Art Journal Pages

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Seahorse and Cat Watercolor Paintings

Above is a watercolor painting I made of a seahorse.

This one was made by my 7 year old, Daria. 

Watercolor Doodling

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Watercolor and Black Paint Art Journal Pages

Hi again!  This is my poor, neglected blog space.  I've been putting forth any extra time and effort I have into my art teaching blog.  I've revamped it, added a newsletter and a slideshow at the top. I've been adding products to my TPT shop and coming up with new resources for my blog.

I have had a little bit of time to experiment with art journaling again.  I've been using watercolors combined with stark black paint.

Journal page before watercolor lettering

Journal page with lettering added

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Sweet and Sassy Art Journaling

 

I hope you all are having a wonderful winter time so far.  Brrrr... it's really cold here now!  The wind chills are about -20 degrees.   

My New Year's goal is to create at least one artwork per month just for me!  So, that is a total of 12 artworks.  I go to a book club and they helped me come up with that goal.  It is a very attainable goal and most months I make at least one artwork anyways.  It has just been so hard to find time to do anything for ME. 

Art is Basic:  Art ideas for children
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Watercolor Bird #7

Watercolor Bird Painting #6

Watercolor Bird Painting

 

This is a recent watercolor painting I completed.  #5 in my series of watercolor birds.  Read more to see detail shots.

An Art Journal Page In Steps

Would you like to see me create an art journal page with a quote in steps?  Of course you do!  Here goes.

Sunshine Quote - Watercolor Painting

If you like my artwork, be sure to visit my Etsy shop where I have some original Project Life cards, some miniature art cards, greeting cards, postcards and collage packs.  It truly makes my day when someone purchases my art. 

Painting Watercolor Backgrounds

These are watercolor backgrounds which will soon be the starting point for further watercolor doodling and collages

Art Journaling Technique: Fingerprints with Watercolor

Here is a quick and easy art technique to paint an interesting background or to make painted papers to cut apart for collages.

Masking with Watercolor

Hi friends!  Today's blogpost is a cross-post.  This week I was a guest blogger on Marit's Paper World for her Quirky Dutch Summer series.  In case you missed it, I thought I would share it here as well.

Masking with Watercolor

Watercolor is my favorite art medium to use, because I love how the colors can flow and blend together. The element of surprise is always a part of painting with watercolors because often the paint will move in ways you didn’t quite expect. As you use watercolors more, you can begin to predict and control the paints better. Today I am going to show you one of my favorite watercolor techniques to get shapes with crisp edges.

Guest Blog Post for Quirky Dutch Summer

Hi to anyone who has stopped over here from the Quirky Dutch Summer series at Marit's blog.  I'm glad you came to visit me here.  Marit has been a blogging friend for many years and we connected more when she started her magazine called Featuring and I became a writer/contributing editor for her publication.  The Quirky Dutch Summer series will have lots of prompts and technique tutorials throughout the summer, so be sure to check it out.  It's not just for Dutch artists!

I am a guest blogger for her series today!  The technique I shared is about using contact paper to mask off shapes while using watercolor paints.  You can see the steps I used to make this artwork:

As a thank you for reading my blog, enter "SummerTime" in the coupon code box at the checkout of my Etsy shop to receive 20% off your entire order.  I have greeting cards, postcards, prints and collage packs.  Thanks for reading my blog!

Elephant Watercolor Painting & a Quirky Dutch Summer

Hi friends!  I finished another watercolor painting this week and it is not of a bird!  I really stretched myself with this one. :)  One of my dear friends was at my house and was talking about some of my watercolor paintings on the wall.  She said she loved elephants and would love a painting of an elephant.  I decided I would give it a try!  Now, since I love bright colors so much, I couldn't just paint a gray elephant.  I found some pictures of decorated Indian elephants and came up with this design.  It's not perfect, but I'm proud of how it turned out.

I'm excited to announce that I'm going to be a part of Another Quirky Dutch Summer and I'll be writing a Guest Artist blog post. Mine will be posted mid-June.  I was so honored that she asked me to participate!  You probably didn't know this, but I am 50% Dutch!  My mom's family is 100% Dutch.  I don't know when our ancestors came to the US but it was quite awhile ago.  Anyways, the series will have all kinds of fun prompts and techniques and you can play along with all of us.  There is a Facebook group too you can join to share your artwork.

Other than that, I am just trying to finish up the end of our school year!  Yikes!  Lots of report card writing in progress.

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Oops Painting

I thought I'd show you a nice painting I was making and then the oops part of it.  I'd love to see your mistakes too!
 

I have been having so much fun painting watercolor birds, I just keep going. I wanted to paint some parakeets and I was making a really nice painting of the birds, but then I couldn't get the eyes on two of them right, so it kept smearing and now there's smudges.  Ah.. it's too bad because I love that little yellow bird.  I might just have to cut him out and do something else with him.

I'm also thinking about cropping the bird on the right off and using that as a separate picture.  I need to add feet though.

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New Watercolor Bird

 I'm having so much fun continuing my bird series.  I just finished this colorful little guy.

So I need your honest opinion.  Do you like it better with the background paint splotches or without?  Here's it before I did the background.

These are some of my favorite watercolor paints to use.

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Watercolor Abstract

What does this remind you of?  Maps?  Islands?  Microscopic things?  I was teaching my students about art that has been inspired by microscopic things and also I had checked out Map Art Lab: 52 Exciting Art Explorations in Mapmaking, Imagination, and Travel.  So this has influences from both.


I am starting a huge mural with my students at school.  I will keep you updated as we start to paint it.  It's hard to see what's going on in these pictures, but we traced figures on to large white banner paper, cut them out and then traced those on to the wall. Next week the painting begins!

I was thinking of something school themed and since the wall is so long a parade of kids would be fun. The idea evolved organically through casual conversations with the principal, other teachers and students. We talked about how each kid could be holding something to represent subject areas of school. It started with just a few figures but in order to represent all of the subjects it kept growing to 8 silhouettes. The silhouettes will be painted black with the objects in color. We have music (blowing a horn, leading the parade), reading/social studies (a book), science (magnifying glass and flower), athletics (shooting a ball), computers ( holding a laptop), foreign language/cultures (holding a flag), the arts (paintbrush/drama mask) and math (ruler and protractor). There will be words written along the figures that say key concepts from the subject areas. There is also an eagle flying in front of the parade because our school is called Eagle. I had seen figural murals before and then the silhouettes of Bansky kind of gave me a more solid idea.

 The kids were able to trace a classmate using a projector and the shadows against the wall. The other art teacher and I (and other teachers and older students I grabbed in the hall) looked at the images and tried to make sure the proportions/lines made sense. 

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Watercolor Bird Painting

Hello there!  What a long and cold month this has been.  I was feeling sick for about 3 1/2 weeks there.  I'm starting a new bird series with watercolors.  I painted the bird below this week.  It's fun to show my elementary students my sketchbook because it's a big ego boost.  Ha ha.  "WOW!! You should be an artist!"  they say.  Well, I guess I am an artist.. art teacher.. 

If that colorful little guy above looks familiar, that's because I painted the same type of bird a few months ago.  Here he is below.

Stay tuned for more colorful birds.  Growing up I had a couple parakeets... maybe parakeets are next?!

If you like my art, you can purchase a Happy Mail Pack at my Etsy shop or maybe you would like a 5" x 7" postcard of one of my watercolor paintings?  If money is a problem, feel free to message me for a trade of some sort (I collect zines and love stickers).  Anyways.. I'm just excited when someone else likes my art enough to want something from my shop! :)

Have a great weekend, friends!

Watercolor lettering collage

I used that Molotow masking fluid pen for the white parts of this image.  I did several layers of watercolor doodling and then used Sharpies and glued a few other collage elements on top.  I cut out two of the images from this previous page to include on this picture.

Gah!  I'm in such a creative rut.  I rarely have time to make my own art and when I do I feel like I don't know where to start so I just do something else.  Anyone else feel that way? 

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