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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Published Magazine Article!

An article I wrote was published in the April issue of Arts and Activities magazine! If you want to read the digital version, here is the link: http://pubdev.ipaperus.com/ArtsandActivities/AAApril2016/?page=24

Big thanks to the editor, Maryellen, for publishing my article.  I really appreciate it!  Writing about art and teaching is a hobby of mine (as you might have guessed from reading my blog) and it’s exciting to hold an actual physical copy of my writing.

I have subscribed to Arts and Activities magazine for about 14 years now and I’m thrilled to have written an article.



If you want to see more examples of student artwork, this blog post has more pictures.

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A World of Artist Journal Pages: Book Review

I am excited to share with you the book A World of Artist Journal Pages.  It just arrived in the mail yesterday and it is thick.. just full of inspiring art pages.  And I am super excited because five of my art journal pages have been published in the book!


I put together a video flip-through to show you some of the pages of the book.  I have really low voice and my voice is even scratchier with a sore throat I have now.



Here are four of my pages that are in the book (I couldn’t find a photo of the final page.)
Soul Affirming Journal Page
Every Creation Journal Page
The Whole World Journal Page
Page with Bird and Boy



(I’m a little bummed because the scans I sent off for printing didn’t show the colors as bright as it really is in real life, but oh well!)


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Art journaling and Quotes Illustrated

One of my artworks is in the Inspirational Quotes Illustrated: Art and Words to Motivate book which recently was re-released under a new publisher.  The book is available here on Amazon.

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Somerset Studio Gallery Magazine

I was super thrilled to receive an email that I was going to have an art journal published in the Somerset Studio Gallery magazine (Summer 2014 issue).  I had submitted this book over 2 years ago and I had pretty much forgotten all about it.  You can see all the pages in a video here.

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Some of My Favorite Posts from 2013

A blog is a great way to look back at your favorite artworks and posts from the year.  I think about the year and it doesn't really feel like I accomplished a lot... just tinkering around here and there in my art journal and scrapbook.  Rereading my blog entries reminds me that I did do a lot.  Here is my year in review.

In 2013, I continued working on Project Life style scrapbooking (however, not documenting each and every day because that is way way too much.)

In January, Featuring magazine Issue #3 (of which I am a contributing editor) was released.  To learn more about Featuring, visit the website. 

February:  I made this sweet page around Valentine's Day.   I love the bright colors and the lettering in this one. 

March: I chose the word "soul-affirming" for the year 2013.  I was hoping to choose to use my time on soul-affirming activities.. making sure that whatever I said "yes" to was something I really wanted to do and was a good way to nourish my soul.  That happened mostly.  I made some choices I shouldn't have but I'm more on track now.  Here is a journal page with that phrase and I'm super excited that this was selected to be a part of a book about art journaling that will be published in 2015.  Yay!

Here is another one from March that I really enjoyed making:  You Shine Brighter than the Brightest Star.

March was a busy art month and I made several art journal pages that I treasure.

April:  In April, I signed up for the 21 Secrets online art journaling workshops and had a blast.  Cathy Bluteau's workshop was one of my favorites and here is a page I made inspired by her videos:

Here is one I made for Artists in Blogland Color this Quote Challenge:

In April, I had an article titled "13 Great Layers for Art Journal Pages" published in:

And another colorful burst of fun!

In May, I made more journal pages and decided that during the summer I would create a series about using stickers in your journals.  There were 15 posts about "sticky journaling" during the summer.

 

Anatomy of an Art Journal Page are among my favorite types of posts to write:

June:  Ah, summer.  The perfect time for leisurely arts and crafting.

I wrote a post about How to Make Stickers Using PicMonkey, 

our trip to the Lego Brickworld Convention,

and showed more pictures of my watercolor doodling.

In June, Featuring Magazine Issue #4 was published.  I wrote several articles in this issue. 

July:  An article I wrote for Cloth Paper Scissors Pages came out.  Love their photography and presentation!

I made a number of index cards for the Daisy Yellow Index Card challenge:

1. leaf icad, 2. ICAD, 3. ICAD, 4. ICAD, 5. ICAD, 6. ICAD, 7. ICAD, 8. ICAD, 9. index card art Marcia, 10. index card art Marcia Beckett, 11. icad art, 12. hello index card art, 13. bird art marcia beckett, 14. Index Card art, 15. Daria making index card art, 16. ICAD: Index Card a Day Art, 17. ICAD: Index Card a Day Art, 18. ICAD: Index Card a Day Art, 19. ICAD: Index Card a Day Art, 20. ICAD: Index Card a Day Art, 21. ICAD: Index Card a Day Art, 22. ICAD: Index Card a Day Art, 23. Bird ICAD, 24. icad to journal page, 25. icad to journal page marcia

August: We went on a family vacation in August and then on a girls' weekend with a few friends later that month.  I did some art journaling with my daughter and my niece while we were there.  Check out our craftiness here.

At the end of August, I found out I was pregnant.  We kept it a secret longer than our first.. we wanted to make sure everything with the baby was healthy and besides, I'm still barely showing as it is.  Well, my stomach is definitely bigger but I wear a lot of loose clothing as it is.  (I'm 23 weeks now.)  From August until the present, I have been going to bed between 7:30 and 9:00 every night and I'm still working full-time, so my art time has been drastically reduced.  All I feel like doing is laying on the couch!

September was back to school and nothing really amazing stands out to me art-wise.  I did some fun Lego stamping with my students.  

October I was pleased to do a Stencil Test Drive for Jessica Sporn's new stencil, did a painting of a Dreamer Girl and wrote a tutorial about making windows for an art journal page.

November the book Quotes Illustrated came out and I was honored to have an artwork published in that book.

I also started painting faces more:

That brings us to December.   Well, December is so recent I probably don't need to bring up anything that happened! 

As for goals and resolutions for the year 2014, I will have to think about that.  Mostly, survival!  Getting through the rest of this pregnancy and then surviving having a newborn.

Watercolor Quote

I am so pleased to have an artwork published in Lesley Riley's new book called Quotes Illustrated.  The quote was given to me by Lesley and the quote definitely resonates with me.  Love it.

I have not received my copy of the book yet, but I am eagerly awaiting it!  I think it would be a nice gift for an art or quote lover.

Here is what the description says,

"QUOTES ILLUSTRATED by Lesley Riley is a timeless source of inspiration and motivation. Through the diverse and eclectic work of over 90 artists, familiar and some not-yet-discovered quotes are brought to life.

It's an eye-opening experience to see how these talented artists interpret modern and age-old wisdom. To quote Georgia O'Keefe, "Art is not what you see,
 but what you make others see." And therein lies the magic of this book - it expands your awareness, so that you see, not only with new eyes, but come to understand how art can illustrate and illuminate more than words alone can express.
100 quotes were carefully chosen by Lesley to create a positive book that moves the reader to take action on their dreams. If the quotes alone don't do the trick, the artwork certainly will. Artists were free to interpret their quote in their own way, with their medium of choice.
The book includes wonderful examples of digital art, art quilts, fiber art, mixed media, collage, assemblage and paintings. There is something to delight all tastes. Artists in particular will find this compendium a source of ideas and techniques for their own art. While it's not a how-to book, information on materials and techniques used are provided for each artwork."

Cloth Paper Scissors Article on Watercolor Doodling

I am honored to have an article published in the Summer 2013 edition of Cloth Paper Scissors PAGES magazine.  It is on the newsstands now.  The digital version is available here.

I wrote about my watercolor doodles and showed how to photocopy the paintings, cut them up and use them in art journal pages.   I have a lot of these types of paintings on my blog, like here, here, and this page using the watercolor doodles. 

Cloth Paper Scissors does a wonderful job photographing the work and laying out the article.  I submitted about 10 different artworks to accompany the article and it's always interesting to see which ones they choose to use.

Thanks Cloth Paper Scissors!!!

Best wishes, Marcia
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Art Journaling Exposed 2

I am very honored to share with you that I have an article in the Art Journaling Exposed 2 downloadable E-magazine from Cloth Paper Scissors.  I browsed through the issue last night and it has a lot of interesting articles and videos.  My article is titled "13 Great Layers for Art Journal Pages"

These are some of the pages in the article.

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A Sneak Peak...

I received a nice surprise in the mail today!

I wrote an article for Art Journaling magazine by Somerset Studio!   I'm thrilled to have four pages of my artwork in this publication.  The magazine will hit the newsstands in January. 

This was one of my favorite pages!

Coloring Book

I just wanted to share with you this cool Doodlers Anonymous coloring book link. 
I have a drawing that is going to be in the coloring book!  I can't wait to see it.  (I haven't been paid to promote the book, I just wanted to share my good news!)

"The anticipated Volume II of the Doodlers Anonymous coloring book features the doodles and drawings of 60 artists from around the globe - some fresh novices, others seasoned veterans, all of whom share a love for the hand-drawn.

The coloring book ships in time for the holidays and is the perfect stocking stuffer for the young or young at heart.

The artwork is playful, beautiful and inspiring - not something off the shelf. So treat yourself, your family, and your faves to a little bit of happy!"

Here was my drawing!

The cover of the coloring book.  Doesn't it look fun?

School has started!

School has started!  I teach K-6 art at a private school (plus I do Yearbook and Student Council).. so I'm guessing I probably will not have much time to blog for awhile.

Children's art is so refreshing...

The first graders are starting with simple collaged initials and then moving on to a watercolor/texture background.

Stamping with cylindrical objects and then embellishing with markers and pens. 

Look how beautiful crayon rubbings and kid's watercolor paints can be.

I've managed to sneak in a little bit of my own art journaling in the past few weeks.

And look, I've been published!

             Scholastic Art is a magazine geared for grades 4-12.   I've subscribed to it for many years and submitted a lesson plan to them.

Here is my lesson plan and students' artwork.

That's me!