactly true.  I finished a page that I began a few days ago; I did a quickie collage page; and I started (but did not finish) another page that contains a lot of drawing.  Here are the two pages I finished today.

A few days ago, I posted this painted background with just a sketch of the uppermost cat. At the time I had no idea where the page was going.  Last night I had an idea for the words on the page: “We wish you a merry Catmas” . . . except when I said it out loud in my head it came out “We wish you a Merry Catmouse.”  Perfect!  I couldn’t pass that up so I went with it.  The cats and mice were sketched with a pencil and outlined with a black china marker.  The lettering and all of the details were done with a Posca paint pen in white and a black Fude ball pen.  This page makes me smile.

Yesterday I added the red & white washi tape to the inside of one of the cereal boxes I used in creating my holiday journal.  Today while thinking of whether or not to paint this page, I saw a piece of Tim Holtz scrapbook paper that had old-fashioned alphabet blocks on it.  I thought they would look perfect directly on the cardboard itself.  Since there were only one of each letter of the alphabet, I decided on the phrase ‘kid toys’.  Once that was decided on, I looked for something in my stash that was related.  I found a roll of vintage bingo cards and cut one to use as the center background.  I also cut out the letter blocks and collaged all onto the page.  I then used Crayola crayons to outline the letter blocks and, finally, I drew the baseball and jack.  I like how the page came out.  It takes me back to my childhood in the 50’s when all of those items were popular.

These pages were fun but now I have housework to do.  I’ll be back, maybe tomorrow, with more creative play in my holiday art journal.  I hope you make time today, too, for some creative fun!

O Tannenbaum…

This afternoon I was supposed to decorate our tree.  It is a tall narrow artificial tree that fits into our small living room. I’ve used the same decorations for years and I like how it looks when it is done.  A little commercial and neat; a little sloppy; a little fun; maybe a little under-done.

But today I just wasn’t feeling like decorating that tree!  (The photo is from 2013).  I wanted to work in my holiday art journal so, for the third day in a row, I procrastinated and headed to my craft room instead.

I had a narrow piece of green scrapbook paper bound into my handmade journal, so I decided to work on that.  The prompt for my weekly art journal group, Journal52.com,  was ‘Doodle’.  Now, I’m not into formal doodle techniques like Zentangle although I do mindless doodling that is similar if I have a lot of time and/or large areas in which to doodle.  Most of the time, for me, doodle means to goof around and scribble and draw and make marks.  My doodling is pretty messy . . . as is my lettering.

Hmmm, what to doodle?  Since my bare Christmas tree has been on my mind, I decided to ‘doodle’ a tree.  I drew a very loosey-goosey tree on the paper with a Micron pen and ‘doodled’ ornaments for it.  The tree made me think of the German song “O, Tannenbaum” (“Oh, Christmas Tree”, to us) so I wrote the first line of the song in German and the next line in English over the top of the Christmas tree with its ornaments.  The tree looked very wimpy at that time and the letters got lost.  To correct that, I filled the block letters in with an 08 black Micron pen and then colored the ornaments with various colored souffle & glaze pens.  I then went over the circular pattern in the paper in green and added white accents, cranberry garland, and dangles at the top of the page.  Done!

The tree is narrow, like mine.  It is a little messy; a little neat; a little fun; a little under-done.  Just like mine.  Do I wish I had the time, patience, and hand-control to doodle something spectacular on the page?  Sure.  But I don’t . . . and I refuse to fuss about it.  I’m okay with my page just as it is.   And I still decorated a tree, didn’t I?

I enjoyed playing in my holiday art journal today.  I hope you found the time to play creatively today, too!

Hope is the thing…

Today Dawn DeVries Sokol put out her second set of prompts for the 12.31 holiday art journal workshop. Every Tuesday and Friday she gives a thought prompt as well as a word of the day, a quote of the day, a song of the day and a suggested visual focus for your page.  None of these are required.  The prompts are there to provide inspiration for your holiday art journaling, if you need them.  If you are interested in finding out more about her free 12.31 workshop, you can find it here:  http://www.dawnsokol.com/1231/ .

The only prompt that called to me today was her visual focus which was to create a shape on the page using torn bits and pieces of paper and then to doodle and/or journal on or around the shape.  I already had a tall and narrow piece of red scrapbook paper as a page in the journal so I decided to use that as the base.  My first thought was to create a cross, which I did.  But that cross morphed into the shape of a Christmas star so I decided to go with that. The shape of the Christmas star reminded me a little of a tree so I drew a bird on one of the branches (rays).  I doodled and collaged scalloped shapes around the bottom and sides of the page and then doodled over the star.  I wrote the word HOPE on top of the scallops at the bottom of the page. I’m not sure where that came from, but it seemed to fit. Then I doodled small white and black stars on the background to mirror the large one.   I used Posca paint pens, a Fude ball pen in black,  and a white Signo Broad pen for all of my doodling.

As I was looking over the page, the word HOPE and the bird came together in my mind and I journaled the first verse of Emily Dickinson’s poem “Hope Is the Thing With Feathers” in the center of the bottom scallops.  For those who are unfamiliar with that poem it reads:

Hope is the thing with feathers

By Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers  
That perches in the soul,  
And sings the tune without the words,  
And never stops at all,  
   
And sweetest in the gale is heard;          
And sore must be the storm  
That could abash the little bird  
That kept so many warm.  
   
I’ve heard it in the chillest land,  
And on the strangest sea;         
Yet, never, in extremity,  
It asked a crumb of me.

I rather like my patchwork Christmas star/cross and its association with Emily Dickinson’s poem.  Christmas (the birth of Christ) is, after all, associated with hope in the hearts of many.

This was an interesting creative exercise, pulling almost everything from some source inside that had nothing to do with planning or thought.  I love that about creativity.  It has much to do with intuition and process and less to do with the end product.

I hope you find some time in your day to creatively express your own intuition!

Holiday Art Journal Love #12.31

Two days after I put together my recycled art journal, I have decided that I am in love with it.  It is so nice to doodle, stencil, paint & spray to my heart’s content knowing that it is just for me, just for fun!  And I love that I am using a non-traditional holiday color scheme on the pages.  The reds are more magenta, the greens more teal . . . and lemons, aquas, corals and violets have crept in there.  It seems less formal and more festive to me than traditional Christmas colors.

This morning, I completed the back cover of the journal.  I gessoed it to cover up the cereal box images and then stenciled snowflakes all over it in acrylic paints using colors that appeared on the front cover (the snowmen page). The stencil I used is called Blizzard by ColorBox.  After the stenciled areas were dry I doodled inside each snowflake with a white Uni-ball Signo Broad pen (except the yellow snowflakes which I doodled with a black roller-ball pen).  I love the way it turned out.  No words.  Just colorful snowflakes on a white background.  I’ll leave the words and images for inside the journal.

Back cover of my holiday journal.

When I finished the back cover I still had wet acrylics sitting on my palette.  So I picked up a wide brush and used the paint up on the inside of the front cover.  I didn’t bother to gesso.  I merely painted directly on the inside cardboard of the cereal box that forms the cover of the journal.  I like the blocky look of the paints.  When I stared at it for a moment, I saw a cat’s head near the top center so I sketched in a whimsical cat onto the dried paint using a Stabilo All pencil (which is water-soluble).  I decided to leave it for now until I decide what should accompany the kitty on the page.

Inside front cover of the holiday journal.

I had a lot of fun this morning just playing in the journal.  But now I have to do grown-up chores.  I’ll be back another time with more.

I hope you can find something creative and fun to do today too!

31 Days Has December…

It’s been about a week since I blogged last. I got sick with either whopping allergies or a cold two days before Thanksgiving.  Cleaning the house, preparing the feast, and then cleaning everything up afterward took a toll on my energy and I am finally beginning to feel myself again.  And just in time too!

December is here and it has 31 days in which to create.  The late fall is full of fun and a flurry of family activities. One of the activities I decided to do this year is to keep a holiday art journal.  I feel no pressure to work in it every day or to finish a page each day, but I do want to get in the holiday mood and sustain some form of creativity for the next 4 weeks.  I plan to loosely follow prompts given in a free “12.31” holiday journal workshop sponsored by Dawn DeVries Sokol, the same person who does NaNoJouMo during November.  If you’re interested you can find it here:  http://www.dawnsokol.com/1231/ .

I decided to create my own journal out of cereal and cracker boxes using a technique that Dawn teaches in a workshop on Creativebug.com .  I used two cereal boxes, two cracker boxes, a greeting card and four pieces of heavy scrapbook paper/cardstock.  I will gesso and paint or otherwise decorate each page as I use it.  Yesterday (December 1st) I started putting the journal together and today I finished the journal and decorated the cover for it.

You can see that the boxes, cards, and papers I used are different sizes.  That’s A-okay for what I will be doing.  I’m happy to re-cycle items I would otherwise throw out.

Along the right edge I deckle-cut each of the boxes to give them a little more interest.

After binding all of the pages together with a needle and twine, I covered the outside spine in decorative duct tape.  I decorated the cover page with gesso, Dylusions sprays, Posca paint pens and a white gel pen.  The two snow-people are made from circles that I had painted as an exercise in a watercolor workshop a few months ago.  I kept those exercise papers just in case I wanted to use bits and pieces as collage in my art journal.  Again, re-use & recycle.

I have no idea what this journal will look like at the end of December, but I’m pretty sure I will have fun working in it.  I hope you also find something fun and creative to do during this last month of 2014!

Poem A Day Challenge – Day 24

I’ll Be Trimming the Tree

Not for me Black Friday
Commercial hordes saving a buck
I’m staying home that day
You’ll find me listening to Christmas music
And trimming the tree
The one I purchased on Christmas Eve
Three years ago
Because the thought of doing without Christmas
Hurt too damn much
Let the masses trample the aisles
Let them spend their credit and dimes
I’ll stay home and drink hot chocolate
Watch Scrooged on TV
Eat popcorn sprinkled with lime
Retailers will just have to wait
I’ll be home trimming my tree