Watercolor Doodling

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Published Article, Colored Pencil Flowers and My Latest Creative Project

Great news! I have been published in the Summer issue of School Arts magazine.
I wrote an article about artwork my students made after learning about the art of contemporary artist Justin Vining.  You can read the article here.  I wrote a blog post last year all about this project:  Inspired by Artist Justin Vining.

I love Justin’s artwork and you can see pictures of his artwork on his website.

School's out for summer!  For those of you who don't know, I teach K-6 art full-time during the school year.  Most of my blogging energy gets put into my teaching blog, Art is Basic.

A colored pencil flower drawing I recently made.

It's interesting how the coloring book craze has taken over.  If you walk into a craft store or Barnes and Noble, you will see a big display of them.  I even saw some adult coloring books at a gas station.  People have asked if I have gotten into coloring books, but I usually just like to draw my own pages, like the one above.

I have been working on a new creative project, which is not watercolor, not collage and not drawing!  What is it?  A planner for club or scout leaders!  So my plan is to create all the pages of this special planner and then get it printed for myself to use.  Also, I will put the files as a bundle in my shop so if anyone else wants to purchase a download, they can do so.  I'm also thinking of getting a bunch of them printed and then selling actual physical planners from my two online shops:  Teachers Pay Teachers and Etsy.

So what will make these planners special?  Well, the purpose of them is for club or scout leaders.  After my first year of leading a Girl Scout troop, I realized that using my personal calendar, plus the online tools were making it very confusing.  I decided that for next year I needed one paper planner that was only for Girl Scouts. Can you believe I couldn't find any physical bound planners for Girl Scout leaders?  I asked in a Girl Scouts Facebook group and people used teacher planners, but covered up the headings with stickers and re-purposed pages.  I was thinking how it would be really useful to have a planner that has the calendar pages, but also pages for attendance rosters, contact information of members, badges or awards earned, meeting agendas, future ideas and so forth.  My intentions are not to make it specific to Girl Scouts (there are copyright issues with that anyways) but general enough for leaders of other clubs to use as well (like a church scouting group or Student Council). 

The digital clip art I have gotten from commercial use websites such as Pixabay.com or Creative Market.  Some of the digital art I alter with color, cropping, rotating, etc. I think the pages are pretty cute.  I still have several hours of playing around with the other pages before I'm ready to send them off to the printers.  I am making the calendar pages from June 2016 through all of 2018, so the planner would be good for 2 years.  What do you think so far? Any suggestions or tips for printing?  Any pages you think I need to include in a club leader planner?

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Flowery Collage

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Watercolor Flowers with Ink

I prepared the watercolor blobs ahead of time and took them with on a long car ride.  I added the black lines with a Pilot Varsity Fountain Penand some Sakura Pigma pens.

  

This was a big weekend!  We took our first car trip with baby Desmond to Chicago and we threw a baby shower for my brother and his wife, who are due in September.  I'm so happy that they will be having a baby also and Desmond will be able to grow up with a cousin his age.  We also celebrated my mom's retirement and cousin's graduation.

Also, you may have heard about the same-sex marriage ban being overturned in Wisconsin.  My sisters-in-law got legally married this weekend!  They had a commitment ceremony several years ago, but now it is legal too.  Their story made it on the news and you can read it here.  

Links to Share:

These gelli print collages make me want to get out my Gelli plates to make some papers.

52 Blog Post Topics for Creatives

I love the contrast between the bright watercolors and black inky lines in these artworks.

I finished a new edition of my E-Zine called Art Journaling with Kids.  You can download it from my store on TPT. 

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Springtime Flowers in Watercolor

 

Springtime flowers painted with watercolors, like these,

and outlined with the Pilot Varsity pen

 

Inspired by Alisa Burke's online workshop

Fruit and Flowers, a Mouse and Me!

Fruit and Flowers:
I colored in the sketch that I showed you here.  I mostly used colored pencils, watercolor pencils and watercolor paints. 

A Mouse:
My 5th/6th graders are painting animals and my go-to demo is always a mouse or hamster.  I love cute rodents.  The kids are always astounded when I show them how to make furry texture with a fan brush!  So fun.

Me: 
Here I am at 33 weeks pregnant!  Time is ticking away.  Hopefully the sooner the better!

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Organic Shapes, Dots and Doodles

What is your definition of an art journal page?  Do you consider mixed media collages (even without words) to be art journal pages?  

My students at school saw me making this and they were so excited.  "Wow!  Can we make something like this?"

The Molotow Paint Marker in white is my new favorite marker!  It wrote over all these paint layers really well.  When I ordered it through that link above, I received a box of 6 markers (I think).  I don't know if that was a mistake and if it was only supposed to be one, but I was only expecting one marker. 

Linking to Paint Party Friday and Art Journal Every Day.

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Sunflower

Sunflower journal page--- cut outs of watercolor paintings, painted sunflower, magazine images, acrylic inks

Paintings from my watercolor class

I have been taking a watercolor painting class this summer and Wednesday was our last day.  Here are two of the paintings I made.

Happy Paint Party Friday!

Watercolor Flowers on Yupo Paper

This Yupo paper is very interesting to paint on.. The paper does not absorb the paint, it sits on the surface until it dries.  The paper is translucent (like vellum) but does not wrinkle when you paint on it.  The flowers in the middle were painted on it and then the picture was taped on to the background.  I'm linking this one over at the Butterfly Effect.

Painting!

Flower Power, 2011,  Gouache, ink, watercolor paint

Remember this painting, that I was unhappy with?

 

Well, I gessoed over those flowers in the middle and added some other colors to change the scheme a bit.  I'm going to add a bit more line work, probably in white or light gray.

I testing out some new methods for lettering!  I'm going to make some greeting cards.