All posts tagged: Art Journaling

‘I Like’ Friday. Picture books for art inspiration.

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I keep getting the best ideas from children’s picture books. I check them in and out at the library and every so often, one will catch my eye. I have a look at the beautiful illustrations and get some ideas for my art journal. Some are just plain gorgeous and some are sparking ideas left and right! These are some examples of what I have found recently. There are lots of ideas in these books which will keep me going for ages! Yak and Dove by Kyo Maclear and illustrated by Esmé Shapiro. These buildings are inside the covers and I just love them. Another inspiring inside cover from Kali’s Song by Jeanette Winter. Looks like some gorgeous collage and pen drawings. These fabulous ladies make me want to gather all the leaves and sticks to make wings and crowns and skis!  From Fairy Friends Seasons by Merrilee Liddiard Images to inspire from Shackleton’s Journey by William Grill. The drawings are deceptively simple and very effective. These last two pages are from The Story of …

Get Messy Art Journal Season of Fairy Tales. Week 2.

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I really got stuck into the season of fairy tales this week, and I have made a good start in my hand made journal as well as some off-shoot ideas in my giant Moleskine. Rather than follow any fairy tale in particular, I am making my pages with the general theme in mind and as a guide rather than a director. I have lots of golden circles reflecting the golden ball from The Frog Prince and this week I have painted castles and trees which I see more of in this journal as they were lovely to paint and sparked many more ideas as I created them. I made a falling triangle stencil and painted it in a bright opera pink on a vellum page in my journal.  I like this simple but striking page over the watery trees and inky castle. I may draw in some details to my castle but for now, I like it as it is. Castles and forests and golden balls. My week in fairy tale art journaling. Happy Thursday …

Get Messy Season of Colour/Color Week 5

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This season is flying by and has been one of my favorites which I think may be because I made my own sketchbook from paper bags and an old giant atlas and I have tried to not put any pressure on myself with any of the pages. This has sometimes worked and not always worked if I am honest. I don’t want a half full book, so I am working to fill it and I don’t want to turn over a page I don’t like without finishing it (I would totally do this in a bought sketchbook).  This has meant that on more than one occasion I have had to slog through a page which didn’t start at all well and keep working on it until it transforms. I am happy to say that I have ended up with successful pages in my eyes. I have been enjoying the prompts and the tutorials provided by the Get Messy team this season, to the extent that I haven’t done nearly as much as I have been …

‘I Like’ Fridays. The travel art journal and supplies edition.

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  Before I went on holiday to Cape Cod I used the covers of an old book called ‘Cape Cod Folks’ to make myself a journal filled with watercolor paper, handmade blue paper, kraft paper and some pages from an old dictionary. I am really enjoying using handmade journals because I get to choose the paper, the size of the pages and the overall size of the journal.  Full credit to the Get Messy Bookbinding class for teaching me all I know about making journals.  It really is a great class.  If you want a good book with clear instructions I recommend Esther K Smith’s book called How to Make Books. I have borrowed it many times from the library. Once I was on vacation, it honestly took me a couple of days to get going in my art journal. It would have been easy to leave it in the drawer. I am so glad I didn’t. The first spread I made was awful and again I could have left it in the drawer.  Then …

The Circle Zine.

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I have been zined! Mail is the very best thing when it is not bills or junk, it is the very very best thing when it is a mini book full to the lid with art made just for you. This is what the amazing Zine Squad do, they collaborate with each other and make a zine using their talents and generosity and it ends up with a lucky recipient, this time, it was me.  I was so excited to open my very own zine when it arrived in the mail, I had just got back from vacation and among the junk and adverts, this gem shone out at me! My heartfelt thanks goes to Jules, Vanessa, Ashley and Katie for thinking of me and creating this wonderful artwork. This mini art journal has zipped around the world and back again, gathering art and energy as it goes.  It almost shines with the joy bursting from it! Love love love my zine! Happy Tuesday x       SaveSave

Get Messy Season of Contrast Week 6

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The last week of the Season of Contrast has come around so quickly. There have been so many great ideas through the prompts and tutorials, I have not kept up, but that just means a wealth of ideas for me to try in future pages. I am new convert (as of a few hours ago) to paper weaving.  The effects are amazing and I am so new to it, most of what I have done so far (see above) came mainly as a surprise. The process for me is still evolving, but I am loving it so far.  I applied a little planning and then let the papers do the work. For the weaving I used magazine pages and images, a vintage dictionary page and a 1950’s accounts ledger book as well as a painted page from an old book. None of it has made it to my journal yet, the ledger will stay as it is and I may add to the page, but it could be finished now in my opinion. Thanks to …

Get Messy Season of Contrast Week 5

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I set out this week to follow some ideas from the tutorials over at the Get Messy website as well as a prompt or two.  I even wrote down some ideas of things I could do in my sketchbooks. Lots of contrast was achieved I think and I almost managed to leave part of a page blank, but I ended up with some gold and a black gesso ‘hole’ on it instead. I had a go at contrasting patterns in my mini Moleskine and a page of black and a page of white with a little red flower. There are some contrasting colours on the last page which is in my ‘The Shape of Towns’ altered book and I decided to cut a circle out of one page to reveal the head of a statue on the previous page.  Of course once I had the head, I had to sketch in the rest of the statue onto my page. I wandered off from the prompts a little and even got distracted from the tutorial I …

Get Messy Season of Contrast week 4 and rediscovering art supplies.

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Isn’t it strange how seeing things or using things within a different context alters your approach and attitude? I have been whining on about how I never know how to use inks and I can’t get to grips with them especially acrylic inks.  I really want to use them because they have such great colours but I don’t know how – whah whah whah. Today I watched the lovely Amy Maricle on the Get Messy tutorial page demonstrating a lovely technique using circles on a journal page.  She uses Neocolor II crayons and I only have Neocolor I which are the oil pastels and not at all what we need for this.  So I racked my brain, do I have anything else I could use? Way back when I was a twenty something fashion student, I used some chunky water soluble crayons which I adored, so I went to dig them out. In the same shoe box they were stored in were some card making supplies I used to make little cards to sell and …

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! …

Get Messy Week Four. Season of Art 101

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This week I have been playing with background ideas and I painted some ombre backgrounds with a view to working on top of the pages.  I have run into a problem though. I don’t want to cover the backgrounds. This is one of my major art journaling issues, I can’t/won’t (delete as appropriate) layer pages.  If I like how the page starts, I like to leave it.  Maybe I will paint some more ombre base pages to work over so that I can keep the original pages. Or maybe I could work over half of each page. One thing I did manage to  do as planned was make up some colours and give them names.  This was a prompt from last week’s Art 101 Season. I came up with an idea to gather colour inspiration as I watched the TV!  As I watched Planet Earth II on BBC America I had my notebook with me and whenever I saw a colour I liked or a colour idea, I noted it down and wrote down the …