partner journal

I am involved in a partner journal with Wendy in Australia. These are the seventh set of layouts that I have done. These layouts are in my journal.

I have had trouble getting back into my art after the hectic Christmas and New Year break, so these are simple layouts.

The theme for these pages was hopes, dreams or aspirations for 2010 or beyond.

The background for the first page is scrapbooking paper, the nest and egg are collaged on, the background is smudged with gesso, the writing is in black Pitt Artist pen and white Signo pen.

The background of the second page was stamped with text, then painted over with acrylic and gesso. The daisies were collaged on, then I drew and wrote over the top. I love Ali Edwards' ideas on taking one little word as a theme for your year!

partner journal

I am involved in a partner journal with Wendy in New Zealand. These are the sixth set of layouts that I have done. These layouts are in Wendy's journal.

The theme for these pages was self portraits with commentaries.

In the first page the frame is scrapbooking paper cut to the correct dimensions. The centre is painted with silver acrylic paint. The image of me is a digital photograph altered in Photoshop Elements. The poem is "Mirror" by Sylvia Plath, and it has been written in with black Pitt Artist pen.

The second page is a simple drawing done on the white page with black Pitt Artist pen, and smudges of acrylic paint on the butterflies. The drawing is a younger me. The verse is taken from a poem by Vivienne Plumb.

illustration friday "frozen"

Illustration Friday entry for the prompt "frozen" - Yay!!!! I managed two weeks in a row!!


This is a mixed media collage in my little "52 prompts" inspiration journal. It is in under the prompt "weather and it is "snow".


The background started with smeared gesso and silver acrylic paint. Then strips of two shades of blue sellotape. You can't really see the effect of these first layers properly. The silver has scanned looking grey and the sellotape strips are actually a beautiful, glossy, transparent blue.


Then I collaged images of the girl and jewels from magazines. I folded the largest jewel image and snipped it like a snowflake. Then decorated with white Uniball Signo pen and black Pitt Artist pen.


I didn't use any blue paint, so the blue that you see is all done with the nifty sellotape that I bought.

This is a scan of the page before I added the collage elements and the decorations. It is the smeared gesso and silver acrylic paint with the two shades of blue sellotape over the top. The sellotape is ripped into strips.

The effect is much better if you are looking at the actual art in front of you. The sellotape is really shiny and it adds gloss to the coloured page and the blue colour intensifies wherever the blue is overlapped.

illustration friday "flying"

Illustration Friday entry for the prompt "flying"

Once again I haven't managed to post to this group for ages. Hope to get back on track again!

This is a mixed media collage. This journal page has torn pages underneath from a vintage book of boy's stories. Then I drew over that with watersoluble crayons and then over that with acrylic paints. Three collage elements from a magazine, white and black pens.

partner journal

I am involved in a partner journal with Wendy in New Zealand. These are the fifth set of layouts that I have done. These layouts are in my journal.

The theme for these pages was self portraits with commentaries.

In the self-portrait as Venus page I painted the background first with acrylic paint (for you people who like detail... the colour was "Derivan Matisse Ultramarine Blue", gorgeous colour!) The image of Venus and Cupid was found on the internet. The painting is "Venus and Cupid at Vulcan's Forge" by Palma Giovane. I added my face to Venus' body (bless her!) using Photoshop Elements and cut out section I wanted and glued it to the page with Gel Medium. I continued on the curtain at the top and the sheets at the bottom using watersoluble crayons. I stamped flourishes with white ink (sorry all you artists that don't like flourishes!!), then printed my commentary with a white Uniball Signo pen (the colour is called Angelic Colour!). This pen is FANTASTIC on the dark background, the white comes out even more solid than my souffle pens and there was no trouble using it over acrylic paint.

The next page started with torn and collaged scrapbooking and magazine and pamphlet papers. Then I drew the drawing on the right hand side. Then I attacked it with gesso and watersoluble crayons and coloured metallic pencil for the glasses. It was cool too wet the watersoluble crayons with gesso rather than just water! You get a more milky effect. On the left I used watersoluble crayons on the edges and gesso in the centre. The text is done on the computer and printed on transparency sheet. The writing didn't show up too well when I sat it over the page to test it, so I glued a layer of white serviette with gel medium to the centre of the page before I glued the transparency on. You will notice that I managed to smudge the bottom of the text in the process, but I let it go, because it is OK to make bad art!!!!!

I am loving doing this journal swap, it always manages to kick start me again from the doldrums!!

lady macbeth

"Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad"

This is a collage journal page on black paper. The image is a vintage book clipping of Lady Macbeth.

I started the page with Naples Yellow acrylic paint, then crackled over purple paint with a crackle medium. I glued torn pieces of serviette around the outside edge and glued the Lady Macbeth in the centre. The border was drawn with Sakura glaze pen and black Sharpie. So was the text. I just made up the font as I wrote it because I didn't want to use computer font (I am trying to do more of my own lettering! Man, do I need to loosen up though!!) Then I drew around Lady Macbeth with the black Sharpie as well.

If you click on the image to get a closer look, you will see the cool textures from the two colour crackle!

mama

This journal page was kind of a result of reading Pam Carricker's article in "Cloth, Paper, Scissors" where she explained that her artwork felt like it was about a mother letting go of her children. Then I came across an image of an oldfashioned mother in a vintage children's book while I was looking for pages to send someone in an ephemera swap. She looked so calm and kind and knowing that I had to cut her out and use her. She was originally holding a door handle, but I put the lovely little bird on her hand instead.

The story it tells is a mother looking away and letting her children grow up and make mistakes on their own. The bird is the child that she is letting free. She has given her children all the warnings that she can, and now she knows that she has to let them make mistakes and find out for themselves. Looks like her son in the background learned a rather hard one!!

The quote is a line from Elvis Presly's song "It's all right, Mama", music and lyrics by Arthur Crudup.

The journal page is done on black paper with gesso and acrylic paint as a background. The collaged elements are a piece of dress pattern and images from three different vintage kid's books. The writing is painted in acrylic paints (it took a lot of layers to block out that bright blue underneath!!) and was outlined with fine black maker. The decoratons were stencilled acrylic paints, fine black marker, and white gelly-roll glaze pen.

Hope you like it!

partner journal

I am involved in a partner journal with Wendy in New Zealand. These are the fourth set of layouts that I have done. These layouts are in her journal.
The theme for these pages was still where we came from, grew up, live, etc. But I responded to her pages with these layouts.

I started with acrylic paint. Then I added printed images. The titling letters are stickers. I then decorated with watersoluble crayons, sharpies and rubon embellishments. Four out of the six photos are my own, the other two were off the internet.

I used digital photos of the piles of mess in my house, printed them, then tore them into strips and wove them onto the page with modge podge.
The bottom page was printed on the computer to contrast with the top page.

tattoo

This is a mixed media collage on a journal page. The prompt was "tattoo" and it came from the Yahoo Group I belong to "Blissfully Art Journaling"

Of course if I ever was to get angel's wings tattooed on me, they would be much, much smaller than this, but I like to dream of a different me sometimes.

The method was scrapbooking papers painted over with black and white gesso. Computer printed image and title. Roses are magazine images. Stamped with black ink and white gesso. Decorated and written with white souffle pen.

music satchel

I promised more art, and here it is! My sister is an opera singer and she said last year that she was trying to find a satchel type bag that she could carry her music in to work. She was having trouble finding something that wasn't either the wrong shape or too boring looking. So I hunted and hunted for a modern looking satchel (which was hard to find, I might add!) and then I added an artwork to the front of it to make it different!

The satchel turned out to be a fairly cheap one from a stationery shop. It was perfect with its large blank front panel.

The artwork is handmade "fabric paper" - I have seen this technique in "Cloth, Paper, Scissors" magazine and in Beryl Taylor's wonderful book "Mixed Media Explorations". It is a process of building up paper with PVA glue on a fabric background. I used a plain fabric in the background and then layered sheet music, serviettes, and images on card and paper with PVA glue. The servittes are wonderful because they go quite transparent with the glue and you get different layers showing through from underneath.

This image was from a glossy magazine. I blended it in by gluing serviettes over the edges of the paper. I chose her because I loved the glowing colours of her outfit, and her classical pose.

This image is of L'Opera in Paris (quite suitable for an opera singer's bag!!) and it was a reproduction image that was a giveaway in a "Somerset Studio" magazine.

Once I was happy with the layers I had built up, I took to the art with my sewing machine! I picked some plain and some fancy stitches and sewed around the images (to help make sure they didn't dislodge later) and around the whole artwork to frame it and secure the edges. Please don't look too closely at the sewing because I am NO seamstress! I love that I can finally make use of my sewing machine in mixed media artwork. Sometimes I go crazy with it, and I don't worry at all that the sewing is terrible!!

I gave this to my sister for Christmas and she was over the moon with it! I hope that it hasn't fallen apart yet!!!!

Kenya

This is a page from an art journal. It is layered collage with vintage book pages, serviettes and postage stamps. I coloured with gesso and watersoluble crayons. Added a hand drawn image of a tree and painted it. Added the hand drawn word "Kenya" and the writing around the orange picture with souffle pen. Embellished with watersoluble crayon, souffle pen, gesso, coloured pencil and black sharpie. This took a few layers that I wasn't sure that I liked before it all came together and I was happy!

The story behind the images is that the 26 year old Princess Royal, Elizabeth, was in Kenya when her father, King George, died. But because the news took a while to get to them, noone there, including herself, realised that she had become the Queen of England.

tiny little flower

"Who would have thought it possible that a tiny little flower could preoccupy a person so completely that there simply wasn't room for any other thought..." - Sophie Scholl.

I thought that this quote was perfect for this journal page! This was built up with a layer of old sheet music, then a vellum sheet with the coloured circles, then the collaged vintage image of the girl. I then used scrapbooking paper blocks around the outside of the page. There is watercolour pencil around the collaged image that I wet with water and brush. I finished by embellishing with orange watersoluble crayon and purple sharpie. The saying is done with computer font.

I love using the vintage book images and pages of text or music. It is wonderful taking all the different elements and then mixing them all together.

strawberries and cream

This is a nursery rhyme I remember from books when I was young. I couldn't remember all the words so I had to do a little googling to finish a couple of lines. It reminds me particularly of going to my grandparent's house, because I used to get out a "Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes" book everytime I went, and read the old rhymes.

This is a collage page from a journal. I used scrapbooking paper, vellum, stamped images, vintage magazine image, and sharpies.

illustration friday "opinion"

executive education (false gods)

...it is my opinion that educating a person to enter the workforce immediately to an executive position is a mistake, I feel that to be a good executive you must have risen through the ranks.


This was a straight collage onto a journal page. I usedimages from a vintage book, magazine article, serviette, and assorted ephemera. I have been wanting to try some straight collages without the added afterthoughts of mixed media. I like that I am forced to work it out with solid pieces rather than "cheat" with added lines and scribbles. I enjoyed this, I am sure I will do more!

happy birthday helen!

Thought I would show you a card I made recently for my friend Helen. It is always a bit of a challenge making birthday and Christmas cards for each other. Because we do a lot of our art making together, we have to come up with something a bit different than we have been doing lately, and on top of that we have to be making it in secret. I decided to go the collage way for this card, because that is what I have been dabbling in lately. It is A4 sized card with a book page stitched onto it. I decorated the book page before I stitched it to the background card. The collaged images are from vintage books and vintage children's playing cards. The text was printed onto vellum with the computer. I added stitches with cotton and embroidery threads.

thief!!

This strange little fella was spotted nicking off with an expensive piece of jewelry! He buzzed through the room and out the window and everyone there thought it was just a willy willy blowing through. This high speed camera just happened to catch the guilty culprit redhanded.

This is a page in a journal. It is a mixed media piece with pages from a vintage book in the background. Then I coloured the background with watersoluble crayons and acrylic paint. Then I collaged on the images of the man, the ring and the wings. I used a white pen marker to do the feathers on the wings and outlined the figure with black fineline pen.

If you look carefully, you will see the woman that the ring was stolen from in the picture. And she is wearing the very same ring!

Can't find her? Take a close look at the wings!!

shoes will do that to a woman!

This journal page was just a bit of a laugh. It was a play on words because I started the page with newspaper images and a heading about Fiji and then fruit stickers and labels underneath and then while I was searching in a magazine for images of tropical fruits I found this rather "fruity" image of a woman who went surfing naked in Sydney to get a free pair of gold Manolo Blahniks (shoes, to you peasants and jandal wearers!)

Well it just all fitted in perfectly!

riding the highs and lows of life

This is a journal page with a host of ephemera underneath. There is a bad lotto ticket, courier stickers, magazine cuttings, stamp, Starbuck's pamphlet, etc. I painted over them all with acrylic paint leaving little bits to peek through, then I drew over the page with sharpies.

This isn't the entire page because my scanner isn't quite big enough for the journal that I am using! I keep saying to myself that I will keep my art smaller on the page when I do it...but I never remember.

I am busy working at the moment, but I am trying to keep my creativity going with little snatches of art. It is a long weekend here in Hawkes Bay this weekend. We have Friday off for Hawkes Bay day and Monday off for Labour Day, and it is the tradition in our family to go along to the Hawkes Bay A&P Show (Agricultural and Pastoral!!). We will walk and walk and walk around hundreds of exhibits (when hardly any of them really interest us!), we will watch the kids on the side show rides (and watch our money ride off with them!), we will eat hotdogs and candyfloss, and we will get sunburn even though we drench ourselves in cancer society sunscreen lotion. Aaaaaah! And yet I am looking forward to it as usual!!

I will take my camera with me and try and get some shots (even if they are just arty ones!) to put up on my blog.

If I am lucky I will get some time for some art on the weekend too!!!!!!!!

City

Through this broad street, restless ever,
Ebbs and flows a human tide,
Wave on Wave a living river;
Wealth and fashion side by side;
Toiler, idler, slave and master,
In the same quick current glide.

John Greenleaf Whittier (At Washington)

This is a collage page in a journal. It is a magazine image glued on a page coloured with stamppad ink. It is smeared with acrylic paint. The lettering is stencilled with souffle pen. Then it is doodled on with pencil, souffle pen and sharpies. The poem just suited it perfectly.

Lighthouse

Aaaaaah! I'm still in a good mood from having finished an Illustration Friday drawing! Now to keep the momentum going! This is a journal page with an excerpt from Virginia Woolf's "To The Lighthouse." Unfortunately I can't claim to have read this book. I found the quote (as well as a couple of others from the same book) and comments on the story line, and now I have to say that I want to read it. I have some others on the go and in line at the moment ("The Artist's Way" "Novel About My Wife" "At The Sign Of The Sugared Plum" and "Petals In The Ashes"), but I think I will see if there are any Virginia Woolf books in the library next.

The method for this page was colouring the page with watersoluble crayons first then washing them with water. Once dried I collaged on the images of the lighthouse, the boats and the woman.

Next I washed a layer of dark paint over the top. I had planned to use Payne's Grey because I love it so, but I discovered that the lid had been broken and my tube had dried up. Because that is what I had envisioned, I made up my own version of Payne's Grey with Mars Black, Phthalo Green and Phthalo Blue. It seemed to do the trick. I masked the portion where the beam of light shone and painted over the entire page (except the woman.) I rubbed the paint off a few times with absorbent towels.

Then I attached the bird image and wrote the text with souffle pen, and added embellishments with sharpie and souffle pen.