Artistic Embroidery with Pens and Paper
I am so excited!
I will be teaching an online class as a part of 21 SECRETS Spring 2015! The class is called Artistic Embroidery with Pens and Paper.
Class Description
Let the long history of textiles show up in your art journal! For hundreds of years people have created textile art to express themselves. In the workshop we will discover ways to imitate embroidery and quilting using paint, pen and paper! No actual sewing needed!
We will find inspiration from various stitches and techniques like crazy quilting, silk ribbon embroidery and modern patchwork. These art journal pages don’t only make you feel warm and welcomed, but also let you express the luxury only handmade can offer. After the workshop you will look at the family heirlooms in a new way!
21 SECRETS – 21 teachers!
By purchasing the class you will not only get that but also 20 other online classes from 20 other great artists!
Starts in April – Now available for preorder!
21 SECRETS Spring 2014 starts at 1st April and it is now available for preorder. Once the workshop starts in April, you will get a downloadable PDF including all 21 classes. It is packed with videos, full color photos, printouts and instructional content. You will get unlimited access to all 21 classes and a membership to the private Facebook community where you can discuss with me and the other teachers and participants. If you want to learn or boost your art journaling, this is the workshop to choose!
Why preorder now?
I am a big believer of looking further ahead than to the next month. When you will see the spring light and start to wait for the summer, April is the perfect time to get something new for your journals and your skills.
And here’s another good reason to pre-order! The regular price for the 21 classes is 98 USD, if you preorder now it is only 69 USD! But be quick, the lowest price is available for the first 150 participants only!
I hope to see you at Artistic Embroidery with Pens and Paper! Click here to read more and preorder!
How to Imitate Glass with Paint
For this painting, I learned how to imitate glass. It is called “We Will Protect You,” and it’s about parents trying to protect their children. The parents have good intentions, and they do their best, but in the end, they have to let the child step into the world. I have painted two glass vases to represent the parents. The child sees the world through the parents, and even if they want to protect the child, they are fragile too.
Artistic Inspiration from Glassware
The idea for the painting began last Saturday when I went to the local library to get some ideas for the future blog posts. I saw the book called The Art of Glass. It was about Kaj Franck, a Finnish designer who was extremely skillful in designing glassware.
Most Finns have Kaj Franck’s glassware. He didn’t design unique pieces only, but everyday glass as well. My most precious glass item from him is this red “Goblet” which was originally owned by my aunt. She passed away ten years ago, and the color of this Goblet reminds me of her vivid character.
After browsing few pages of the book, I knew I had to make something glass-related. It’s not the first time the glass has inspired me: see the collage inspired by Nanny Still, and I have also knitted a folk bag inspired by Oiva Toikka. Both Nanny Still and Oiva Toikka are Finnish glass designers as well.
This time, I wanted not only to find out how to imitate glass but to explain it to you too. Before beginning the bigger painting, I painted few circles on a small paper and tried to make them look like glass.
I used acrylic paints to paint the circles and then watercolors to add more circles around the previous ones. The shapes were softened with colored pencils. Then I added white with acrylic paint and a gel pen, and black with a PITT Artist Pen.
I made each circle a bit different. I was not fully satisfied with them, though. The center circles were too solid in color. I decided to start the bigger painting with watercolors as they are easier for making transparent layers.
8 Tips on How to Imitate Glass
1) Paint several transparent layers which intersect each other. Use a lot of water to create thin layers.
2) Use a lot of hues and shades of the same color. Mix colors to get new tones which have slight differences from each other. Use small spots of other colors too as glass reflects its surroundings.
3) Paint geometric shapes like circles, squares, half-circles, and triangles.
4) Add white with acrylic paint. When painting the white shapes, soften one side of them by adding water.
5) Use a black colored pencil to add dark near the sharp edges of white areas. Make the dark areas soft too.
6) With correction pen, add brilliant white to highlight parts of the white areas.
7) Add jet black with a black marker (I used a brush tip PITT Artist Pen) to make dark areas pop as well.
8) Finish with thin lines using a gel pen and a black marker. It will make your glass look a bit thinner and more elegant.
What kind of glass do you like the most? Does mimicking materials interest you too?
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Art Journaling with Still Lives
For the last couple of years, I have felt drawn to still lives. I even have the Pinterest board of the ones that I especially like. I used to think that old still lives are very conventional but they really are not! There can be anything happening in the painting, like a squirrel running on the table, and there can be a wide variety of objects too. And even the flowers look magical! Art journaling has a lot to learn from the old masters.
So, I thought it could be a fun concept to create still lives by applying the tips from the previous blog post. I could combine odd paper pieces and doodles with text and create surreal art journal pages.
I kind of like how this first still life combines conventional elements like flowers with the more surreal ones, like the eye. The same contradiction is also seen in the color scheme: bright purples look mystical when combined with olive greens and warm browns.
Group the elements!
The principal of composition in still lives is simple. Just group the elements closely together!
My art journals often have unfinished pages with elements here and there. This page had some doodles and a small illustration that I had drewn for a surface pattern. I often glue odd pieces to my art journals to save them. A page like this can be a great starting point for a still life!
I started working this page by adding the text so that it creates the vase for the flowers. I emphasized that with colored pencils. Then I colored the soft background with colored pencils. The softness is a great contrast to the graphic element on the bottom.
The third still life is formed around a doodle found on another page. It included just the bird and the flowers. I added the pot, stamped the text, colored the doodles with colored pencils and finally created the background with markers.
Why Are These Pages So Fast and Simple?
1) The starting point does not have to be grand, just some doodles, or paint, or odd pieces of paper.
2) Stamping few words tie the oddly placed elements easily together.
3) Coloring does not have to take a lot of time when it adds something new to the page.
More Still Lives
Watercolor 101 for Intuitive Painting – my video introduces an easy method which is especially suitable for surreal still lives and landscapes
A Formula for Composition – another way for creating a still life
Stretch Your Style – instructions to step out of the comfort zone, showcasing one of my favorite still lives
Visual Chronicles and Fast Art Journaling
In the newsletter sent 5th November, I mistakenly sent a wrong link, here’s the link to the latest video
In Finland, the weather got colder last week and I got a terrible flu. It is so frustrating to be able to do nothing but sleep. Being healthy feels so important then!
If there’s anything positive in lying down and doing nothing, it’s the creative break. It is weird how much processing time some things require. In 2006, I saw a new book in Amazon.com. It was called Visual Chronicles. It was nothing like I had seen before and I felt strangely drawn to it. I was mesmerized by the concept of creating relaxed pages combining text, paint, simple illustrations and photos. Art journaling was a new word in my vocabulary.
I took the book everywhere. While reading it, I tried to understand what it is actually about. I picked a blank book and tried to fill its pages. It was so disappointing to see how horrible my pages looked and furthermore, I did not have good time when I created them. I browsed the book over and over again. I could not get it!
But I did not give up. During the time I bought more books and made more experiments. I also noticed that there seemed to be other people doing the same thing. I took some online courses and finally… My first art journal was finished in 2010! (See the journal and my first blog post about art journaling)
Four years of agony! And now when I read Visual Chronicles, everything that I had learned stands there so clearly! However, there was still one thing that had been bothering me from 2006. The pages in the book are very simple and still I find most of them visually appealing. But if I tried to do the same, the end result was nothing alike.
After sleeping two full nights and the day between, I finally figured it out! It is the stamped journaling that makes the pages stand out in the book! I had never tried to stamp the words as I have always hated handling the alphabet stamps. But I do own two sets and had many pages waiting for journaling!
Now I am hooked!
“Sometimes my mind is like a paradise”
“My life, my problems”
“Small changes, big impact”
“Swim like a bird”
Visual Chronicles by Linda Woods and Karen Dinino is still one of my favorite art journaling books. It does not take art journaling too seriously. Linda and Karen also have a blog which is written with the same humorous attitude. “If you are alive you have succeeded” is one of their recent advices. While still recovering, it feels very relevant at the moment!
Tips for fast art journal pages:
1) Divide the making of the page into three phases: a) doodling with a black pen b) coloring the doodles c) adding the text
2) Use colored pencils for easy coloring. A Moleskine Notebook and the colored pencils work really well together.
3) Add the text by grouping stamped words with the doodles. Use big and small stamps to create contrasts.
4) Let your personal history of art journaling get recorded into your journals! If I could turn back time, I would not toss those first pages.
5) Buy the book: Visual Chronicles