Imitate Ceramic Art!
A strange cat in the shadows.
Too many apples for the tree to bear.
A blackbird complains: Dry mouth!
Still, it’s a paradise: my garden.
This is an art journal page where I wanted to achieve two things:
1) imitate Scandinavian ceramic artists of 1940-1960s
2) write a poem and illustrate it
Scandinavian Ceramic Art
Let’s start with the artists: Annikki Hovisaari from Finland and Lisa Larson from Sweden. They are women who made beautiful ceramic art in 40s-60s. Annikki Hovisaari died in 2004 but Lisa Larson is still alive and she has a website too.
Me and my husband own a couple of Annikki Hovisaari’s work. We have bought those from antique fairs.
I found out about Lisa Larson in Scandinavian Retro magazine nr 1/2014. You can also see the best work of hers by searching from Google with the search term “Lisa Larson tile”
When I examined the work of these two artists, it was clear that a white correction pen would be perfect to imitate the lines. I made a couple of small pages by combining the correction pen with acrylic paints and PITT Artist Pens. However I was not fully satisfied with the outcome. These did not have the liveliness in color that I wanted to achieve.
But after making these I realized how I would use the correction pen and what I would combine it with: watercolors! Here’s how you can create your own ceramic tile look!
1) Doodle with correction pen
2) Use watercolors for coloring
The correction pen works as a resist. You can watercolor over the white doodles. After painting add some water and wipe the paint off from the doodles.
3) Add contrast and draw thin black lines
When you are done with watercolors, don’t stop yet. Add color variation and contrasts to doodled shapes. You can also work with colored pencils when finishing if it feels easier. Finally, take a thin black marker and add thin lines in the center of white doodles or both sides of the doodles. These lines will make your work look sharper and more dimensional.
Here you can see the difference that finishing makes. At this stage, I have also added the poem. Actually, my process began by writing the poem. I have discovered that if I want more depth in journaling, it’s better to write it first.
Have fun with this simple technique!
More ceramic art inspiration and playing with simple shapes
>> Modern Mid-Century art journaling mini-course
Surface Patterns for Hot Summer Days
This July has been wonderful in Finland. I have enjoyed gardening and photographing and it shows in my art journal too.
Both the wildflowers and flowers in the garden look great with a dark background. So when I made the drawing with colored pencils, I added some shadows too. Great way to express sunshine is to combine black with yellow!
But my main focus was on summer fabrics. It is so much fun to design prints for summer dresses.
The collage of the left is an old one. A sketch for a surface pattern made in 2011. It was made by cutting circles from handdecorated papers. This time I replicated the design by cutting circles from stamped papers.
The summery prints are mostly made by stamping here. Paper scraps like old scrapbooking papers can be altered easily with markers, colored pencils and stamps. I always try to add subtle color variation in the background to keep the result interesting. Thinking about shadows help here too.
As you can see, my colored pencils are always with me! Hopefully your summer has been as wonderful as mine!
Make Samplers to Save Bits and Pieces
My sampler madness began when I found an unfinished embroidery project. I had started it two years ago on an online course called Happy-Go-Lucky Stitchalong. It was led by Amy Powers and the goal was to embroider a sampler showing all the things that make you happy.
It was only a two-week course and I got some more squares done than what is shown here but there was still plenty to go. I had dyed the fabric with monoprinting method and quite liked it. I was not happy with all the embroidery that I had made but I felt compelled to finish this project. The embroidery floss I had to finish this looked so tempting!
So I began to work little every day for a couple of weeks. Some of the squares were remade and some were complemented with extra stitches.
In the end I added some more details to the background fabric using the same method than in the beginning. By using a glass plate and textile dye I was able to prints some more color and doodling to make the result even more interesting.
I painted the frame with bright coral red to create an athmosphere of hot summer days (which I love and which are all too rare in Finland).
I am pretty happy with the finished piece. Can you spot a peony and a parakeet there?
While stitching the sampler, I was thinking about samplers in general. They can be really handy of saving things. Even virtually! Isn’t Pinterest like a big sampler too?
I chose not to spend an extra hour at Pinterest but make a stamped sampler showcasing some of my favorite stamps.
Folk style suits well to samplers so I decided to make a sampler that reminds me of folk costumes. I doodled around the stamped images to get extra details. Then I colored them with colored pencils and markers.
Thinking of folk costumes, I got the idea of adding buttons in the middle of each square. They all had to be different, of course. That way they would repeat the idea of a sampler too.
Before sewing the buttons I had painted the frame with faux antique paint. Many folk costumes use a lot of lace and ribbons so I picked all the stamps which were like them. Luckily I had so many that I was able to use each once and get the decoration around the frame.
While making this sampler I got the idea of a sampler made from handdecorated papers. Wouldn’t it be cool to have an art journal page showcasing the scraps of papers? Or just coloring and drawing 9 squares while on vacation, one per day and then gather them into a sampler. Or giving each family member a square … The possibilities are endless!
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Mimicking Embroidery with Colored Pencils
With summer, I have had more time for hand embroidery. After holding a needle in my hand, I got the idea to embroider with the colored pencils too.
Mimicking Embroidery – A Rough Sketch
I began with white 8-by-8 inches sized cardstock. If you look closely, you can see some texture on the surface. I used a white weave textured cardstock turned upside down so that the surface is smooth enough for colored pencils. Before picking up the colored pencils, I made a rough sketch of the shapes first.
Coloring the Shapes with Colored Pencils
Remember these when using colored pencils:
1) Keep the direction of the strokes the same. Especially if you want to mimic embroidery as I have done here.
2) Control the color intensity with the number of strokes. When coloring, press lightly and create thin layers of color.
3) Mix colors by adding thin layers of various colors. Mixed colors always look better!
4) Keep your pencils fairly sharp. If you have an electronic pencil sharpener, use it to make your pencils last longer.
I have tried several brands of colored pencils but here are the ones that I like most at the moment:
1) Garan d’Ache Pablo (soft waxy finish)
2) Derwent Colorsoft (work great on watercolored surface)
3) Derwent Inktense (water soluble)
I have also heard that Prismacolor colored pencils are great.
I store my pencils in a jar. Whatever brand they are, they all go into the same jar. This way they take very little space and I can keep them visible all the time. When I see them, I will use them!
Coloring the Background with Markers
After coloring the sketched shapes, the background was colored with black and dark gray markers. To emphasize the fabric look and to make the background interesting too, I created lined areas for the shades. I aimed for an impression of the light shining on the fabric cloth. Using markers created a contrast between the soft colored shapes. (Copic markers used: 100 black and C7 Cool Gray)
Darkening the Shapes
After creating the background, I began to darken the areas of the shapes that were on the black background. The darkening shows well in this second artwork which I made after the first one.
After finishing this, I realized that my recent activity of picking up lily leaf beetles from my garden had lurked into my art. Oh, my! There they are, those orangy yellow swirls!
The first lilies have just opened… Hopefully, my subconscious will replace the images of the leaf beetles with the lily flowers!
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