All posts filed under: Art Journaling

Get Messy Season of Contrast, Week 3.

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I let this page guide me as I made it and I love how it turned out.  Almost the opposite to last week where I layered and layered, this page has lots of white space left which I like. I started by making some plain gelli plate prints using the colours I had chosen.  I printed blocks of colour on dry wax paper and old book pages.  Once I had my pages I cut out some shapes as neatly as I could and I tore some shapes to contrast. I wove the green and aqua torn strips, both of which were on wax paper to make the grid on the right page above. The aqua circles are torn out and also printed on dry wax paper. The copper and gold shapes are cut with scissors and were printed on the book paper. I like to see the pages close up, the gelli plate gives an interesting print even with one or two colours. Thanks to Get Messy Art Journal and Jules Tea for the inspiration! …

Intuitive Painting – what a process!

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Today I tried a new thing in my giant Moleskine art journal which is A3 size and perfect for something like intuitive painting which I haven’t really done before.  I don’t often know where a page is heading when I start and I rarely make layers and layers of paint and techniques. I am a single layer painting kinda girl, I might draw or collage on top of that layer, but that is more than likely going to be it. The end. Finished page. So of course I was keen to try some intuitive painting as featured in this week’s Get Messy tutorial. The main aim is to use lots of colour and supplies and equipment and make layers, all of the layers. Random is not my top skill, I always end up making things balance or matching the colours or following a pattern even when I think I am not going to. Part way through the layers for my ‘intuitive’ art journal painting, I thought that maybe I could do a layer of images …

Get Messy Art Journaling. Season of Contrast Week 1.

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For this first week of Season of Contrast at Get Messy I have taken contrast to the extreme and used only black and white! I have enjoyed working with black ink, black gesso and white gesso so far, with a little addition of Posca pen to make the dots on the ombre spread and the details on the next spread.  I tried some ink blots and then couldn’t stop making them!! I find the ink blots mesmerizing to make and to stare at.  All kinds of things pop out of the page.  I always see lots of faces.   For sketchbooks, I  used my giant Moleskine which opens A2 size, medium Moleskine which is A3 when open and my mini Moleskine which is A5 open.  All the sizes! I really like the small gelli prints of fern leaves in my mini book. Prints were made on vintage dictionary paper and dry wax paper as well as directly into my sketchbooks. I think I will leave some of these prints and blots alone and some I …

Get Messy Art 101 Week Two

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Week two of Art 101 and we are messing about with texture. I worked on one of the pages I started last week and added some texture using a doily to print and then I stuck it down when I had printed with it and it was starting to get soggy! The second page is a background I made a while ago.  I added some texture to this page and the first page using gold paint and a mesh bag which had lemons in it which had to be emptied out. I painted on the quote and all done! ‘Enable the chance for something to happen’ – sound advice from Christoph Niemann who is featured on the first episode of ‘Abstract’ on Netflix. I have watched the first three episodes and it is an excellent series about the design process. If you are interested in the Get Messy Art Journaling community, check out their website and public blog. Happy Creating and Happy Thursday.

The Grey Journal is about to travel the world.

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I have never participated in a traveling journal before, so I did what anyone would and I joined two groups! This is the first journal and my colour is grey.  How it works is I make a journal and art a couple of spreads inside using greys only.  Then I send it onto the next person in the group and so it continues until eventually it comes back to me full of grey goodness. We have five artists and we each have a different colour, so I wonder which journal I will get first and what colour it will be?  I like the restriction of only using one colour, it allows me to concentrate on other areas without having to plan a colour palette. I have used Paynes Grey in the book and it looks blue to me, but I am getting away with it because it is officially called ‘grey’ and it is one of my most favorite colours. Also silver counts as grey right!? I can’t wait to paint and draw in everyones …

Get Messy Art 101. Week One.

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This season of Get Messy Art Journal is all about getting down to the art basics and building  repertoire of techniques and ideas.  The first week was no disappointment, there were tutorials in painting faces and creating backgrounds and lots of mini prompts and ideas pouring out of the Get Messy community! I put my spin on a background using watercolor and pulled out my trusty gelli plate to add the wishy washy colour to the pages of my sketchbooks and I also printed onto some pages from a vintage typewriting book. Lots of sketchbooks are essential for me because I always end up starting many pages at the same time and they all need to dry before I carry on to the next layer or page. I tried various colour palettes and I love these backgrounds. I added a page to a page and I will continue to layer onto this spread. These pages started with a self portrait painted on the inside of security envelopes using a sumi brush and black sumi ink. …

‘I Like’ Friday. The mini journal edition.

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I started working in one of my mini journals today,  and I love it love it love it!  Each page is  a little quick delve into colour, collage and drawing.  I have used acrylic paints which dry nice and quickly, so I can work through the journal without having to wait ages for paint to dry. I started with my new friend, the ‘owlat’ which came about in a previous page and I thought the image looked like a owl crossed with a cat.  I drew this one more deliberately, guiding the triangles as I went. The fold out pages are fun and I tried to make them work with each other and the pages around them by adding a similar flower motif in pen (I used white Uniball and a blue Micron). I am becoming very interested in old photos as well as postcards and this is a copy of a vintage photograph.  I wonder who she was? Collage is a new addition to my art journaling and I am enjoying using snips of …

Hand-Made small and mini journals.

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Are you easily influenced? I am and I have been spotting mini art journals all over the interwebs, mainly Instagram and I wanted to make my very own teeny tiny journal. So I did! I have lots of paper ephemera ranging from maps to paper bags via old National Geographic magazines and sports order forms, so I thought I would drag it all out and make a book or five!  You know how it is, once you start, you can’t stop. I started with a couple of small but not mini books, they are about five and a half inches by four inches and some of the pages fold out to make a wider spread. To stitch them together at the spine, I used wax linen and pamphlet stitch. I found a good book at the library with lots of clear instructions called How to make Books by Esther K. Smith which is full of great ideas including the single signature pamphlet or leaflet style book. I cut out three different size mini journals, the …

Get Messy Season of Gifts Week 6. Blind Contour Faces.

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I have a love/hate relationship with blind contour drawing.  It is super fun to do but the results are always at best hilarious, but more often just horrific! On a couple of these I cheated a little and looked every so often.  They are all done using a sumi brush and ink except the last one.   The ones which look like a bald monster were done following the rules and no looking, even when I was filling my brush.  While doing the other two, I peeked a couple of times usually when filling my brush.  I think they retain the free and loose effect, but a little less horror story! The final one is in my handmade journal and I started the page with some vintage dress pattern paper and some pink acrylic paint.  I drew some faces directly onto the page and some onto dry wax paper which I glued over the whole thing.  I also used a water soluble pencil which has dissolved a bit under the matt medium I used to …

Get Messy Art Journal Season of gifts week 3-4.

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This week I met a fellow Get Messy member and it was great!  I am in a couple of groups on Facebook and via the interwebs but I have never met any of them in real life. Now I have! We met at the local library who have a room we could use to art journal and paint and make a mess generally!  They even have drop cloths for the tables to catch our painty inky messes. The time flew by as we made ink galaxies and gelli plate printed backgrounds. I had plans to make journals and all kinds of things, but we ran out of time.  So I will be making some journals this week I think so that I can work in some mini sketchbooks in the new year. I took some dried seeds and botanicals which I had previously gathered on a dog walk through the woods, some printed better than others as is always the way with the gelli plate.  I printed on vintage book paper, kraft paper and dry …