Creative Friday!
Friday evenings are the best! I go to the library room of our house and start creating. And yes, it’s always this clean before I begin and also after I have finished. I love creating when everything is in order. I also like to see the art supplies I am using.
At the front of the big photo there’s the only electrical vanity item that I can’t give up: an electric pencil sharpener! After I bought it I have used my colored pencils more than ever. The pencils are always sharp as it’s so fun to sharpen them after using them. My model is Derwent universal sharpener that has 5 holes for various sized pencils.
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Happy New Year 2014
With this overly doodled number, I wish you happy new year!
Doodling Idea
I made this image by making a roughly doodled collage that I scanned to the computer. Then I adjusted the colors and printed the photo. I made the size bigger than in the original.
Then I began doodling again. After doodling I adjusted some areas by coloring them with color pencils. I also added some collage pieces.
Finally, I scanned the collage again and adjusted colors in some areas.
This way I was able to add detail after another. I could have continued these steps over and over! Crazy – I know!
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How To Love Your Art Journal
If you have not been art journaling for a long time, you probably have a journal or even many that you are not satisfied with. Maybe you have even ripped off few pages, just to keep the journal pretty. If you feel disconnected with your journaling, this post is for you.
If your journal is empty, it’s like freezing. “Give me some colour, give me something warm to wear!”, it screams! You won’t get to know your journal, neither your inner world, if you search for the perfect moment to create the perfect page. The pages can be built gradually, layer by layer, and you have to start filling those empty pages.
If you do not know where to begin, take a dry brush and some acrylic paint and paint a thin layer. You get visually better results if you do not repeat one color but make the page as asymmetrical as possible. That way colors get their own space and character from the beginning. You can paint many pages if you feel like to. If you are tired and lack inspiration, this is the thing to do!
The next thing you need to do is to let your journal see the world. Take it with you when you go to library, travel, where ever you have little moments to spend quality time with it.
While on the road, take a black pen with you and draw or write something, it does not have to be special. Remember, the pages can be built within time and even the smallest scribbles help to fill the page.
When you feel more focused you can continue with the pages that have painted backgrounds. I used acrylic paints and thin brushes to draw some doodles and colour pencils to add dimension. If you have nothing else in mind, strengthen the colored areas that you painted. Add more similar hues to each area with color pencils and work with horizontal or vertical strokes. Always work fast as it makes you use more imagination and less rational thinking. The result at this point is like a photo without a focus.
Then decide where you would like the focus to be. Add some details there. I love to use my own hand decorated papers for details. Finally find or create a background for journaling. When I begin to make a page I do not usually know what to write but in the end I just write what I had been thinking while creating.
An art journal is the photo book of your inner world. Like with photos, the pages are not always perfect. But when you have a collection of them, they tell a story. And I guarantee – you will then love your art journal.
Expressing an Aha Moment through Art
Being a visual person I often have problems expressing my thoughts through words. Especially if I need to explain those aha moments when I suddenly understand something that used to be only complex and strange.
The story of today’s collage began a couple weeks ago when me and my husband went to the concert of Depeche Mode. I had bought the tickets as a birthday present for him. Depeche Mode is one of his favorite bands but I hated the music. It was too introvert, strange and edgy for me.
But after staring the band for song after song, I began to open myself up to the music. It sounded pretty all right after a while. Then great. I got it!
I tried to analyze what happened. Perhaps my brains had been expanded! I felt like I had understood the formula how the music was stuctured but could not put it into words.
I saw colors. A sunny day. The window.
Something began to happen at the window sill. I put some ceramic pots there, then a porcelain figure, a horse.
Then the music began to play in my head: “You should be higher …” The party at the window sill began. A surreal world of rigid objects and mechanical rhytms came to alive. The temperature rised and the colors deepened.
One of the best things in art is that it combines the intellectual to the intuitive. This collage is very meaningful for me. It is not only the memory of the concert but also a proof that the world is as full of inspiration as long as I am willing to watch and listen to it.
