"Rain" Prompt Illustration + WIP Journal Pages

 Hey everyone! It's good to be back, even after as short a period of time as a day. Yesterday was a bit chaotic for me, and I didn't have time for much art at all. I added a few layers to a couple different art journal pages, but it was nothing to write home about, so I figured it wasn't worth posting yet. However, today is a bit different!

I've been trying to take slow steps into creating more professional quality drawings as of late; I'm not sure why the idea appeals to me so much, it just does. I've also been practicing for Inktober, so I figured that an ink drawing would be a nice thing to attempt, since I had a bit of time to dedicate to my art. In addition to all of that, the Illustration Friday prompt has been floating around in my head for a couple of days, and I really felt the need to do something with it.

This illustration was born as a result of all of that. I'm a really big fan of interesting/weird conceptual types of art, and I feel like I was able to capture that with this piece. Perhaps in the future, during Inktober, I'll get a bit more intricate with my details, but for now this sort of cartoon-like style suits me just fine. I like the way she turned out, and much like my post from the other day, it inspires many stories.

As for my mixed media work, I don't have any finished pages to share yet, but I do have a few works in progress that I've been playing with and am super excited with the way they're turning out.

The first page up is a single page, and uses a lot of bright colors, quite a bit of paint, and one main piece of collage. This page is a bit of an experiment in the long run, and I also worked it over top of a base layer that I ultimately hated. The colors clashed and it had been sitting in this journal for freaking ever, so I finally decided to just paint over it completely. I think this has a lot more potential.

• I mentioned above that this page was an experiment, and that's because I recently got a few things that I wanted to play around with. I had ordered some Sharpie Pens from Amazon (because they were on sale and NaNoWriMo is quickly approaching!!) and to bump the order up to free shipping, I got a brayer and a diamond stencil. I figured that they would work in combination with the Gelli plate I recently bought, as well as having other applications. That was what I was attempting to do here.
• As you can see, there are a lot of bright colors and a lot of layers. The neon pink applied around the circles are Portfolio oil pastels, and though I haven't done anything with them yet, they are water soluble and one of my very favorite (and inexpensive!) art supplies to use. 

• The second work in progress I want to show you guys is actually a spread; one that I'm actually afraid to do too much else to for fear of messing it up. It's something that I definitely love conceptually - it was a way of experimenting with the branches stencil used along the bottom but I ended up adoring the way it turned out. I may have to do a more finished piece separate from my journal at a later date.
• One of my favorite bits of this spread currently is the background that shows through the tree stencil. There is some copper metallic paint in there, and in certain lights it gleams.

So, as you can see, I've definitely been up to some things, despite the fact that I've been pretty busy and tired as of late. The art definitely helps balance it out!

Thank you for stopping by, and I'd love to hear from you!