Hi everyone, I have 4 videos for you today. A couple of them are only a few minutes long, however the main one is 25 minutes long. Yesterday I created a new mixed media art canvas for my lounge room wall. I have videoed nearly the whole process for you, as I did the work. Please note: the picture shown at the beginning of the video is NOT the canvas we are making.:-)
PLease excuse the muttering in the last video, especially at the end.LOL
Hi Guys, finally I have my video uploaded. It took 3 times and each time when the computer decided to go into sleep mode the video stopped loading and I had to start from scratch again..GGGGGGGRRRRRRRRRR!
Anyway here it is..enjoy! If I get more questions then I would be happy to do one of these sessions once a week.
Di
Hi everyone, I was really hanging out to get into the paints today. Its been a couple of days and I really noticed it. I decided to try painting and drawing the face on fabric and seeing if I felt more comfortable with that. I did, actually I really enjoyed creating this page. I called it “Do what you love”. I am a real believer that life is too short to be stuck doing something you don’t love, even if it means you will have to be short of money.
I managed to get my studio tidy and then I was just itching to get going. I have some macros of this page so you can see closer up. Enjoy!
Are you doing what you love yet?????? If you have any art journal pages or mixed media art you would like to share, just add them at the bottom of this page.
Hi Guys, Today my art includes a girls face. I have called it “Be You”, which is something I feel strongly about. I think many of us put on a “brave face” or pretend we are ok when we are not. It is so freeing when you decided that you don’t care what others think and just want to be as authentic and as unique as you really are. That’s what makes us all so special.
As you will have discovered by now , I am feeling my way on this blog. I am experimenting to see what will and what will not work here. AS a lot of you know I was first and foremost a doll designer and maker, so faces were a very important part of my work. What you may not know though , is that I have never really drawn faces on paper or painted faces. It is wayy different than on fabric. So this is where my learning curve comes in. This is my first painted face on paper. Please know that I intend to get better LOL……….PLease feel free to learn along with me too.:-)
I am not sure about the color of the skin and I am not sure I like the way the eyes are looking to the side. However that’s all part of the learning process…..trial and error.
Today started off with me in the kitchen, that pinterest keeps giving me new recipes to try:-) Started off making some chocolate oatmeal cookies, then made a HUGE casserole in my new crockpot/slowcooker. I have a large amount of gorgeous vine ripened tomatoes (woohoo !!!!!New Zealand Tomatoes) in the oven slowly semi drying to put with sauted onions on a homemade pizza and will freeze the rest and I have just finished the art shown on the page.
Going to send Wayne off to get the video ” We bought a Zoo” as that looks like a good movie to watch on a cloudy Saturday. Ahhhhhhhhhhh Matt Damon…nice!:-)
OK Please leave me a comment so I know I’m not here alone in cyber space.
Di
Yesterday was a bit of a washout as far as making art was concerned. However, I still managed to buy some art supplies with my birthday money:-) I got 60% off canvases at a sale WOOHOO!! I created the canvas above to go next to the one with the flowers on it. They look cute together.:-)
I also bought some A3 sized watercolor paper pads that I can cut in half to make the size of paper I want. Sadly I couldn’t get them in a journal book. Because I want to journal on each page separately, I am going to try this and have them bound together later. I don’t know if this will be satisfactory, but will try it and see. Can always change my mind again LOL:-)
I have also ordered a few Adirondack Color Washes as I have never used it before. Here is a video of Tim Holtz using the color wash, just in case you don’t know about it.
I also bought a few paint samples to try out color on our walls. To start with I painted some samples of the lounge wall and already , out of the 4 we have I dislike one of them. In fact I think I have already made up my mind which color I will use for that room. Mind you, its not some fancy color………..we have 4 shades of white:-) A couple are more creamy, one is beigey and the other one is more white. We will use one of the more creamy colors for the bathroom as I want to keep that warm.
OK I have plenty to do today and I want to get a couple art journaling pages finished. Please let me know if you are thinking about trying daily art journals, I would LOVE to hear from you.
All the best Di
Today has been an interesting one for me with my journaling. I think the most important thing is that I made some new realizations. I now understand that the page size I have been using is too small for me! I also now know that I need to buy good watercolor paper.
The journal page shown is painted on a SMALL watercolor page and I just wasn’t happy with it at all. However I did say that I was going to do journaling daily so here it is.:-)
Tomorrow I am going out and will buy the exact journal that I want. I have a list LOL…so I have a few other art things to find too. I love to use items I already have around the house, however, this will not work for paper.
I had a great time creating this piece. It was such fun. I am loving using the modeling paste too. What I learn’t is that you have to colour it first then use it. That way you don’t wreck your brushes trying to paint over it. I used it with a stencil and it creates a 3 dimentional look to the work.
The flowers are made from scrap book papers and buttons. I used the pic below for my facebook front page.
I have recently moved back to New Zealand from Australia where I have been living for many years now. Along with the change in country came some changes in direction. To make it even better its the “New Year”, a great time for new things. Happy New Year by the way:-)
As many of you will know, for years I designed and taught doll making. For the last few years I have focused more on Mixed media art including journaling. I think one of the reasons I love journaling so much is that it is portable, it is small in size and you just need a small amount of desk space, not an entire studio. The last place I lived was a 2 bedroom apartment and there really was very little space to do art work. Now I am living in a 3 bedroom old and roomy house and have art space at last woohoo!!!
We are redecorating the house room by room and this one needs a lot of work. And I am a messy creator, however I am showing you pics anyway, just to give you an idea of the space I have now.
I ended up buying a couple small bookcases from Warehouse which sit on the table and this way I can see my paints, sprays, mediums etc all out in front of me. Otherwise I find I have bought good stuff but never remember to use it.
One of the important things that this blog will focus on is being authentic in your journaling and in your artwork in general. What I mean by that is, do you take a class and find that afterwards your work looks like the teachers work? Or do you try to always make your artwork as authentic to your unique self as possible.?? I have seen many journals that I can immediately identify as a close copy of another artist..for instance Teesha Moore or Dina Wakely. Is that OK with you? Or would you love your work to be truly unique and only go to classes to learn the techniques.
How do you get your art to become unique??? How do these people who are amazingly different get noticed? Is it because they are different. One example of this would be Jesse Reno Have you seen his work on you tube?? Check out the video I have provided here.
Until Telstra Clear gets my broadband connected I am using a T stick and its taking ages to get these pics up.I will try again and let you go to the links and think about the questions I asked. I will be back tomorrow with more.
Would love to hear of any comments you have.
luv Di