An Art Journal Page of Leftovers (9/100)

I'm back and joining all of you today with another couple of projects I worked on tonight that I'm really quite proud of. The first is the above canvas panel. I think that I'm slowly but surely starting to get used to this sort of surface, though it's taken a bit of experimentation and adjustment (though not quite as much as a full-out canvas. 

This piece was a bit of a play on my canvas from the other day, though when I started on this canvas it was a fairly unintentional sort of thing. I am happy with the way I was able to differentiate this piece and have it stand well on its own, while still working as a set. If you want to purchase this piece, you can find it here. 

• As I mentioned on my instagram this evening, this canvas was really inspired by the colors, specifically the color purple. It's one of those colors that I love, but don't tend to use very often, for reasons unbeknownst to me. I had a lot of fun playing with the blue in combination with the purple (then adding the yellow for good measure and a sense of flow). 
• I said above that this piece worked well with another piece I had made previously, and in that post I mentioned that the circles were made with a homemade stencil, that I reused here. I can't even tell you all how good it feels to be using my own stencils in my artwork, it just adds another layer of depth to it all, in my opinion.
• The purple in the circles was done with a Portfolio oil pastel, which I then proceeded to activate by rubbing it with a damp paper towel (you could also use a baby wipe). I love the end result. 

Now I want to share with you something that I have done previously on this blog, and I will continue to do it in the future. When I had completed the above project, I still had quite a bit of paint on my palette that I didn't want to go to waste. I actually have a special journal (not this one) that I use specifically to get rid of my paint leftovers, but there was enough to create a full page and I hadn't worked on an art journal page in a while.

And so, out came the composition notebook!

• The words placed on this page were very much inspired by how unique I felt this page was to me. Though it is fairly simple (and I'm not completely sure that I'll never add anything to it), I still feel as if it is very uniquely me. 
• There are several reasons for this, but first and foremost it is because of the doodled pieces that are scattered throughout the page. I had created these as part of a sort of collage sheet fairly near the beginning of last month, and I'm just now getting around to using them. They just seemed to fit. 
• Another thing that I felt was very much particular to my style in particular is that I used yet another one of my stencils I created in this piece. The oval shapes were this very stencil, and it's quickly becoming one of my favorites. 

In the long run, I'm very happy with the way these mixed media pieces turned out, though I think I prefer the canvas panel. That's only if I had to pick a favorite. I've actually been spending a lot of time with my art today, and I ended up finishing a digital piece and my first drawing for Inktober if you want to check my instagram (@worldofimmensum). 

Thank you all again for visiting me, it's greatly appreciated, and I'll see you all next time!

"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!

Inspiring a Character + 29 Faces FINISHED

There are several interesting things to me about art, and this finished page in particular says a few of those things. This page was actually worked on top of something I had already started - every now and again I find it worthwhile to look back through my journals and look for pages I haven't finished yet. I didn't have a whole lot of time tonight, so that was what I decided to do. I love the way that it turned out.

That leads me to my first point about art that I adore. Even when you're happy with the way your art looks on a consistent basis, when you think that you've developed a style, there's still more room to grow. The more you do, the more you work at it, the happier you start to become. At least, that's the way it has ended up working for me.

• The second thing that I find interesting about art is that, at least for me, the more that I do, the more ideas I seem to have. The words in this particular page illustrate this point. They read as follows. "In all my days, with all the things I've seen - there is nothing much more difficult than fixing a broken heart."
• As I was working on this page, the drips coming from the heart immediately started screaming to me that it was a broken heart. I didn't have a quote in mind, or any sort of phrase, but what I did know was that I wanted to incorporate a broken heart somehow. As I worked, and continued to build up the page, the words continued to jumble around in my brain, and eventually I managed to spit this out. It didn't come from anywhere except for my own brain, and I can imagine it coming from a wizened old man in a fairy-tale esque story. In fact, a character started to develop out of this page, and that was something I didn't intend to happen when I started it.
• The sharp contrast of the black with the bright colors is something that I love about this page, and I feel like it plays right in with the feeling of the page. Besides, it's just something that I generally enjoy. 

•  In both of the above photographs, you can see some black outlines of collage bits I cut out and glued down onto this page. I've been hoarding this scrap for a good long while now, but I've decided that I can't keep things just because I like them - that I need to start using them so that I can buy new things that I like even more. It was just a piece of copy paper that I painted a lot of doodly scribbles on with india ink, and I think it fits this page beautifully.
• Also in these photos, you can see a lot of the beautiful layering I was able to achieve with this page in particular. The color layered much better than I had even been expecting (I actually never painted the color purple onto the page, which can be seen in the first photo - the colors just mixed that way) and a lot of it I don't even remember doing, since some of it was already down when I got to this page.

• I want to finish off talking about this page with a close up of the heart itself and the drips that inspired the words. I created the heart with Prismacolor NuPastels, which I've talked about quite a bit recently as something I've been experimenting with and having a whole lot of fun. They're water-soluble, so they spread beautifully, and if you wet them enough when the page is tilted, they create beautiful, inspiring drips like these. 

That brings us to today's face I completed for 29 Faces. It's been a crazy journey, and this actually marks my 29th face. I've finished with a bit of time to spare, but I've definitely learned a lot these past 20 days. I've learned that I love painting faces, and I've awoken a love of watercolor that wasn't there before (as you can see in the sketchbook page shown above). 

After painting my ocean-inspired girl, I felt the need to give my watercolors another go. I also wanted to try out this sketchbook, which I typically use more for pencil sketches, but it has 98 lb paper. It warped a bit, but I think it's manageable, so I'll probably be doing more watercolor in this sketchbook in the future! Ultimately, I like the way this girl turned out. The coloring is perhaps a bit more brown overall than I typically tend to go for, but I'm certainly not opposed. It's definitely better than I could have done at the beginning of this month!

If I've learned anything, it's that painting people is definitely something I'm capable of if I put my mind to it, and that continuous practice is a good way to make significant improvement. Essentially that's what I plan to do this October with Inktober (as well as a top secret upcoming project that I'm super excited to share with all of you).

Thank you all for being with me through this month, I hope you've enjoyed viewing the work I've been sharing as much as I've loved creating it!

Pen & Ink + Distressed Bright Colors

I would like to start today's post off with today's piece for 29 Faces, which was a whole new kind of experiment for me.

I think I've been gushing about this challenge the entire time I've been doing it - there's really something to working at the same thing consistently, and I've definitely seen significant improvement just in the time I've been working on this challenge. This entire month I've been making an effort to experiment in different mediums, and today's face is the 28th out of 29 faces in the month of September. It was done after being inspired by another challenge that I just recently heard about - Inktober.

Now, I haven't done a whole lot of pen and ink drawings in my day, solely because it's always seemed like an intimidating medium to me. However, seeing as this entire month has been about exploring new things (as I did with watercolor, an equally intimidating medium), I thought it only fitting to do a sample piece for Inktober using a face. This was really about me convincing myself that I could do it if I truly wanted to - I'm so pleased with the result that I probably will be doing Inktober this coming month. So stay tuned!

Now we arrive at the art journal page I finished this afternoon. This was done on the page opposite the one created in this video - in it, you can see me building up a few layers that I built up on top of. That is what makes the color scheme vaguely similar to the previous page - I decided to go with the colors that were already down on the page.

There is something that I really love about this page - I feel like it really describes me in a lot of ways. I love bright colors, but I also love distressing. I love texture and a lot of layers, and this page did all of that for me. 

• A big part of the purpose of this page was to experiment with the Ranger texture paste I had bought at Michaels the other day. I had bought some texture paste previously, but it wasn't very good and was really more like white paint. I should have known, since it was pretty inexpensive. However, this texture paste was much different - it was thick and I laid it down over top of a stencil to create the pattern of squares you can see throughout the page.4
• The blue squares scattered throughout the page were punched from the leftover paper I used to draw my face from before - it was a piece of 140 lb paper that I sprayed with Dylusions ink spray and wet with a paintbrush to spread it out over the surface of the paper. The color seemed to work well, so I went with it.
• You can see just how many layers of paint I put down in the second photograph. It took me quite a while to get this page to a place where I was genuinely happy with it, and these are the little areas that make all of the process worth it for me (besides the fun of playing around with  color).

• Something I am quickly starting to become a big fan of is doodling in the layers of my pages, specifically underneath a ton of other layers. You can see that in this photograph, with the gold circles I did in sets of three.
• There are many layers of stamping and paint - you can see the butterflies and dots specifically. Also, if you look closely in the upper left corner, you can see an under-layer of collage I ended up covering almost completely - it was a piece of a gelli print from the other day I was trying to use. I guess I'll have to try again soon.
• I'm linking this page to Stamplorations Stencil Sunday (mixed media + a stencil), as well as Altered Eclectics (anything mixed media).

In the long run, I'm extremely happy with my creativity results for today - sometimes I feel as if it's too much work to try to juggle it among all the chaos of everything else that is going on in my life, and then I realize just how much better I feel when I do make things and I remember why I do it. 

Thank you all for visiting, I look forward to seeing you around!

Mixing Digital and Physical + A Sketchbook Page

Today the art I focused on doing was a lot more oriented towards drawing and not so much painting, but I suppose the first piece could technically be considered mixed media.

This is definitely one of my favorite things I've finished in a good long while, and I'm happy that I even managed to come up with the concept in the first place. It's definitely something I'm going to have to explore in the future. I scanned the page from my art journal I painted yesterday into my computer to start things off.

A big thing I wanted to do was make this painting feel more finished, so I opened the scan in Photoshop and used my drawing tablet to add solid black outlines. I love the way this turned out, and the lines from the composition paper showing through add a sort of subtle touch that I love.

The second thing I have to share with you all today was a age that I finished in my sketchbook (you can see the marker lines peeking through on the opposite page from this sketch) that I absolutely adore.

When I started this page, the only real idea I had in mind was the girl in the lower left hand of the page. I didn't even realize that I was going to give her a body (which is why the one side of her body is sort of falling off of the page), but I'm glad that I did in the long run. She's a character that I'd love to give a final version eventually. 

After I had given her a little bit of work, I started to develop other concepts and felt the need to put them down as well. After it was all said and done, an hour and a half had passed and this was the result. Sometimes a little bit of pointless sketching is great stress relief, and this was one of those instances.

In the long run, today was more of a time to recover from working four days with long hours in a row. I watched a couple of movies and got nice and inspired in that regard, and the ideas are slowly but surely starting to merge and work themselves out. 

Thank you all for joining me, and I hope you're all as excited to see what the next couple of days (that I have off) will hold!

An Ocean Inspired Watercolor Face

Today's mixed media (but primarily watercolor) face is right up there with some of my favorite pieces I've done for the entire 29 Faces challenge. This is actually my 22nd face that I have completed, despite the fact that it's only the 17th of September (I'm a bit of an overachiever, if you haven't noticed), but I wanted to say that I probably will be continuing to create faces for the rest of the month, even after I hit 29. I've been having an extraordinary amount of fun with it, especially when I manage something that I love as much as this piece.

In the long run, I sort of wish that I had done this piece on a more legitimate surface, rather than a page in a composition notebook, and I don't think I'm going to give this girl any more of a background than she already has. However, I do like the lines peeking through in this piece, so in the end I suppose it all works out.

• This piece was done in a composition book art journal, as previously stated, but I did decide to prep the surface with a thin later of white acrylic paint that I scraped onto it with a palette knife. The pages were slightly shiny and I wanted /something/ for the watercolor to adhere to, rather than sitting on the surface or sinking into the paper. 
• As you can probably tell by the photographs, I incorporated a good bit of graphite into this piece. The entire idea for creating this face was to just play with watercolors. I didn't want to be too structured with it, but I didn't want to be too abstract either. I just wanted to have fun and try to curb some of the fear I have of watercolors. For the most part, I feel like I achieved that. 
• The colors of this piece are honestly one of my favorite parts. The color of her hair originally sprung from trying to incorporate some blue into the actual tones of her skin, but it just sat on top of the face and seemed like it could be shaped into a hairline. I went with it. 

•  Something you can also see in these photos was something I used on another of my favorite faces I've done, which is a gold marker by Studio G that I got at Michaels for something like $1.50. It writes smoothly on top of paint, and it adds a shine and highlight to the page that I utterly adore. Sometimes it just seems to be the perfect finishing touch.
• Almost contrasting yesterday's face (though I like today's a lot better), the blue of her hair made me feel as though she could represent water. That was why I decided to go with such a freeflowing neckline for her shirt, almost letting it fade into waves. 

In the long run, it's days like these that make me excited to do challenges like this one - if I paint enough faces, a few are going to stand out as my favorites!

Thank you all for visiting, and I hope you like this girl as much as I do.

Oil Pastel Portrait in an Altered Magazine

I'm actually not completely sure how I feel about today's face.

Normally I have pretty strong feelings one way or another, but with this mixed media portrait, I feel a little bit of both. There's a lot that I like and quite a bit that I don't, and it's conflicting. For example, I feel as if there is a lot of potential in this piece when it actually comes to character development - she practically screams fire, both in appearance and in stature.

 I also feel as if the photos here don't exactly do the page justice - however, seeing as I do most of my art journaling at night, I don't see how I can take photographs in sunlight for better results. I'm going to attempt to shift it over at some point, and hopefully that will help.

However, all that being said, onto the actual page!

• In the first photograph, you can clearly see that I worked this page in the altered magazine I have going. I don't know what makes me decide to work in a particular book or on a particular project, but there was an unfinished portrait on this particular page and it was taunting me.
• You can also see some of my attempts at a background in this first photograph. I like the portrait itself a lot more than I like the background - likely this page isn't completely finished and I will go back to it later. For me, an art journal page is never truly finished unless I'm happy with it. 
• Moving on to the second photo, you can see some of the finer details in the skin tone of this girl's face. I worked with it quite a bit, trying to get the blending right without being over the top (I kept accidentally rubbing sections away, I think because the surface was slick), and I'm decently happy with the results. Like many other pages before this one, I used Portfolio oil pastels to do the majority of this face. I also blended the oil pastel with both acrylic paint and graphite pencil.
• In both of the above photos, you can see the colors of the hair. I used a lot of yellows, oranges and reds, though the intention had originally for her to be blonde. She ended up being more like fire, and I love the result of that.

Now we come to my favorite portion of the page. It's not overly complicated, and there's not a whole lot to say in the long run. However, on the neck portion of this figure, I decided to stamp "fly" with a silver ink pigment ink pad. I adore the result. 

At some angles it's subtle, hardly noticeable at all, and at others it draws from the light source and stands out. Essentially, those are the sorts of details that I love. Also, a shoutout to Paint Party Friday!

I had a lot of fun experimenting with this little piece, and I also think it's cool to point out that a day ago yesterday marked the point of my first oil pastel portrait. In just that short of a time, I've already made immense progress, thanks to all of the practice I've been putting in. It just goes to show, sometimes that's a lot of what it takes!

Thank you all for visiting, and I hope you enjoyed today's page!

Mixed Media Canvas Panel + Gelli Printing

 As I look back over the pieces I've done for the 29 Faces challenge, even though we're only halfway through the month, I am continuously impressed and happy with my progress.

Lately I have come to the realization that pushing myself into new directions is a key way of achieving this progress, so I have attempted to make strides in new and interesting directions. Today's face (a painted one for the first time in two days!) serves to do just that.

This piece was done on a 4"x4" canvas panel, so not only is it a size I'm unused to for paintings, I've also never done a face on a canvas panel at all. That wasn't the only way that I challenged myself, with this piece, but it was certainly part of it. A side note, the canvas panels are a bit of a sneak peek at a future project I will be taking on after September is over, so get hyped.

In taking a closer look at the piece, you can hopefully see that though the surface I was working on was small, I attempted to add layers of interest anyways. I couldn't help myself.

• In the photo on the left, you can the the tiniest hint of a collage piece that I started this square off with. If you watched the video I posted the other day, you may have seen me messing around with a photocopy of a piece of bubble wrap I thought the colors had blended beautifully on. I have several copies of it, actually, but I've been wanting to actually use it. This small surface gave me the change to do just that, and it adds a fun pop of pink.
• The butterfly is a stamped image on newspaper that has been cut out and collaged on top of the hair - fun fact, I originally attempted to stamp directly onto the canvas, but it didn't work out - so I just used my test stamp, since the light blue paint in the background worked perfectly. 
• In the right hand photograph, you can see some of the finer details and textures of this girl's face. It was definitely a challenge to work in a small size like this, especially since I was just starting to get used to using certain brushes for painting portraits. However, it worked out in the long run. 

• This is potentially the most simple part of this mixed media piece, but also potentially my favorite part. Not only did I use yellow ochre, my current favorite color, but I love the way it looks against the gray watercolor.
• Another favorite part of this little portion is the way the hair seems to blend or merge outside of the lines and into the background, as well as the tiny little bit of text stamp that is visible at the very top of the photograph. 

In the end, I think this face turned out extremely well - the bright blue, yellow and pink stand out against the gray, white and black in a way that I personally like a lot. I'll have to play with the yellow ochre and gray color combination again in the near future!

In addition to finishing the above tiny painting, I also received a Gelli plate in the mail today (I had ordered it a few days back, along with the canvas panels), and I got to play around with it and the paint I had leftover on my palette.

Let me tell you, this was a lot of fun. I think my favorites have to be the pink and brown numbers, and the yellow ochre (surprise) circles in the lower right hand corner. I really love the way those prints in particular turned out, but I'm definitely going to have to put all of these to good use in the near future!

After an extremely stressful past couple of days, it was nice to be able to just sit down with some paint and just play. The more I make art on a regular basis, the more I start to realize just how important it is to me as an individual, both to my mood and the number of creative ideas I have. 

Thank you all for visiting, I appreciate each and every one of you! I hope you all have a nice day, and I'll see you next time.

Art Journal Video + Four Faces

Hello everyone, I'm back and this time I have my third art journal video ever to share with all of you. I know I haven't been incredible consistent with making videos, and I'm not going to promise to do so because I honestly don't have the time to edit them a lot of the time.

However, I am going to be making them whenever I can (most likely on days I don't have to work, like today). I'm also not going to be expanding upon the photographs too much, only because I added captions to my video this time around. However, I will be adding a few comments, so stay tuned!

I broke out the better camera to take these photographs today (honestly, I had just kept forgetting to use it, but I'm glad that I remembered, since these are much clearly and generally better). In the above photograph, you can see a bit of the page opposite the one I was actually working on. You can also see me adding things to it in the video. Essentially this is how I clean my brushes and my stamps, as well as test out ideas. Then I just work over top of the layers later.

In these two photographs, you can see the quote a bit more clearly. I heard this the other day and I just couldn't get it out of my head. I knew that it would become an art journal page eventually, and when I ended up creating a circle with wings that looked good, but didn't really make sense, I knew it was perfect.

I thoroughly enjoy this little section of the page. I grouped the majority of the main elements of the page down in this corner, which gives it a lot of interest (while at the same time using the rest of the page as a way to even out the overall feeling of the piece). 

Finally, I would like to finish the sharing of this page off with what is probably my favorite photograph of it. In the long run, the idea was to work with bright colors. I was starting to miss them after so many warmer tones recently, and I'm glad that I made the decision to do an abstract piece instead of a face (not that I dislike faces, don't get me wrong).

For this page, I'm linking to Creative Artiste Mixed Media for "anything mixed media goes".

Speaking of faces, I did some doodles this morning in an attempt to practice some faces that weren't straight on (not including the girl in the upper left). I think it's fairly obvious that I don't do it very much, but that's exactly why I knew that I needed to practice doing so. I used Prismacolor pencils again today for these sketches - they give a bit of a different look than the Derwent ones that I really like. They both act differently, and because of that, I'm glad that I'm experimenting with both.

Thank you so much for visiting and commenting, it really means a lot to hear from all of you! I hope you enjoyed today's post.