Some Recent Art Journaling

Hello All!

Sorry it has been a while! I kept meaning to blog but life has been busy lately, and I have been distracted with various things. That all said I didn't mean to put it off for so long! I will hopefully make that up over the next few days as I have loads to show you. Today I am going to start off with some recent art journaling:

This first one was an experiment of bold colours and lines. For the lady I used a magazine cutting which I then painted over and I tried to keep to black and white to match the boldness of the page. The whole thing I felt had a confidence about it and so I found the text from a magazine which was in keeping with this. 

This page is in my altered book journal and you may see some of the original text coming through on the right. I have been playing around lately with a lot of portraiture and this is one is a self portrait. Again I stuck to black and white and I think it works well here. This again has an air of confidence and is all about being self assured. 

For this one I really enjoyed playing with layering stamps, ink, pigment powders and tissue paper. I loved the yellow streak running through the page and this is what gave the inspiration for the text. To me the page has a warmth and feels quite happy and relaxed.

Finally this one, done in my small journal, is a bright warm very happy page about my recent family holiday to Crete. It was the best holiday we have ever had, we all had such a good time. The holiday was to celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary (we went to Crete for our honeymoon) and it couldn't have been better. It was a memory I had to journal about! The colours have a warm glow to them and the image is my youngest daughter paddling in the sea.

I hope you enjoyed these pages, I will be back with more very soon!

Bye for now xxx

February Art Journaling

Hello All,

Well here we are in February, my least favorite month! I am not one for cold and really dislike snow. It really makes me feel like hibernating until the spring. But one good thing about hiding indoors is that I have more time to journal and I thought I would show you some of the pages I have done this month so far.

I have been playing around with leaving white space in a few of these, something I am not very good at cause I usually just want to fill the whole page with vivid colour, but I do like how these turned out. 

I feel as though I have coming out of an abstract phase and going into portraits again. I do swing from one to the other. I think I may try a mixed media portrait on canvas next... Anyway I hope you enjoy these.

Bye for now xxx

Creative play

Hello All,

Today I thought I would share a process that I sometimes like to do when I am feeling uninspired. Sometimes I go through a lull and my motivation to create just isn't there. This is when I turn to what I call creative play. I delve into my art supplies and just pick some things that catch my eye..not too much or it is easy to get overwhelmed. On this last occasion I chose spray inks, modeling paste and some stencils, glass bead texture gel, iridescent medium, some ecoline watercolour inks, a few stamps and an ink pad, a few old book pages, and four tubes of craft acrylic.

I then prep some A3 plain paper with some gesso and get to work. Using only what I have picked I just let go and do whatever comes to mind. I don't think too much about it, simply just letting myself play with the colours and mediums and see what happens. Here's what came from this process at the weekend:

Sometimes I really like how they turn out and may add to them to create a finished piece. Other times I just stash them or cut them up and use them in other projects. What is important is that it gets the creative juices flowing again and straight away I feel more inspired. It is very therapeutic to just relax and play with the materials and even if I don't like the results I have spent a happy afternoon anyway.

I definitely recommend it if you have lost your motivation!

Bye for now! xxx 

Some Recent Art Journaling

Hello All,

Apologies for not posting recently, I don't seem to have been able to find the time to sit and type. That is not to say I haven't been creating, I have been doing the odd bit of art journaling recently and I thought I would share some of the pages I have been creating:

This is in my altered book and was an experiment in playing with a hot glue gun to create texture.
I enjoyed adding the colour and bringing back forward some of the original text and imagery to the foreground. The glue texture worked really well, I will definitely be doing this again!

This was a 10 minute exercise simply playing with paint and pattern. It gave me a lovely creative boost on a gloomy Sunday morning. It is a lovely thing to do, just give yourself 10 minutes to play, it doesn't matter how it turns out!

I was using this page to mop up left over paint from other projects and decided to create an autumnal spread over the top. The image is taken from an old calendar I had lying around and the quote is from a Fiona Apple song that I always used to sing to my daughter. I also used a leaf stencil that someone sent me a while ago and I haven't had a chance to use yet.

This is a spread I created in my smallest journal. I was inspired by a lovely evening I had with a friend of mine and I really fancied painting a figure. I am really pleased with how she turned out.

I hope you like these pages, I will hopefully find some more time to blog as I have also been working on a new canvas and had a lovely art swap this month... more on this to follow.

Bye for now! xxx

New Painting

Hello All,

After completing my last painting I was inspired so much by the combination of textures and vivid colour that I dived straight into another and have managed to get it finished relatively quickly:

This one makes me feel like I am under the sea looking up to the surface at the light and pattern of the current. It is full of different textures and shimmery bits that catch the light:

Here is a detail of that texture. I didn't paint this as a commission, just for enjoyment but luckily it has sold nearly straight away.

I am now trying to focus on arranging some workshops as I haven't been able to fit them in now for almost a year. These are definitely top priority now! I have also been hired to deliver a children's autumn themed craft party next month so I have that to organise too.

I will be advertising my workshops via my website which you can link to from here so look out for them! 

Bye for now

xxxx