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.

Neon Pink + An Oil Pastel Face (9.1.2016)

It's been a little over a week since I last posted, but it's for good reason.

I haven't really been making a whole lot of art (except the past couple of days I broke because I was already starting to miss it) because I've been working on organizing my art space. Ever since we moved into this house, I don't think that it's ever been properly organized. And by that, I mean a place for everything and everything in its place. It's been clean, but never full out organized.

I'm still not quite done with it, but I've made significant progress, and it's incredibly inspiring. Today, I hope I can inspire you.

As you can see both from the photos above and the photo that started the post off, I've really been enjoying working with bright colors recently. I still like my dramatic bits of black, but I've been trying to experiment a bit.

• Circles have always been aesthetically pleasing to me, and in the photo on the left, you can see four instances of where I used them. I cut some circles out of a piece of phone book paper and glued them down, made some dots with the end of my paintbrush, stamped a dot/circle stamp, and did some paint splatters.
• As far as the paint splatters are concerned, I made them with watered down white acrylic paint, let them dry partially, then picked up what was left with a paper towel. That's why they come across more like outlines of circles (I didn't outline them painstakingly, I promise). 
• Recently I acquired a white gel pen, and I had some fun doodling on this page and playing around with it. The white dots within the yellow ochre circle, and the lines in the crosses were all a result of that.  

Recently I've been inspired by Rae Missigman's 15 Minutes of Mixed Media on youtube. She's a big part of the thoughts behind this page, and the whole reason I decided to add neon pink to my paint collection. I would highly recommend that you check her out. 

Something I'm also extremely excited to announce (if I can even call it an announcement) that I'm doing is participating in 29 Faces for the month of September. I was looking around for something I could do this month, due mostly to the fact that it's officially a new month, and stumbled across this amazing challenge.

I can't guarantee that all the faces I do for this challenge will be mixed media (I already have some digital ideas floating around in my head), but the first one absolutely is. There's some collage (her face was a newspaper page cut into the shape of a face and worked on), oil pastels, acrylic paints and graphite. The watercolor look of her hair was thanks to my Portfolio water soluble oil pastels.

I can't even begin to explain how happy I am with the way she turned out. This page is a bit of a work in progress, as I still have a background to go, but as far as the face is concerned, I think I'm going to leave well enough alone. Just creating this face got the ideas flowing for other types of art, and I'll probably be working in my sketchbook based on this before too long.

I'm super excited to see what the rest of this month will hold, and I hope you'll join me in the adventure!

Playing with Colors and Pattern (8.23.2016)

I've been wanting to do another mixed media video since I did one a few weeks back, but my schedule has been fighting me every step of the way. Not only have I been working a decent amount lately, but I've also officially started my freshman year of college.

Needless to say, it's been crazy.

However, I was able to carve out time in that busy schedule to record this video today, and I'm decently happy with the way it turned out.

It's not often that I start an art journal page with an idea in mind. Most of the time, my art journals just aren't that type of art for me. However, in this case, I was willing to make an exception.

On instagram the other day, I posted a picture of a piece of newspaper I had been using as a drop paper for my art. It had collected an assortment of colors that I thought looked good together, even though I had been working on completely different pages when it happened. Those colors were an almost neon pink, a light turquoise, and my current favorite color - yellow ochre.

I knew that I wanted to glue this piece of newspaper down to begin my page, and I had a vague idea of the shapes I wanted to include (the flowers and the scalloped borders). It was more than I normally have.

The textures and colors of this page are what I really love.

• Here you can see the quote that I chose for this page. I love this quote because it helps me to remember to focus on the present, which is something that I constantly need reminding of.
• Something I adore about the photo on the left is the greenish color I was able to achieve by mixing a mustard yellow color with the blue I had originally put down. I ultimately loved the effect I was able to achieve. Something I wasn't as big of a fan of can also be seen in this photograph. I don't like the way I put Emily Dickinson on the page, it's too curved and sticks out too much. In the end, this might change.

•  These are just a couple more detail shots. I wanted to get a bit of a different angle in the photo on the left, and you can see some of the subtle pen doodling near the bottom of the shot that was on the original piece of newspaper. I attempted to recreate that feeling throughout the page with a doodled, playful feeling.
• And finally, last but not least, on the right you can see my favorite picture I've taken of this page. The colors and textures are nice, and the circles and curved lines represent what I was trying to achieve with this page. If I had to pick my favorite part, this little section would be it.

If you have any questions at all, about how I made this page, what I used to make it, or any ideas of what you would like to see from me in the future, please let me know in the comments, whether it be here or on youtube. I look forward to hearing from you!

A Fresh Start (7.26.2016)

Before I get into the actual art, a bit of a note about the World of Immensum. 

Even though all of my more formal artwork all takes place in the same world, my mixed media is more of place for me to play with ideas and techniques - they don't have specific ideas in mind, but they can inspire ideas. With that being said, until I figure out a way to share the stories that come up from this sort of mixed media, I will be focusing on the latter.

Now, without further ado, the art journal awaits!

In order to kick this project off strong, I decided to begin a new journal. 

This is the cover page, which I always love to start with before moving on to the actual pages. For a lot of people, the complete opposite is the case - they like to finish their entire journal before polishing the whole thing off by completing the covers. Either way is fine, this is just the way I like to do it. 

These pictures show a lot of the finer details/my favorite bits of this particular cover.

• In the left hand photo, you can see a lot of the texture that I got from my stamped title piece. I used foam stamps and a mixture of red and brown acrylic paint. Then I simply loaded it on and allowed it to dry. I also love where the tiny bit of the butterfly wing overlaps with said title piece.
• On the right, there are a lot of things going on that I love. The thing that sticks out to me the most though is the patterned piece of tissue paper that is pretty much front and center. I've been hoarding it for a long while now, because I found it almost too pretty to use. However, I finally broke, and I'm glad that I did as it fits perfectly. The horizontal brush strokes were done with a metallic paint that I adore.

This is the second piece that I've finished in the past few days, and I'm pretty happy with it. The idea was to work with brighter, more playful colors (thus the title), and was done in a much smaller format, on a 3x5 index card.

A big part of my style is that I don't like to be limited to any one thing, including what types of canvases or background pieces I decide to work on. This is a prime example of just that.

As you can see, the title was cut out of newspaper titles and glued down (I've collected many cut-out letters through the years and have them organized into envelopes for easier access).

With the finer details of this piece, you can see that there are some areas where I put down white paint and then proceeded to scratch it away in a circular pattern, revealing the background behind it. The drawn lines along the yellow paint marks are also incredibly appealing to me.

I tend to use a lot of paint and layers in my mixed media, and these pieces are no exception. I hope you all enjoy looking at these pieces as much as I enjoyed making them, and I look forward to hearing what you think!