21 secrets 2015 Roxanne Coble

I bought 21 Secrets a few years ago when it was only $59 or so. Now it's $98, which still isn't a ton of money for 21 classes, but I didn't even go look at the class line up this time since I had enough classes to work on. Then I started seeing pictures in the 21 Secrets FB group of work coming out of Fragments & Mysteries, Roxanne Coble's workshop. I was fascinated, and finally swallowed the hook and bought the workshop.

Glad I did because I never would have figured out the layers by myself. I've finished 1 spread and have 3 more in progress. Very interesting way of working. The theory is that you study your painted/collaged page to find fragments that speak to you. That didn't happen for me on this one, but I'm sort of not surprised as I am not one to find hidden meaning in *anything*.

Anyway, here's my finished first spread. As I'm writing this in blogger, I'm positioning the two pictures side by side, like a spread. But by the time you see it on whatever platform you use, they may be one above the other. In any case, left hand page is 1st, right hand page 2nd.

I like the colors a lot, and the doodling was a workout. Will keep this way of working in my bag of tricks because it suits my "plan? what plan?" way of doing things.

dlp2015 week 6

Doesn't seem like 6 weeks since I started DLP but it is. Time is a funny (funny odd, not funny haha) thing.
Here's the challenge for this week.

February Theme:  Layers You Will Love!
Art Challenge:  When Not To Stop
Journal Prompt:  "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough!" 

Layers are good, I like layers, I just tend to stop too soon, so I was determined to put a LOT of layers on this page. I didn't bother keeping track, just kept adding things as they came to mind. Paint, collage, pencil, marker, gel pen, stencil, stamp, gesso, paint on credit card edge, paint on pencil eraser, paint on finger, dots, squiggles, Xs, vines, flowers, triangles, circles, scallops.

A common question is how do you know when a page is done? I did reach a point on this one where I looked at it and felt it had reached its apex and anything more would be too much. So I stopped, and I'm happy with it. Quite happy, actually. Love the colors. Michaels had acrylics on sale so I bought 6 tubes of my faves and used four of them on this page, along with black and white. No words this time, just didn't feel like it needed any.

Double click to see it BIG.

sketching at the dog park

So I signed up for Sketchbook Skool and wasn't super impressed with the first batch of videos, so signed up for Sketchbookery by Mary Ann Moss. Her goofy teaching methods are much more my style. And, throwing caution to the winds, I began to sketch willy nilly, not worrying about how straight my lines were, just kept going, as she instructed. I've posted a few things already, most of what I've done actually, and am really happy that somewhere along the way, I became pleased with what I was doing. Not too critical, like I usually am, just happy that my drawings looked enough like what they were to be recognizable, and that they had some character.

I'll do a more thorough review of both classes soon. Need to watch the last couple Sketchbook Skool classes to see if it got better. But for now, here's a quick sketch from the dog park. I had to take Maggie to the vet for shots and figured she needed a treat afterwards. I was sitting on a bench drawing while she ran around. The dog park isn't terribly interesting so I just drew the scene looking toward the back of the park.

It's in a small Moleskine sketchbook, so the spread is about 7"w x 5.5" tall. I water colored it after I got home. It got the most hearts on Instagram of any pic I ever posted.

evolution of an art journal page

I like in-progress posts where I can see how an artist got from a blank sheet of paper to a finish art journal page, so thought I'd do one, because, for some reason or other, I took pics of this one along the way. The background is pale yellow with green smudgey marks from large bubble wrap.

My pages rarely have any meaning, deep or otherwise, and this one is no exception. I do not plumb the depths of my angst nor the heights of my joy when I do these. I simply cut out things that look cool or interest me for some reason, and try to make them into a whole. That said, this page is loosely inspired by an art journal page by Teesha Moore that has a winged figure on it.

Just cutting out likely elements and laying them on the page.
Her body is the upside down top to a large bottle of perfume from a magazine ad.

Rearranged them a bit, added a head piece. No gluing yet.

Changed out the left side scallops and added a building.

Changed out the wings, added 15 cents, and the square right edge.
Glued everything down at this point.

Looked bare at the top so found some more elements.

Added center circle to her head piece. Did a lot of pen work and it's done.
Somewhere along the way I stuck a piece of gluey newspaper
to it and made a mess on her face, head piece and square border. 

channeling Teesha

I still remember the first time I saw one of Teesha Moore's journal pages. I could hardly believe all the detail - tons of pen work, very cool lettering, bizarre creatures. I thought they were weird and wonderful. In fact, I still think that. I also knew I needed to try my hand at it. That was several years ago and I've made a handful of them since, but just lately have gotten better at sticking with the page until it's nice and loaded with stuff. That's always been an issue with me - quitting before there are enough layers or enough stitches or enough detail. But I'm getting better at it.

My art bud Rhonda was down for the day about a month ago and we each made one of Teesha's 16 page journals, then each started a Teesha-type page. I'm not showing that one today because I accidentally sat a sticky piece of paper on it and goobered up some of it. <heavy sigh>  So I'm showing the second one I did.

The initial inspiration was the seahorse. He was weird enough looking all by himself and I wanted to build a page around him. Found the mussel which made a great body, drew some seaweed type stuff, did a bunch of doodling, etc, etc. Still need to get better (bolder?) with the shadowing but I'm happy with the page. Double click on the image to see it huge.

Here's the link to all Teesha's marvelous videos on how she does her journal pages. It's basically a FREE art journaling class. Go make one.

MMAJRR update!

Mixed Media Art Journal Round Robin. I'm behind posting pics for this, but I just got done with the last one and will mail it home to Terrie on Tuesday. Meanwhile, here are the various spreads I've done since the last post about this. Hmmm... I know I've posted spreads but must not have tagged them correctly. Ah, found them.  Unfortunately I didn't keep track of which ones are whose so just enjoy them. Left side of spread is first, then the right.

Vintage papers collage, gesso, a circular rainbow of stamps,
gel stick edges, a couple quotes.

 

Scraped paint background, original images from
1924 ladies magazines, a bit of a story.
Sure wish I had some La-Mar Reducing Soap
so I could just wash my fat away...

Painted background, magazines images, doodles.

Painted background, magazine images, doodles.

Vintage paper collage background, various inks,
modeling paste scraped thru stencils,
gel sticks, stamped circles, printed quote.

Watercolor background, gel sticks, vintage postcard flap with
washi tape, magazine image, doodles,
hand carved 'home' stamp.

Underneath the postcard flap, another quote and
the original writing on the postcard.

Artspirations Studio workshop

There's me - Leslie52 - along the left side.

Last weekend I spent 17 wonderful hours art journaling with a bunch of other women at Tangie Baxter's Artspirations Studio in Mesa AZ. Those 17 hours happened in a 28 hour period - 5 hours Friday night (6pm-11pm) and 12 hours Saturday (10am-10pm). I've never in my life done something for 12 hours straight. It's a long time, even for something I like a lot and I got a little light headed around 5pm but a slice of pizza fixed me right up.

Gorgeous old turquoise lockers and the bird wall.

The studio exists because Tangie ran a Kickstarter campaign, hit her goal, and then worked her butt off putting it all together! I was a contributor so my name is up on the wall along with everyone else who chipped in, and it was cool to look up and see it there - kinda like having your star on Broadway!

The studio is a wonderful place, full of every art supply known to woman, tables to work at, chairs to sit and look at books in, stuff to buy, art on the walls.

One side of the paint station and the circus wall.

The workshop was good. Tangie demoed a lot of techniques and we all thrashed away on the journals her husband made for the class. I'll show mine in another post after I get it all scanned.

Tangie showing us how to do gel transfers.

The rest of the paint station.

Tangie talking to all of us sitting at tables
along the left wall, just out of sight.

mixed media art journal round robin kick-off

A while back, I put out a call for participants in an art journal round robin, thanks to the kindness of Karen at MMSA. I used her blog figuring I'd get people who were timely, artistic, prolific and pleasant, since that's the only kind of people I run into there. I ended up with 5 women from around the country, and we're about to send our journals out for the first leg of their journey. 

We were to make or buy a journal, do a couple spreads to set the tone for our theme/color/style, and be ready to mail by the 3rd Monday in August. I made a journal using 300lb watercolor paper for the covers and 90lb watercolor paper for the signatures. 

I bound it using some upholstery fabric (from a dumpster diving expedition my friend Moneka made a decade ago. I've been hauling boxes of fabric around all these years using it here and there) and the diamond X stitch. 

The covers were collaged with random papers, stamped a bit, painted with acrylics, collaged with a few layers of crinkled dress pattern tissue, then painted and stamped again. They look a bit leather-like in person and I'm very pleased with them. The inside covers - not so much, so I'm going to do more with them when it comes home 6 months from now.

I did this spread in the art journal class I'm teaching, working from an Oprah magazine, trying to get them to see the way a crazy batch of unrelated stuff can come together in a collage. I like it but it's sooo different from the next one that it's hard to believe I made both of them. And it's weird to look at them together like this. Makes me think maybe I'm a bit schizo LOL. 

This spread is very vintage in feel and fact - almost all original ephemera. The woman is a gel medium transfer of a picture I've used before. I just love her and the transfer was already made from a demo I did in class. The ledger page is from a purchased lot, the envelope flap is from (I think) my friend Julie-in-San-Diego's mom's history notebook which she gifted me with, the blue PAID bit is from a batch of old receipts. The reprint envelope is from my mom's old box of negatives, the postage stamps are from the huge baggie Rhonda gave me, the Clark's strip is from some old crochet thread. I'm very happy with this spread. It's so me.

I struggled trying to settle on a theme and eventually decided that I just want people to cut loose and make good art in whatever mode they're in the mood for, just like I did with my two wildly disparate spreads. I'll post the journals and my work in them as they come thru. Should be interesting.