"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!

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!