Yellow Color
If I had to pick only one color, I would choose yellow. It is unconventional, energetic, and brilliant with other colors, mixed or not. I love to make green by mixing yellows with blues or black. Yes, isn’t it surprising that you’ll get olive green if you mix yellow with black! Best oranges come when mixing yellows with reds instead of buying ready-made oranges. I often put a tiny portion of black to get a slightly muted shade.
I created the yellow collage on a canvas mostly with acrylic paints. If you buy only one tube of acrylic paint, I would recommend buying good quality yellow, warm or cold. Then create your art with color pencils, markers or watercolors and finally add a very thin layer of yellow on one or two areas. You will witness the arrival of the sun, warmth, and all the good things!
If you buy two tubes of paint, I would recommend yellow and another primary color, red or blue. You can create almost anything with those. The intensity of good quality yellow paint is amazing and in acrylics, I prefer to buy few and good quality instead of buying cheap sets.
In our house, we have a long hallway painted yellow. It is a particular shade of yellow that was not found in any color charts. I mixed it myself by adding some black to the closest yellow I could find. I saw this yellow first time in Tricia Guild’s old book Design and Detail about 20 years ago. I fell in love with it, and when we bought our house a few years ago, I knew that the dark hallway would look amazing with that yellow.
I think that yellow has a special connection to two colors. The first is black. Try this: pick your yellows and think about blacks. If it helps, find music that represents black for you and turns it on. Paint yellow and think about black. I love that mind game!
Another color that I connect yellow with is blue purple. It is the contrast color of yellow, and it makes yellow pop even more and vice versa. If you look at the collage, there are a couple of tiny circles on the small square on the left. Yellow makes them look lovely and bigger than they really are.
Yellow Color begins a blog post series about color. I will post these color-themed posts now and then. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy these!
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When Pens Replace Needles
I confess: I am constantly thinking about textiles. I often try to hide my love for fabrics, quilting, sewing, embroidery, knitting, crochet, yarn, and wool. It is like I married paper but have a secret relationship with textiles. If you look at the collage, can you see it?
Creating Textile Inspired Art
When attaching the pieces on paper, I feel that whatever glue or medium I use, the pieces still look like that they are floating. Then I pick a pen and add a stitch line here and another there. And soon I am lost in the details!
When people try to find their own style, they often deny what they know best. It is probably too mundane, something they take for granted. Often, it is easier for other people to see where our strengths are. Anything genuine touches people.
I want to thank Denise who pinned the last week’s horse themed collage art to her Pinterest board called “Clever Stitch Artists”. I got curious about what she saw in the collage. She had written in the description: “Embroidery inspiration”. I tried to hide my love for embroidery but she saw it! So this week I decided to create a project that is a celebration of felted fabrics and hand stitching.
The concept is very easy. Just add some shapes on the painted background paper and then: take your markers and stitch your heart out! Here pens really replace the needles!
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Subconscious Goals
Here’s an illustration that came out without any pre-planning. I just added a layer after another and in the end was surprised about the animals, and the scene. What was I thinking about?
Creating Subconscious Art
First I created the background paper in Photoshop. I duplicated my old sticker designs there!
After printing the background I made some random spots with alcohol inks and random lines with white correction pen. Then I added a lot of details with markers and gel pens.
Yes, a lot of details.
Finally, I constructed the main elements from decorated papers. Then it came: the horse on the pedestal and the dogs. The horse tells a story for the dogs, and the dogs are captivated by listening to it. When finished, I realized that I want to be that white horse! I want to develop skills to tell visual stories. I want to learn how to create images which not only appeal to the eye but the mind as well.
Isn’t it a wonderful thing that with creativity we can reveal our subconscious goals!
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Doodled Lace Patterns
I am constantly inspired by surface patterns and textures. From a pile of doodled papers I found lace like doodling on unbleached printing paper. I decided to decorate it by adding white on some of the details and empty areas. It was a quick card: just adding the white and cutting it to the proper size. I pretty liked it so I made another card using the same concept but with different background paper. So, here are instructions to create these fun lace cards!
Doodled Lace on Paper
You can create an interesting effect of color changes in the background by painting the background paper with watercolors. Pick a thin black pen for doodles. I love making doilies that look like they are on the top of another. Draw the doily on the top first. Group your doodles and leave some empty areas around the groups.
Add White to the Background
I used Copic Opaque White in a jar for bigger areas and Uniball Signo pen for smaller areas. A white color pencil was used too. White acrylic paint does the job too.
You can easily make georgeus and unique projects with this technique!
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