A New Year, A New Post

It seems these days when Instagram is so easy, blog posts fall behind.  I have tackled several types of art projects in the last 6 months.  Most recently, I learned to do Acrylic Pouring because my two daughters got all the supplies for me and spent a day with me learning.  It was so much fun, mostly because the entire family got involved.  So here is the kit and our first pours.

Latest Mixed Media Pieces

Spent a bit of time over the past week making a few pieces of mixed media art.

Close-ups

Another piece:

And the last one from yesterday:

I'm not sure if I am going to go back and add anything to this last one.  It seems to me that it needs something.

Art Marks 30 Day Summer Challenge - Week 1

After a long hiatus of blogging, I am determined to get back into it.  I started teaching art at our local Christian school 2 years ago and found it sucked up all my free time.  I was only able to manage easy posts onto Instagram.  I still was making art - although much of it was prepping for classes I was teaching.  Fun, but all-consuming.

So now that I have retired, I decided to join in with @raemissgman 's Art Marks 30 day summer challenge.  For one thing, it gives me a daily challenge prompt which gives me something to focus on.  And secondly, it is a free-style challenge so really anything goes.  I particularly like mixed media and collage, so I am doing a lot of that in the prompts.  The biggest challenge for me is working small.  I am using a journal that was given to me by a sweet compatriot in our MIABA altered book club.  It isn't the best for mixed media, but I am reinforcing the pages as best I can.  So without further ado, here are my first seven days of prompts.

"Dense"

 

 

"Scrawled"

"Curved"

"Geometric"

"Ruled"

"Wide"

"Interrupted"

 

Altered Book Collage and Mixed Media - Vintage Boy and His Dog

This is a recently finished page that I did while vacationing up North at our Lake house.

A Boy and His Dog

I haven't had nearly as much time this year to spend on my own art, since I started teaching art at my school. It has turned out to be a much larger undertaking that I anticipated. So it felt really good to do something just for me for a change. Teaching art has certainly stretched me in many ways and my art has definitely improved because of it, but I miss having the free time to just go into the studio and play.

And I haven't had too much free time to post on my blog.  But summer is coming. So I hope to be better about putting things up.

If you happen to visit, please leave a comment so I know you were here.  Thanks.

Birds in Colored Pencils

I have been experimenting with using colored pencils and I have really been enjoying it. I am using Prismacolor Premier Colored Pencils. They are dreamy to work with. I used a couple of tutorials from the internet and two are my own work from photos. I love this new-to-me medium.

Altered Book Mixed Media Collage

Haven't posted here in a really long time, but I have been making art. Here are a couple of collage spreads that I did recently inside my altered book turned journal.

Mixed Media on Board

This is a piece I made with inspiration from Shawn Petite.  I love her style and her quotes that she uses on her work.  I also totally appreciate the free tutorials that she gives on her website.  So many artists are so generous with their time and talents! 

Anyway, I found a board at the local Restore for $0.50 that I thought would work for my first venture into working on a hard surface.  I gessoed the surface and then did a collage of map pieces, napkins, text pages and tissue paper.  I stenciled a few paint colors onto the surface and decopauged the butterflies and the quote. I used charcoal pencil to do the shading around the butterflies. The final piece is about 8x8 in.

 All in all, I was pretty happy with how it turned out and I will definitely try this again.  As a matter of fact, I have one in process now.

Altered Book Spread - Collage

I am trying out different things in my art journals these days.  This particular one is a collage of various vintage papers and ephemera.  I really like it. I don't know whether it is completely done or not.  I am letting it rest awhile to see if I feel it needs more later.

Mandala Altered Book for Round Robin

Mandala Altered Book Final

Three Little House Canvases Using Gelli Prints

These are three small canvases - about 5X5 in. that I did. I gelli printed directly onto the canvas for the background and cut pieces out of other gelli prints for the houses. Then I used more paint, doodles, stamping, rub-ons and more to finish them off.

Mixed Media Canvas - Peace

Wow - it's been a while since I've posted anything. It got really busy over the holidays. But I have been making lots of art. I'll be posting some pictures over the next little while of things I've been making.

I recently tried repurposing a canvas that my daughter had done a few years ago. It was one where she had melted crayons on it, so I knew the only hope was lots of gesso, texture and molding paste.

Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of the original canvas, but here is the finished product.

These two pictures sort of show the texture and also you can see some of the art peeking through below the gesso.

I am currently following along with Donna Downey's Inspiration Wednesday and that is where I got the idea for the raised letters for the word "PEACE".  So that is it for today. I'll be back soon with more art to share!