29 Faces Challenge - Face #14

Today's face was colored with Prismacolor pencils. Graphite is quicker, but I need practice with the colored pencils. I haven't used them much in the last year, except to add shadows and details to journal pages created with mostly acrylic paint.

The downside is the extra time it will take to finish a face. But, with all the other things I need to do this week, there is no way I'll finish all 29 faces anyway. Practicing with the Prismacolors is a better use of my time. So here she is.

This face was actually sketched a couple of days before the challenge started, with the idea of using her for a journal page. You will notice the angry look...at least, I hope you do. That was my intention. The journal page is for venting about something that is making me very angry. The challenge started and the journal page was set aside.

In the meantime, I've come up with a better idea for my journal page. I decided to use this lady as part of my 29 Faces. I transferred her from my sketchbook to a piece of Stonehenge paper using the homemade carbon paper method I described in this post.

Over a period of several years, I tried all kinds of paper with the Prismacolors. They either had too much tooth or not enough, or were too thin. It was a supply list that I found on a DVD by Lee Hammond that solved my problem. She recommended using the Stonehenge paper for colored pencils.

I tried scanning, but my image was washed out. I took a photograph with artificial light. I get better results if I take photos outside in natural light, but we've had a very dark, rainy day. I did work on the image in Photoshop to make it look as close to the original image as possible. It's not perfect, but it is the best I am going to get today.

I have to get back to the things I should have been doing. Since there is nothing in progress on my art table, I might actually get something else done.

29 Faces Challenge - Faces #12 and #13

I have been looking at painted or drawn faces with realistic noses.  Besides being the ugliest part of the human face (IMO), I find it the hardest part to draw or paint. It mostly depends on the artist's skill with applying shadows and highlights.

On my latest attempt at a three-quarter female face, I made an effort to make a realistic nose. I still need a lot of practice, but I definitely think it is an improvement over Face #11.

Another male, this time with a less aggressive chin:

Enjoy your weekend.

29 Faces Challenge - Face #11

Gave the three-quarter view a try. The usual places, the nose and mouth, gave me trouble. I'm hoping more practice will help. Suggestions are welcome.

29 Faces Challenge - Faces #9 and #10

Here are a couple more faces. They are a little happier than the last ones.

It's really hard to find a photo of a front-facing male face. Every male in my catalog pile was photographed in the three-quarter view. Most of the females are, too, but you can usually find a front-facing female in the women's magazines. I did find some on the web, but the quality was not good. Guess that means I need to move on to the three-quarter view.

Both of these drawings were done mostly freehanded with estimation of placement rather than actual measurement. The only exception was the placement of the eyes when I first began. Once they are in place, I can estimate where other facial features should be placed. It's making my faces looser and more varied. The practice is definitely helping.

'Til next time.

29 Faces Challenge - Face #7 and 8

I'm five faces behind. I'm hoping to get in a few extra faces this week to catch up, but in reality, I may end up even farther behind.

Below are a couple of sketches I did today. The first one is a bit weird. I don't think human eyes can end up in quite that shape, but I had fun drawing them. I'm thinking about making the smudging around the eyes even darker.

I did not feel like drawing hair, thus the hat. I decided it made a change. I might have to do more hats. I tried darker smudging around the eyes. I'm thinking about trying charcoal to get the effect I want, but not in this sketchbook.

Both faces are in the sketchbook that I have decided is only good for pen and ink. Pencil works okay as long as I don't use a blending stump, but that is what I needed to get the effect I wanted to practice. The blending is not smooth like I get on Bristol paper.

The sketchbook was a gift which I will continue to use. There are some things I like about it. The size, 7" X 10", is perfect for a practice sketch. The wirebound cover is very sturdy and gives good support if you are working while sitting in a recliner. All the information about this journal was on the wrapper I threw away a couple of years ago. I don't even remember the brand. I found the same size with a sturdy, wirebound cover at Blick, which is temporarily out of stock. The description says it works with lots of different mediums. I am hoping to get the good features of this one with some better paper.

We have some nice weather in the forecast. It is supposed to be chilly tonight, good sleeping weather. I'm planning to sleep in tomorrow morning since it will still be cool enough tomorrow afternoon to work in the yard, seventies and low humidity. Ah-h-h, fall.

29 Faces Challenge - Face #6

In my last post, I mentioned that I knew I had made lots of mistakes in Face #4, the male. I took Klair Scattergood's (aka Rhomany of Rhomany's Realm) Portrait classes in 2012 when she first introduced them. I have mostly drawn females since those classes. I had forgotten a lot about the differences in the male and female faces.

On Saturday afternoon, I reviewed the first set of class videos on the basic male features and the front-facing portrait. Wow, I really was off on a lot of things. After reviewing it once, I went through it again and drew a basic male along with her explanation. This is my result.

You may notice some light pencil stokes that make two stacked squares. These are the structure that Rhomany uses to build her faces. She developed this for herself because she said her ovals always came out wonky. You will have to take her classes for an explanation. I will say that her classes helped me because I draw wonky ovals, too, but that was just a small part of what I learned.

This guy is much too perfect, but as you get used to the system, you can begin to be more freehanded with it, thus losing the perfection.

I did use a photograph I had in my sketchbook to draw his eyes. Men have such interesting folds in their eyes. They can be really different. The ears are all over the place, too. You can also see some lightly sketched-in hair because I am going to take this guy beyond the initial sketch.

When I was taking Rho's first class on females, we were coloring the girls using Prismacolor pencils. If you have worked with them, you know that the Prismacolors will pick up any place you erased or otherwise altered the surface of the paper. Because of this, I got in the habit of doing a draft drawing in a sketchbook and then transferring the finished drawing to whatever type of paper I wanted to use, depending on the art medium I wanted to use. There are many ways to transfer, but I am going to show you my easy and cheap method.

I am planning to finish this guy with graphite pencils and a blending stump on Bristol paper. The paper has a smooth vellum surface that works well with graphite. Here are the steps I used to transfer him from the sketchbook to the Bristol paper.

• I decided the guy needed a shirt over all his muscles. I found a photo of a guy in a t-shirt online and used it to help draw a shirt on my sketch.
• I scanned the sketch. Then I took it into Photoshop and resized it. I am using a 7 in X 10 in piece of Bristol. I needed the sketch to be a bit smaller for it to fit nicely on the paper.
• Next I printed the resized sketch on a piece of plain paper.
• I used a trick I learned from my fourth grade teacher. I made my own carbon paper by coloring the backside of the paper with graphite. We used plain old No. 2 pencils in 4th grade, but I like to use a Prismacolor Ebony pencil. It has a soft, fat lead that leaves a lot of graphite on the paper. I'm down to a stub, so I ordered a new 2-pack a few days ago.
• After positioning the paper over the Bristol, I secured it with paperclips. Then I used a ballpoint pen to trace over the basic parts of the sketch. I don't press hard because I want to leave a minimum amount of graphite and I do not want to leave a groove in the paper. (Prismacolors and graphite do not work well over those.) Because the soft Ebony pencil leaves so much graphite, you don't need a lot of pressure.

 In this photo, you can see the red ballpoint line of my tracing. I use a colored pen to make it easier to see. If, for some reason, I want to make another tracing, I use a different color of pen.

You can see the graphite on the backside of the printed sketch. To make sure you have covered all the needed parts with the graphite, hold the paper up to let light shine through. You will easily see any spots you missed.

I traced a minimum of lines to give me the basic shapes. I only traced lines along the bottom of the eyebrows to give placement. A photo of some ears will help with the shading. Only the bottom of the nose was traced. Shading with the blending stump will make the upper portion.

It will be a couple of days before I post again. We're having a Labor Day cookout at a friend's house tomorrow. It will be a full day of activity and I know I will have no time for art. The guy will just have to wait.

29 Faces Challenge - Faces #4 and #5

Yesterday afternoon, while it was storming, I spent some time working with a pen in my sketchbook. I usually use a pencil, so this is always a bit scary. I drew about a dozen faces. These two are the best of the bunch.

The sketches were all freehand. The closest I came to measuring was to draw a small horizontal line crossed by a vertical line with pencil to help me space the eye ovals correctly. Then I erased the lines. Once I have the eyes in place, I can use them to estimate where the nose, mouth, and ears go.

Have you ever noticed that male faces seldom appear on the art blogs you visit? I wonder why that is. I admit that I tend to draw more females than males.

You will notice a lot of extra lines around his eyes. That is not some weird makeup. After studying my sketch, I realized he looked strange because his eyes were too small compared with the size of his nose. So I kept adding to the eyes until they were large enough.

As I look at him after scanning, I see some other mistakes I made. I think I need to rewatch the class videos before I draw more males.

I think I finally figured out what I've been doing wrong with my eyebrows in this expression.

I am really glad I joined the 29 Faces Challenge. All the practice I have done in the last few days is really helping to knock the rust off of my drawing skills.

29 Faces Challenge - Face #3

I finished my face last night, but was too tired to do the post. I went to get groceries this morning. This afternoon I had to unplug my computer due to storms that wouldn't go away. Just as the storms were finally over, I got a phone call. Then it was time for supper. After cleaning up the kitchen, I started working on my post...until the thunder started and I had to unplug again. Gr-r-r! It is still raining, but it is quiet. It's weird actually after hearing rumbles all afternoon.

I did do some sketching during the storms. I will scan and post a couple of the best tomorrow. No storms are in the forecast, but cooler weather is. Yeah!!

This is nothing like what I was imagining when I started. I am still working on showing emotions other than happy.  I'm not going to tell you what I intended. If you have the time, please tell me what you see.

I did not plan to make such a long face, but the drawing seemed to have a mind of its own. The finished face looks a bit masculine to me. The mop of hair didn't help at all.

Update: I played around with her eyebrows in Photoshop. Where they curve over the nose is much too bold and long. When I shortened the curve, she looks more feminine.

For the hair, I tried a product new to me, a Speedball Elegant Writer. It is one of Speedball's calligraphy markers. When you draw or write with it, the ink looks black. If you activate it with water, it changes color. First, you get a gray-blue, sort of like Paynes Gray. As it dries, pink and turquoise start appearing. I wish I had worked on larger paper so that I would have had more room for hair. I'll keep playing with the Elegant Writer to figure out how to get a better effect.

The face was done with a black Stabilo All pencil which was activated with water. Once you add the water, it is like working with watercolor except for one thing. When it has dried, it will not reactivate. (The Elegant Writer ink does reactivate after it is dry.) The Stabilo is a waxy pencil that will write over a lot of things, such as glass and plastic (acrylic paint). It is available in a few other colors besides black.

Since I am linking to this post at Art Journal Every Day, I ought to explain that even though this face was created on a single sheet of paper, it will be taped into my Faces Journal. All of my faces are in this ring-bound, 9 in X 12 in journal. If the face was originally done in a bound journal or framed, I photograph it and put the photo into the journal.

My Faces Journal is a working journal. On the back of the face, I list supplies used, the things I like about it, the things I don't like, what I need to work on, etc. I refer back to it often. I'll be starting a new one soon as the current one is about to outgrow the bookrings.

Wishing everyone a good weekend and a good holiday to those in the US.

29 Faces Challenge - Face #2

 

Black Stabilo All Pencil on watercolor paper; highlights in eye - White Sharpie Extra Fine Waterbased Paint Marker

29 Faces Challenge - Face #1

This is the first time I have joined the 29 Faces Challenge. Since I really need to do some face practice right now, I thought maybe this would keep me at it. I might not post every day, but I'll try to create a face every day. I'd like to get myself back where I once was before I take another class.

I was trying out some new watercolor pencils, but decided the paper in this journal does not work well with water. I'll try them another day on watercolor paper.

A Rescued Painting

I've continued working on a face showing emotion, anger this time. I did the pencil sketch and then decided to do it in colored pencil. I did it twice with my Prismacolors, not liking either version. But I think I know where I went wrong. Number three is going to be better (fingers crossed).

The problem is that I have not really colored anything with my Primacolors since the last time I did a face with them, over a year ago. I use them frequently for shadowing on acrylic pieces, but that is not the same as doing an entire drawing with them. As I worked on the angry face, I have been recalling the techniques I previously used. So I am optimistic that the next version will be better.

I decided to take a little break from the face before I start up again. I found a piece in my box that I started earlier in the summer with Distress Paints. I had an unexpected result and abandoned it at the time. I did save it for possible rescue later. Yesterday afternoon, I decided to give it a try. This is the result.

I had started the piece by covering the paper with Liquitex Super Heavy Gesso. I made lots of little ridges with the palette knife that would make the Distress Paint change directions as it moved. Then I decided to use a dark acrylic glaze to make a shadowy border around the outside edge. After allowing the glaze to dry for a few minutes, I would wipe the glaze away with baby wipes, leaving a grungy area along the ridges created by the gesso.

This technique works fine with regular acrylic paint. But Distress Paint is not regular acrylic paint. When I wiped with the baby wipes, I wiped away all the glaze and much of the Distress Paint. Most of the white in the background of the finished piece is the white of the gesso. That's where I left it.

I first considered trying to cover the places where I could see gesso, but on second thought, I decided to leave it. I had used yellow and blue Distress Paints which mixed in places to create green. Using regular matte acrylic paints, I used stencils to cover much of the background. I was lacking a focal point. I poured on a bit of pink Distress Paint and let it spread and drip. I used a brush to spatter some pink, black, and white paint onto other parts of the page. Once it was dry, I added more stenciling. I outlined the flower and dots in the pink area with markers.

It is certainly not the best thing I have ever done, but it was relaxing and fun to play with stencils and paint.

Supplies used:

• 14 in. X 11 in., 140lb. Strathmore 400 series Mixed Media Paper
• Liquitex Super Heavy Gesso
• Distress Paints - Mustard Seed, Mermaid Lagoon, Picked Raspberry
• Misc. colors and brands of matte acrylic paint
• stencils - mostly from the Crafter's Workshop or the Artistcellar
• Sakura Gelly Roll Moonlight Gel Pens

Back to Faces

There was a time, a couple of years ago, when most of the art I did involved faces. Lots of sketchbooks and journal pages were filled with faces. And then I almost stopped doing them. I hit a plateau and didn't feel like I was progressing at all. Now I find myself drawing and painting faces again, not with the same absorption that I had before, but I am enjoying creating them again.

One of the things that helped was Jane Davenport's new book, Drawing and Painting Beautiful Faces. It is crammed full of techniques using many different mediums. I have a couple of paintings in progress with the goal of learning a new technique.

Recently, Cloth Paper Scissors Magazine published a special addition called FACES: Creating Mixed-media Portraits. One of Dina Wakley's faces is on the cover. If you are interested in creating faces, you are sure to find something in this magazine. There are articles on drawing, painting, collage, abstract, and assemblage techniques. If you are project-oriented, there is a section in the back with directions on a variety of portrait projects, including stitching, doodling, transfers, resist, and more. Some of the artists who contributed to the magazine are Dina Wakley, Pam Carriker, Jane Davenport, and Michael Massen.

An article that immediately caught my attention is Simple Expressions by Karen O'Brien. It describes how to create faces that express emotions, one of the things my faces have been lacking. Her directions helped me create the faces below. I am really out of practice.

Karen draws the type of faces that have the eyes at the outside edge of the face. She, of course, drew her examples in her style. I started to draw a face in her style, which is how I ended up with such a round head. I just couldn't do it. I have to admit that I find those faces creepy. Based on how many people draw like that, it is obvious that others don't have the same reaction. Don't know where the extra skinny neck came from, but I just left it.

The next drawing had a bit of an accident. I was nearly finished and had grabbed a piece of deli paper to cover part of the face so I wouldn't smear the graphite. I put the paper aside. When I grabbed it again, I smeared burnt sienna on my drawing. I had put the paper on top of my palette paper which had open acrylic on it. (Note to Self: When using open acrylic, remember to move the palette paper out of your working area when you are not using it.) I wiped it off as best I could. I decided to show it to you anyway since I thought I did fairly well on this one. We won't mention that she looks like she has the mumps on her right side. ***

I'll be trying some other emotions from Karen's article.

*** Just a little tip: Scanning your art is one of the best ways to see how it really looks. I can look at something repeatedly, even putting it on an easel and looking at it vertically. But when I scan it and it appears on the computer screen, things just pop out at me that I never saw before, some good, some that need fixing. When I am working on a drawing that will become a serious project, I scan several times as I develop the drawing.

Karen O'Brien has another article in the magazine, Face Play: Drawing Faces from Your Imagination. I'm looking forward to trying some of her ideas in that article, too. Karen has a book, Imaginary Creatures, coming out soon.

I also want to try creating a face as part of an abstract painting with the help of Debora L. Stewart's article, Creating an Abstract Portrait. It seems I am hooked on faces again.

Circles on Stain

This is another piece that has taken a long time to be finished...years even. I have a box where I put pieces that I started on single sheets of art paper, but never finished. It might be because I was tired of working on it, but more likely life got in the way and I didn't have time to finish it. Every now and then I look through the box. Some things get thrown out because I know I will never finish them. Some things have been there for several years. Every once in a while I take one out to finish.

Several days before looking through the box, I had created a new background in my daily journal. I used a brayer to apply Mermaid Lagoon Distress Stain to a double page spread. I had just acquired a couple of the new Dylusions Paints to try out, one of which was Lemon Zest. I used an old library card to spread paint over parts of the stained pages. The yellow paint, of course, turned the stained areas green. I now had a blue, green, and yellow background.

As I was looking through my box, I found an unfinished mandala with the same colors I had used on the journal background. Bingo, an a-ha moment! I had drawn the basic mandala shape on watercolor paper and painted the big blocks of space with blue, green, and yellow Twinkling H2Os. It was at that point I had stopped. Just out of curiosity, I looked back in my old journals to find I was drawing lots of mandalas in 2012. Sometimes being a pack rat pays off. :-)

I outlined the mandala and cut it out. I tried it in different places on the page and decided to create more circles for a background. Using a stencil, I drew different sizes of circles. I made 3 blue rings and 3 blue-green solid circles. I used a stencil through a stencil to add the small white circles.

To continue my practice with glazes, I decided to make the blue rings appear 3D by using a darker blue glaze around the edges. I was trying different brushes to see which worked better and each layer was only adding a bit of color.

A layer of glaze has to be completely dry before you can add the next, and glazing liquid dries slowly. If you try to rush it, the new coat of glaze will remove any color that happens to be even a bit damp. So I set it aside and go onto something else.

I worked on the rings off and on for several weeks, but then non-art things needed to be done. The journal was closed and was only opened to this spread again this past Wednesday evening.

I added some yellow dots to the blue rings and to the mandala with Dina Wakley's heavy body paint and a pencil eraser. While they were drying, I used a previously scanned copy of the mandala to try out doodles before I did them on the real thing. I'm glad I did that because I tried a bunch of things before I figured out the leaves with a flower. I used various markers to add my doodles to the mandala. I did discover that some markers don't write very well on Twinks.

I used Prismacolor pencils to add shadowing to my background circles and rings. Scor-tape was used to secure the mandala to the background.

Supplies used:

• Strathmore Hardback Mixed Media Art Journal
• Distress Stain - Mermaid Lagoon (applied with brayer)
• Dylusions Paint - Lemon Zest
• circle stencils
• Amsterdam Standard Greenish Blue Acrylic
• Blick Matte White Acrylic
• Golden Acrylic Glazing Liquid (Satin)
• Golden Fluid Acrylic - Paynes Gray
• Dina Wakley Media Heavy Body Acrylic Paint - Lemon
• Twinkling H2Os on watercolor paper
• Sharpie Poster Paint Markers
• Montana ExtraFine Acrylic Paint Marker
• Gelly Roll Stardust Pens
• Sakura Gelly Roll Moonlight Gel Pen
• Prismacolor Pencils

Finished at last! It feels really good to finish something.

Accumulate

I'm not going to bore you with why it has been so long since I have written a post. I'll just say I was away from home for a few days. Since then, I've been busy and sometimes there are not enough hours in the day to get it all done.

I have been messing around with a piece of art. I call it Accumulate since that is how it was created, a bit at a time. Also, dealing with my accumulation of stuff is one of the things keeping me so busy lately. OK, I admit it. I am a pack rat.

It started out to be my week 6 project for the Summer of Color, two oranges and a blue, which I did not finish in time. Since I was over the deadline, I decided to add some other colors. I was really having a problem with the limitation of colors, too much like monochrome.

I originally started out with the 14" X 11" paper in landscape to which I added a bit of Liquitex Super Heavy Gesso on part of the paper to add some texture. In case you have never used it, it is like a thick cake icing that you spread with a palette knife. Some people like to pile it on, but I usually use a more moderate amount.

Once it dried, I painted on some messy geometric shapes, using blue, two oranges, and a brown I mixed from blue and orange. I added some blue-striped washi tape and a chevron pattern with a homemade stamp and blue paint. That's where I was when my time for SOC6 ran out.

It remained on my art table. I would look at it once in a while, wondering where to go from there. One rainy afternoon I got out my stencils and a sponge to make several additions in orange. Boring! I remembered a green I had made by mixing the blue and orange. It would be dark though. I decided to use the brighter Golden Green Gold instead. When I started outlining, I wanted something besides fluorescent orange. I used fluorescent yellow. I was feeling much better after adding some more bright colors.

Over the next couple of weeks I added the flower beside the washi tape, the dots to the chevrons, and the circle-sticks marks. While I was turning the paper to make my colored scribbles on my circle-sticks, I decided I liked the piece better in portrait orientation. It took nearly four weeks, a bit added here and a bit added there before this accumulation of bits was finished. Yes, I know it is a big mess, but that's what happens when you accumulate things. If I ever get this place cleaned out, I resolve to stop accumulating things.

Supplies used:

• 14 in. X 11 in., 140lb. Strathmore 400 series Mixed Media Paper
• Liquitex Super Heavy Gesso
• Amsterdam Standard Acrylic Paint: Primary Cyan, Azo Orange, Prussian Blue
• Liquitex Interference Orange
• Golden High Flow Fluorescent Orange
• Golden Matte Acrylic Green Gold
• stencils from the Crafter's Workshop
• Molotow One4All Acrylic Paint Markers
• Sakura Gelly Roll Moonlight Gel Pens
• Blue Fude Ball 1.5 Pen
• Black Stabilo CarbOthello Pastel Pencil

Art Amongst the Chaos

I've created chaos!! Well, maybe not quite that bad, but it's bad enough. It started when I decided to reorganize my art supplies. I am a supply junkie. My supplies keep taking up more and more room.

Not a lot of art was done the last few weeks since I had to make a little working spot among the stuff I was sorting and moving. I did start the Summer of Color challenge for week 3, but I didn't finish. This was mainly because I kept changing my mind about what I was making. It is still not finished, but it will be since it is the first new spread in a new daily journal. I finally know what I want to do...if it works.

The colors of week 4, red + red + metallic, did not push any buttons. Since I was kind of busy, I let it go. But I have gotten the tops of my tables reasonably straight now, enough to get some art done anyway. I am waiting for the new storage containers I ordered to arrive next week.

SOC Week 5 is finished. I had fun with this one.

Supplies used:

• 14 in. X 11 in., 140lb. Strathmore 400 series Mixed Media Paper
• Dylusions Paints: Fresh Lime, Cut Grass, and Bubblegum PInk
• Dylusions Ink Spray: Bubblegum Pink
• white gesso
• Other items in similar colors of green and pink: Derwent Inktense Blocks (Apple Green and Fuchsia), Sakura Gelly Roll Moonlight Gel Pen (Rose)
• stencils from The Crafter's Workshop
• Golden Light Molding Paste

I started by covering the paper with Dylusions Fresh Lime, using Dyan Reaveley's baby wipe method. I rubbed the green Inktense block over a damp sponge, sprayed it lightly with water, and dabbed it onto the paper. I have used this technique before as a background for flowers. I usually use more than one shade of green Inktense which creates more depth than you get with only one color. After the green Inktense dried, I sponged on the fuchsia.

Next I used a template to draw circles where I wanted the flower heads. Then I modified the Whimsical Vines stencil by masking off the top set of leaves. Using the Cut Grass Dylusions, I stenciled on the leaves, leaving space to extend the stem to the flower head.

The first thing I did with the circles was to paint them with gesso. Otherwise, the pink ink would have looked brown over the green. After the gesso was dry, I painted the circles with Dylusions Bubblegum Ink which I have in a water brush. Once the ink dried, I applied light molding paste through the Mums stencil. The moisture from the molding paste reactivated the pink ink which was absorbed into the paste.

The camera messed with my edges around the flowers. They look blue in the photos, but the molding paste stayed white around the edges except in a few places where the pink ran over to the edge.

Text and a few dots were added with a Moonlight Gel Pen. A stenciled butterfly was added to finish the page.

Just some observations about the Dylusions Paints: I wasn't expecting to like these paints, but I have been pleasantly surprised, enough so that I will order the other colors. It is different from any paint I have ever used.

The Dylusions Paints work really well for stenciling, better than many paints. I think the way the paint is absorbed by the sponge dabber has something to do with the way it so neatly works with a stencil. I will definitely be using them for stenciling again.

The baby wipe application is a bit messy, but looks good when you finish. I used a brush to extend the stems on the leaves and to join up the bits of stenciled parts. This don't think I will be using a brush with this paint...maybe a sponge brush...have to try that out.

By the next time I post, most things should be stored away in their new place. Have a good week.

The Summer of Color, Week 2

I decided to do another piece using Distress Paints and a texture medium for week 2 of SOC. This was more of an experiment than the piece I did last week. I use light molding paste frequently, although I had never used it with the Distress Paints before. But this week I used Golden Clear Granular Gel which I had only used once before with regular acrylic paints. I wasn't sure what would happen. Things didn't go exactly as I hoped.

I don't have all the Distress Paint colors. I used Picked Raspberry for one of the pinks and Spiced Marmalade for the orange. I needed another pink. After giving it some thought, I decided to tint some gesso with a few drops of Golden Primary Magenta to make a pale pink.

I painted the paper with the pink gesso and let it dry. Then I applied the Clear Granular Gel through a stencil. I wasn't sure that would work, but it did better than I expected. This texture medium is a soft, glossy gel with bits of hard plastic (translucent acrylic) bits in it. I left the page to dry thoroughly overnight.

In my previous work with Distress Paints, I discovered that enough water will wash the paints right off the gesso to expose white areas. The paint can't soak in like it does on untreated paper. My idea was that I could expose the pale pink by washing off the other paints in places.

Last week I applied Distress Paint over the light molding paste. But I put the paints around the granular gel to allow the paints to drip through the stenciled areas.

It started out well. The paint was moving down through the gel medium and piling up on the acrylic bits when they were in the way. But this is where my plan went astray. I realized that the water was washing away some bits of acrylic. There was no real pressure involved in my spraying, but some of the bits were not embedded in enough gel to hold them.

This section in the top left of the paper is one of the few places where you can see the original pale pink. I stopped applying water before I washed away all my acrylic bits. You can see some of the bare spots where only the gel medium remains.

Farther down the page, you can actually see and feel some of the bits that washed away. 

And the finished page:

Supplies used: 12 in. X 9 in., 140lb. Strathmore 400 series Mixed Media Paper, white gesso, Golden Primary Magenta Fluid Acrylic, Golden Clear Granular Gel, the "Ancent Ruins" stencil from Joggles (a small part was masked off), the Distress Paints (Picked Raspberry and Spiced Marmalade), and a lot of water.

I am not 100% happy about the finished product, but I consider it a learning experience. The bare spots don't look that great, but the places where the bits ended up have a gritty look I like. I need to play around with the granular gel. Maybe pressing it down with a wide palette knife before removing the stencil will help.

In case you are interested, I shared a Distress Paint page in my daily journal in Friday's post. I explained how I protect other pages from being damaged by leaks.

Distress Paint in My Daily Journal

For the first week of the Summer of Color 2015, I used Distress Paints on a single piece of paper. That is probably the best way to do this technique because it is so messy. It takes a lot of paint and a lot of water.

Should you try this in your art journal? Maybe, after you have practiced on single sheets and see how messy this really is. (Oh, but so much fun!!!!) Will it leak to other pages? Yes. Will it get on the underpaper and get on your cover? Yes, probably. If you have a wire-bound journal, absolutely not, unless you want the Distress Paint on every page in your journal. It will leak through those holes in a heartbeat.

Have I every used the Distress Paints in my journal? Yes, occasionally. It leaked every time. But I have found some ways to make it less messy and less destructive to my finished work.

Below is a journal page I did with Distress Paints about a month ago.

You probably noticed that when I rotated the paper to make the drips, I tried not to let the drips go all the way to the edge. It didn't always work because they move quickly, but for the most part, I succeeded. There were some other things I did to keep this leaky project from messing up pages I had already completed.

The first thing is my journal, a Strathmore Hardback 500 Series Mixed Media Art Journal. The Strathmore Mixed Media products have been my go-to papers for several years now because they stand up well to the watery media I love to use. I rarely use gesso. Color never soaks through, including Dylusions Ink Sprays. The only other type of paper that works well with this much water is watercolor paper.

(Michaels here in the US carry some of the Strathmore Mixed Media papers.)

The hardbound journal is made of stitched signatures. The usual place were I get a leak is around the outside edges because I like my paint to go all the way to the edge. The other place where things sometimes leak is the middle page of the signature. Watery liquids will leak through the stitching holes, so I save them for another page.

But the Distress Paints are so messy that I go over to the next signature from where I am working. In that signature I choose the last page. 

The middle page has the stitching holes and thread. The page below that also has easier access to the holes. By the third page, the holes are less available. The pink lines show where I apply the paint. Notice that some of the paint leaks under the fold of the signature. But because paint doesn't soak through the Strathmore paper, the pages in the other signatures are protected.

I place newsprint between my working pages and the next page on each side. I have the Distress Paints poured out into recycled jar lids because I will be using a 1 inch brush for each color. You have to get the paint onto the page quickly so it will not dry out before you can spray water on it.

I first paint across the center of the spread with a background color, only going about an inch onto the left page. I do this thinly which means it is going to dry quickly, but that is okay. I won't be spraying water there. I am just trying to get rid of the white of the paper. I also continue this around the outside edge of the right side of the spread since I will try not to run my dripping paint over the edge.

Next I quickly apply the colors of Distress that I want to activate with water. Then I spray water heavily, avoiding the area near the center of the spread. I rotate the page in all directions getting the paint moving horizontally, vertically, and diagonally. Because I am working in the journal, I watch for drips that are getting close to the edge and rotate to send them another way. I might add additional paint and/or water, but not as much as I would if I were working on a single page.

After the Distress Paint is completely dry, I add some color to the rest of the left page. I make any notes regarding the art work, but I will not do daily journaling until I reach this spread as I go through my journal chronologically. I am just now getting to the daily journaling on this spread where the art was finished weeks ago.

As I worked my way into the signature where I used the Distress Paints, I found the leaks. A bit of gesso covers up the mess.

On the page I showed you above, Mustard Seed and Mermaid Lagoon were the colors used. They formed the green as they mixed. Later, while the paint was still wet, I used a pipette to drop in some Distress Black Soot and PIcket Fence (white). I often do this to add an accent color. If the Distress Paint is still wet, the drops will activate and spread. If the paint has already dried, the drops look like any paint spatter you might add to a project.

After I finished, I left my journal open on my art table. When I came back a bit later, a lot of the paint had moved to the right side of the paper. There was just a small curve to the paper, but that and gravity were enough. A lot of the paint was still wet and would be for some time since it was so thick there. I decided to see if I could still move it. It moved very slowly, but did get there. You can see how far it moved by the wash of color that was left behind.

If you work with Distress Paints on a large surface, I would enjoy seeing your results and learning about your process. I have never come across anyone else who does this.

The Summer of Color, Week 1

Since I am now retired, I have time to become active in an online activity or two. I am a long time fan of Julie Fei-Fan Balzer, making her Art Journal Every Day a natural choice. 

Challenges with weekly themes don't appeal to me because as soon as someone gives me a theme, a topic, or a quote, my mind usually goes blank. But I love color, the brighter the better, for my clothes, my surroundings, and my art. So I am glad that I found The Summer of Color 2015 organized by Kristin Van Valkenburgh.

This year the participants will be given a generic color palette of 2 of one color plus 1 of another. We each get to choose the specific colors. This week it is 1 blue + 1 blue + 1 green. I might choose olive green and someone else could choose emerald green. What a participant creates with the colors is up to her/him. It doesn't even have to be a journal page.

I thought this would be easy, but I was stuck. I was looking back through my art journal for ideas when I saw a page I did with Distress Paints. Also on my table I saw a mostly empty jar of light molding paste which I needed to use up before it dried out completely. Bingo!

I used a piece of 12 in. X 9 in., 140lb. Strathmore 400 series Mixed Media Paper, Golden Light Molding Paste, the "Mesmerized" stencil from Color Box, the Distress Paints, and a lot of water. This is the result:

 I used the new Mermaid Lagoon, a gorgeous blue, Mowed Lawn, and a greenish blue I made by mixing the two. The lighter areas were created by the water leaving behind a wash of color on the paper.

 This is a messy technique, but so much fun. You never know exactly what the outcome will be.

Wet on Wet

Experimenting with new techniques and/or products is part of the fun of art journaling. I am always on the lookout for new techniques to try out in my daily journal. In this piece I modified a technique I found in the May/June 2015 issue of Cloth Paper Scissors Magazine. The article is "Zen Owls: Painting with Ink and Water" by Tracy Verdugo.

The ink referred to in the article was acrylic artist ink. Having only a few colors of acrylic ink, I decided to try it with Dylusions Spray Inks. Instead of owls, I painted flowers.

I experiment directly on the journal page if the paper in the journal is appropriate. But sometimes I want to use a medium that works better on a special type of paper or do a technique that requires a lot of water. When that happens, I work on a separate piece of paper and glue the finished piece into my journal. I use my daily journal for taking notes on my experiments.

Supplies I used: 140 lb hot pressed watercolor paper, Dylusions Spray Inks, water, brushes, pens and paint markers for finishing touches, black Archival Ink around the outside edge

Water is applied in the shape of the object you want to paint. Then you add the ink to the wet area. I found I needed to do small areas at a time and let them dry before proceeding. Otherwise, I would have been smearing them as I worked. It did take a little practice. I was doing much better by the time I got to the leaves. I like the result and will be using this technique again.

The background on the journal page was done with acrylics. I recycled a large sheet of bubblewrap by using my brayer to apply white paint and pressing it onto the page.

Sometimes experiments work. Sometimes they don't. Either way, I have a lot of fun playing in the paints.

Just passing this on...

In case you like Dina Wakley's paints and missed this announcement from Ranger, there is now a mixing chart for making other colors from her paints. You can read about it and find the link to the PDF here. The reds, oranges, and yellows in the background of my journal page were made with Dina's ruby and lemon paints. I have been mixing them all along. Now I have names for the colors.

My First Blog Post

Hi, I'm Neena. I have been art journaling for a number of years, although I didn't know it was called that until a few years ago. My introverted self used writing, pasting, and a bit of doodling in a notebook as a way to find a bit of solitude. Since I discovered art blogs and videos, my journals have become more arty. I am actually starting to think of myself as an artist. Others may not be that generous, but I don't care. I am having fun and plan to have even more. One of my goals for using this great thing called retirement is to improve my art skills.

I work in several journals. The one I work in most often is my daily journal. I do something in it nearly every day. In the past, it was only for a few minutes on most days. Once I retired, I found myself spending more time working in it.

I use the left page of my daily journal spreads for making notes about techniques and supplies used as well as documenting what's happening in my life. For privacy reasons, I'll only be photographing the arty right sides of my daily journal spreads to share on the blog.

I've been experimenting with abstract art while learning more about using acrylic paints. On the page below, I used glazes to build up the colors of the geometric shapes. The black lines were made with pastel pencil. I did this back in March, including some journaling about winter.

The piece was definitely not finished, but I couldn't decide what to add. Recently I was flipping back through this almost finished journal to find pages that need a bit more work. Adding stenciled and stamped designs popped into my head as soon as I saw the page.

Two things that ended up creating the focal point were due to messes that had to be rescued. The circles on the diagonal strip started out as a stamped image, but something pasted on the next spread kept it from printing cleanly. I colored in the circles and then added some marks with acrylic markers. Just below that you see a black stenciled area over some pink. When I was painting, I dripped a blob of another color on the pink. I grabbed a baby wipe to remove it. It took some of the glaze as well, leaving the lighter pink area. That area really pops under the black design. Sometimes messing up is a good thing.

Supplies used: acrylic paints, Golden Acrylic Glazing Liquid (Satin), black pastel pencil, black Pitt Artist Pen, stencils, stamps, acrylic markers, colored pencils

A friend says this is not bad for a first post. I hope you think so, too, and will visit again.