All posts tagged: catseatdogs get messy

Get Messy Season of Seasons week 2

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A few pages and cards from week 2 of the Season of Seasons over at Get Messy Art Journal.  In this found book as journal, I am covering some pages completely and some I am embracing the original page.  Thankfully the paper is not too thin so it is pretty nice to work in and the spiral binding is not getting on my nerves like I thought it would. So hurrah! I have been making marks and using these pages as collage as well as using some flowers I have been playing with as a pattern on top of collage, paint and gesso (the page with the flowers was a hot mess and needed a layer of gesso very badly!). As well as the book I am working in, I have a pile of old library catalogue cards which I am painting and doodling on.  I got hold of some glassine bags which fit the cards in perfectly so I am pleased with that. The season of seasons is rolling on and I am enjoying …

Get Messy Season of Seasons week 1.

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The season of seasons is upon us over at the Get Messy Art Journaling community. I have to admit that it took me far too long to decide on a journal to use for this season!  Eventually I decided on the Airfoil instruction book and a pile of vintage library catalogue cards. I thought that this way I can work in the book and on individual cards which I have recently been enjoying.  I have some glassine envelopes on the way so that I can include the cards in the book and ensure a cohesive journal. Well, I can’t promise cohesive but at least it will be all in one place. Once I had decided on the journal (s), I wanted to make a little ‘kit’ to see me through the season without having to decide which supplies to use for each page, of course my little kit got bigger and bigger and I am pretty certain that my vintage typewriter will have a major part to play too. I am still sure that this …

Get Messy Season of Story Week 5

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For the Season of Story over at the Get Messy Art Journaling community, I made a journal which I love and I am super proud of and then I left it at home when I went on holiday to England for two weeks.  I left it because I didn’t want it to get squashed or damaged or worse, ignored.  All of these things would  most likely have happened to it, so I am pleased I didn’t take it. However, what also happened was that I didn’t do much of anything in the way of art journaling in my new journal for another couple of weeks afterwards.  It is a chunky little number and it needs to be filled! This week I saw a bird egg which I decided to paint in order to capture the colour of it, then I searched my old photos for suitable candidates for the season of story.  At the same time I pulled out some old National Geographic magazines which I had recently bought at an estate sale and I …

Art journaling, bookmaking and sketching.

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I felt like I was neglecting my little art journal for the Season of Play at Get Messy this week. So one evening I picked it up along with some collage pieces I had chosen, cut out and left to one side. Rather than wait for inspiration to strike I decided to just go for it and make a page with these ladies, a constellation map and some butterflies with a few swipes of paint.                                                                                                                                                        I have also just signed up for Sketchbookery so I did a little sketching practice on this page too in the form of a flower …

Get Messy Season of Kindness Week 7.

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I have been practicing my faces this week guided and encouraged by the talented Katie Smith from Studio Katie and Get Messy Art Journal in the run up to the new class called ‘Sketching Faces’ and hosted by Get Messy. The top ladies are painted in black ink using a sumi brush and using a template provided by Katie which I put under my paper as a guide.  I like to put my own style on my faces and I am learning so much from this class and getting more confident at faces which are not straight on, like profiles and turned to one side slightly. I used my new favorite paper for these sketches which is ‘Tomoe River’ paper, it is lightweight but still stands up to ink without warping too much. The middle faces are painted onto vintage ledger paper which has a nice rough texture and absorbs the ink giving an interesting look. The last girl has painted botanicals in her hair and I used a stencil with ink in a mister to get …

Get Messy Season of Kindness Week 2.

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  I am enjoying this Get Messy season so far, and working in my little hand made journal is a good place to be. However, I seem to have started a trend last season when I made a small journal and then I made a big one to give myself more options and ended up filling them both (bear in mind that I don’t put hundreds of pages in my books!). Following this apparent new tradition, I made another journal this season too!  I really do like to work in different sizes and on different paper when the mood/idea strikes.  For my new book I removed the text block from a children’s cook book and replaced it with hot press watercolour paper and a couple of pages of brown paper from a grocery bag. The new sketchbook (on the right) is a book I found in a thrift shop and it is the American version of my first cook book when I was a kid in England. I remember making food from it and I …

Get Messy Art Journal. Season of Nature Week 5.

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I have been busy with my gelli plate this season, I just keep wanting to print flowers!  No bloom is safe when I get my paints out! Some of the pages were printed before I bound this book and some I have printed over collage elements, like the last page shown here where I stuck down the periodic table and butterfly and then printed some flowers on top. Nearly as popular as my gelli plate has been my sumi brush and black sumi ink which I have used to make patterns over pages. I love the depth of the deep black ink when applied with a nice thick sumi brush. I have been enjoying using the Jane Davenport Inkredible inks which smell as good as they look!  I used ‘Limeade’ on the page with the butterfly and gave it a little spray with my water bottle. I am ashamed to say that I have not followed any prompts this season, I have just been jollying along in my journal filling it up a little each …

Get Messy Art Journal. Season of Connections week six.

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The last week of another fab season of Get Messy Art Journal rolls around and I have nearly filled my handmade journal, just a few pages to complete or finish. This week I used lots of collage elements which I don’t usually use so that was good to try, I also got inspired by a page of splatters and I changed the cover of my journal from a giant sunflower to plain brown paper.  Much as I love the sunflower (and it will house a new sketchbook), it just was not sitting with the sketchbook I am creating inside it. The beauty of making your own journal! This is some of the pile of collage materials I gathered together. As the page developed I organically began to incorporate the fold outs and the pages either side into the spread. In the end I had covered four pages with various flaps! Now I want to start this process at the beginning of a sketchbook with a variety of paper and page sizes and incorporate each page …

Get Messy Season of Connections. Week Three.

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The season of connections over in the Get Messy art journal community is in full swing and I am really enjoying it. I suppose I do use things with connections to me in my journal just by the nature of the fact that I chose it or chose to draw or paint it, but I am more and more fascinated by this as I fill this journal. For this spread I painted and sprayed and splattered the pianola paper to get started.  When I was merrily slapping paint around, I didn’t have a plan for it, I was just making some background paper. Once I saw the tutorial on the Get Messy blog which covered mixed media self portraits, I thought I would give it a go. I grabbed a handful of library cards (I work at the library, so there is that connection) and painted some self portraits on each one.  I do these very quickly with no sketch or outline, so they are all different even though they are painted from only a …

Get Messy Season of Connections. Week 2.

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I have been exploring connections of all kinds in my art journal this past two weeks since the Season of Connections started over at Get Messy. Once I started thinking about it, connections are everywhere, physical and abstract. I have a strong connection to nature, so there is usually a botanical theme to my journal somewhere.  It may be flower shapes or organic leaves or a landscape or two. So far in this journal I have printed leaves with my gelli plate onto dry wax paper and stuck them in, I have stitched leaves and painted them with watered down sumi ink. A completely random connection appeared when I printed a leave on a page from an old dictionary and when I tore it up to stick down, I noticed that I had printed on a page which had ‘folk dance’ at the top. This is an immediate connection to my maternal grandparents who used to take me folk dancing when I was a kid.  I loved it and have very fond memories of folk …