Technique Tuesday

Here's a fun technique for kids and adults alike.

Use markers to draw designs on a coffee filter.  regular washable markers like crayola will work, permanent markers will not.

Flip over the coffee filter and place on a piece of paper.  Spray with water.

The ink will bleed to the paper to create a tie dyed effect.  Let it dry before removing the coffee filter. These would make lovely layers in a collage or could be torn up and added to an art journal page.  

Here is another one that I moved, resprayed and blotted.

Drawing on coffee filters is fun!

 

Mosaic Monday

One of the blogs I read does a Mosaic Monday post where a mosaic is created of her favorite inspirations from the web.  So, this Mosaic Monday post features some of the recent artwork that has inspired me by other people  (none of these are my own images.)

1. POWER, 2. five minutes and fifty seven seconds, 3. Vase, 4. Morning walk, 5. how to be less marginal 1, 6. sketchbookfeb14, 7. recent journal pages, 8. goat & vine, an aesop fable., 9. folding book of faces, 10. Flower Garden Collage , 11. Approaching the Plasmatic Living Cluster, Quietly, 12. Riley's Journal, 13. reach for the stars, my love, 14. Paper Quilt Project, 15. Another piece of art, 16. bonnie


I made this mosaic using flickr and big huge labs.

just a few more pictures for you

Journals and Painting in Progress

I've been taping together a lot of loose journal and sketchbook pages to make books.  Thanks to Kelly Kilmer's workshop I learned an easy way to bind pages together. 

recently bound books

a couple pages inside  "Cloudy with a chance of stars"  I love that phrase

some sketches, plus magazine clippings and paint.  I know these are a bit cartoony.

These are some animal drawings that I drew after a lesson on Carla Sonheim's workshop.

In progress painting.. I have been using drawing inks, acrylic craft paints, and prismacolor markers

Paint Party Friday

I've been working on a journal for Kelly Kilmer's journal workshop.  These are leftover papers from my stash and they have been taped together to form a journal.  So, next I will add further focal points, background and embellishments.  This is the very start to the journal. 

And then, I have this painting that is in progress that I'm not happy with and will most likely gesso over the flowers in the center.  ughh...  anyways. .. that is what I am working on.

This one is a watercolor doodle with black marker on top.

I'm on Julie's Blog!

Hey!  I'm featured on Julie Balzer's blog!  She is an awesome art journaler and has her own design line. 

The art of silliness... another drawing

I am participating in the Art of Silliness workshop with Carla Sonheim. I am getting all kinds of great worksheets for the kids to use in my art classroom. Each day, Carla sends up a quirky, funny and inspiring worksheet to complete.   Besides being very sweet, Carla is a wonderful artist.  While this workshop is daily, you can jump in at any time, so it's not too late to sign up.  So, this painting started with a drawing prompted by a series of steps.. for example.. draw 3 long lines... , etc.  The thing is you can change the types of lines and how you draw them.  So, everyone's picture ends up looking very unique.  This is an exercise I have done in my art classroom before.  It's a great one.  After I drew the image, I painted it with watercolors. 

Personal Collage

I tried out the "cruciform" kind of layout.  First, I ripped and glued down a bunch of collage elements and the picture of Daria, my daughter.  Then I painted around the images with acrylic paints and gesso. I was inspired to try this format after looking at Jane Davies artwork.

Scrapbook/Art Journaling Page of my Dog

My dog is truly one of my children.  Whoever thinks animals don't have souls has never owned a dog.  Linus has lived with us for 3 years now.  We got him from rescue agency.  The humane society would not take him because they said he was "not good with humans".  While he was very very skittish and scared when we first got him, he has never hurt any of us and is super obedient.  He follows us around and wants to please us.  One time we accidently left him outside after we'd taken him out and he was just sitting outside on the porch staring at the door waiting for us to come back.  While he has not been the perfect dog by any means (he likes to chew apart dirty diapers), I couldn't imagine not having him.

Paint Party Friday

I didn't really do a whole lot this week... just a bit more watercolor doodling.  I love playing around with the lines and swirls and colors.  The designs were drawn with watercolor paint and markers, then the turquoise paint was acrylic paint around the design.  Enjoy! and Thank you! for visiting my blog!

"Thank you" watercolor page

Practicing lettering, painting, watercolor doodling:

Dog Sketches

Some of these you may have seen before, but I added some color to these.  They are sketches of my dog Linus, in various positions.  This curled up position is my favorite.. he gets into a little ball and sometimes you can't even see his head.

the art of silliness!

 

I am participating in a silly drawing workshop with Carla Sonheim.  Check it out here:  Silly 4

Collage background, contact paper transfer, flower sketches

This is a background painted with spray watercolors, rubber stamp pads and fabric dye.

a flower painted with watercolors on Yupo paper

another watercolor flower... these will be placed on a collage at some point

I did my first contact paper transfer!  I love how it turned out.  Now, I just need to find some better images to transfer.  This was sooooo easy. All you do is take a magazine image, place it on a sheet of the sticky contact paper (face to the sticky side).  Then burnish (rub really hard) with something like the back of a spoon.  Then, let it sit in a bowl of warm/hot water for 10 minutes.  After you come back, rub gently with your fingers until all the paper is off.  You get this nice, translucent-ish image.

This is a worksheet from Carla Sonheim's Art of Silliness class.  I recommend this class, it's very fun.  The worksheets she sends you each day are very unique drawing activities.  What I am doing with these is photocopying them for kids in my class to work on when they are finished with their regular art projects.  (She allows photocopying for classroom use in schools, which is awesome!)  Some of the kids did a drawing exercise on Friday in class where they draw stacks of turtles.  One stack with their left hand, one stack with their right hand.  Great exercise for the brain and hand/eye coordination.  The kids lOVED it.  They also had a blast coming up with Fleep (nonsense) words. 

Works in Progress- for paint party friday

Journal Dump!