Sunday 30 March 2014

Art Journal Covers

Hello Lovelies!

I thought I would share a bit of a how to on the cover for my completed class Art Journal.

 This is a technique I developed last year for the Paperiffic show.  There was a blog post "how to" here on the Crafters Cupboard Blog.

For this particular cover I used a base of Fresco paint in Blood Orange and Inky Pool blending them together in the middle to get purple.

The knob I am using to hold the elastic was from Ideaology, but it was too stark white and distracted from the face, so I coloured it with red pepper alcohol ink.

I used Florentine Treasure Gold for the highlights.  

The face was from a magazine. I used flesh coloured paint and pencils to touch up the skin, and to hide a wrinkle from the glue!  I then used paint pens to doodle on and around it.

'Till next time

~Liz

Thursday 27 March 2014

PaperArtsy Fold-Out Book

Hello lovelies,

I have just had a project posted over at the Crafters Cupboard Blog using some of the new PaperArtsy Products that I was given to play with. 

I made this 4-fold book:


 

So head on over and give it a whirl!  It was a great project to make.

Thanks for stopping by. 'Till next time!

~Liz

Tuesday 25 March 2014

Magnificent Melbourne Street Art

Well hi there lovelies!

So I am still updating the blog from my 6-week insane/mental "completion of all my teaching art samples and notes" period.   This time of arty class updating madness has not only negatively impacted this blog, but also put me behind on my own homework for Life Book 2014, and Express Yourself .  So over the coming weeks I am focusing on getting back up to date with these 2 awesome classes - I feel that I am somehow missing out by not really participating as the classes come live onto their respective nings!  

BTW, I know I am not really "behind" because the classes are available forever and 12 months respectively so I can do actual catch up, but I am such a girly swot that I HATE MYSELF when I start falling behind. I get very harsh on myself to achieve and my inner critic has a field day - its a character flaw that I try to manage as best I can.

Anyhoo, I did manage to spend one afternoon on a curated Melbourne art walk with 3 of my good arty mates (honorable mention here to Joan, Rosie and Jen).  So I wanted to share some of the pics of the awesome Melbourne Street Art (there were lots of other things inside galleries that we saw, but the potential of copyright infringement means that I can't post them here).  

If you haven't gone for a wander around Melbourne's lanes yet - do yourself a favour and get your walking boots on next time your in the CBD.  To all my lovely readers from interstate - make some time between shoe shopping on your next visit!

Here is a link to a really useful DIY walk if you don't want to pay for a curated one. On to the pics:


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
Who doesn't love a good skull?

I was so inspired by all this street art, that I bought a catalog of Melbourne street art from 2010 to 2012, and this very cool Street Art Stencil Book that has pull-out stencils you can use in your own art work!

'Till next time!

~Liz

Saturday 22 March 2014

Completed pages in my class art journal

Hello lovelies! 

As promised in an earlier post, I am giving you some pics of the pages in my recently completed journal that I am using for the art journal class.  These are all pages that are not a "class" but some may become part of an advanced journal class series.  Who knows???

I have also given you a precie of the main supplies or techniques used on each page, in case you are feeling inspired to have a go yourself.

Credit card technique with page cut outs and separately painted add ons.

Playing with supplies - stamping, doodling and colouring with neocolour , oil pastels and gelatos (and a little flap page just because I can).

Paint complete with drippage and rubbing alcohol, using up rub-ons (my stash of rub-ons is out of control). Paint pen lettering.

Tissue paper background, mixing primary paint colours directly, stencil layering in a background, stamping on transparencies and on tissue paper, lettering with paint pens.

Inspired by Melbourne Street Art (I'll do a post on the Melbourne art walk I went on with some friends a couple of weeks ago - it was awesome).  Pastel ground, Inktense blocks, stenciling, plenty of charcoal pencil & chalk pastels.  Oh yes, and a couple of rub-ons that are all so old that they crumbled away in part.  But remember there are no mistakes in art!!

Trying to use negative space.  I am SO BAD at doing this.  I have a tendency to overwork everything and fill a page to within an inch of its life.  The use of negative space is something that I need to practice, so expect to see a lot more in future posts (once I am actually doing it). This is a scrapbook paper collaged background, outlining through a stencil with pencil then painting the whole of he negative space out with brown paint.  Adding writing in white paint pen to turn the "unstenciled" letters into a quote.

This is a really, really textured page - The central image is a pop-up of the empire state building. I've used grunge paste, rust paint, verdigris paint (both fab supplies from the specialty paint section of the hardware store), paint through stencils and paint pens for lettering and building highlights and dots.

I fell in love with this page before it was actually "finished", so I just stopped.  I used collage, grunge paste, dylusions sprays and paint glazes.  There are lots and lots of layers on this page. I sealed it with Liquitex gloss medium to really give the page depth.

Here is a close-up of the yummy paint effect on this page.  I love where the glazes got trapped in the grunge paste that I had slapped on with a palette knife.

Lucky last is the back inside cover.  This page uses paint, collage, corrugated cardboard, oil pastels, beeswax and paint pens.  The beeswax (encaustic) gives the page a great feel and a really nice yellow tint.

Thanks for stopping by! 'Till next time.

~Liz

Wednesday 19 March 2014

Art Journal Class Updates


Well hello my lovelies!

Its been a little while between drinks, in fact since I got back to Melbourne from Perth at the end of January -  6 weeks has just flown by!

I have been a bit of a busy beaver over these 6 weeks - I arranged and commenced contract work and my Dad came over and we had a working bee to get my house ready for a Melbourne winter (replacing guttering is a horrible job).  On an arty front I finished off one of my art journals, and completed all the preparation for the art journal classes with Crafters Cupboard and ran 2 of the 6 classes - only 2 left now. I will be sad to see them finished as I have a wonderful group of students this time.

So this post is to tell you all about what we did in art journal classes 3 and 4.

Class 3 - Words and Lettering. 

Lots of people do not like to write in their art journal. I have found that it is usually either from fear of revealing too much, or because they hate their handwriting. I think this is such a shame.

So in this class, we did some Diana Trout Journal Spilling. Journal writing is not about reading, it's about getting it (whatever it is) out of your system. It's writing for writing's sake. It's the act in itself that matters. It's expression. You're clearing your head by putting your thoughts down. That's all. You're not writing a novel here. You're not trying to win a Pulitzer or a Booker Prize. Don't look at your journal as some kind of sacred spot where only the most profound and deep feelings have a place. Look at is as a dumping ground for everything that's in your head. 

After 15 minutes of journal spilling (which some people in the class found very difficult), we then painted the page, and filled it with a very short quote that students had found over the previous month and was meaningful to them in some way.  

We concentrated on lettering techniques and how to like your handwriting - a tough ask...

So here is the homework page for Class 3: cutting pages and using lettering and doodles to emphasise shapes.  Journals are not sacrosanct objects - you don't have to keep every page squared off.

Class 4 - Collage and Ink.

This was a great class for me to prepare, as collage is my favourite "go to" thing when I am stuck but want to feel like I am doing some art.  It allows me to get some things onto a page without having to think too hard about it!  There is something very therapeutic about chopping up magazines.

We prepared an ink background, and collaged the bejeesus out of it.  The class created amazing "people" collages with weird bodies, strange heads, legs and arms.  Everyone then got out the paint pens and went mad integrating their body parts into a single figure. Everyone's work was fantastic!

Here was the page I had prepared as the class sample:


This class has 2 pages of homework to be completed. The first is another collage page but this time using more random cut shapes - triangles, circles scallops:


The second homework page focuses more on using ink and less on collage - ink washes & stamping on a collaged book paper base.  The class also has to use heavy paper bags (almost cardboard weight) to make flaps that fold around the page, and are cut into.  Again this is about not making your journal a sacrosanct space, but rather a fun and interactive viewing experience once it is completed.

Here is the page with the flaps folded in: 



And here is where I used the natural folds in the bag to cut around a stamped image and create a fold out - a'la the old Mad Magazine back pages. (Am I showing my age by saying that?) 



And here is the whole spread - its a little difficult to fit into a photo because it is so wide!

Thanks for stopping by. Now that I have finished this journal in its entirety, I'll be able to post some pics over the coming weeks of the pages not being used in the class. 

'Till next time!


~Liz

Tuesday 18 March 2014

Unpublished Paperbag Journal

So there was a little confusion over the past month or so about my DT blog posts.  The one that I prepared for January was never published, but it was a good one, so I thought I would share it with you all now, particularly as Easter and school holidays are around the corner...

Hi everyone, Well, I hope that you are all having a fab January. If the kids are driving you nuts, I have a little project that you can do with them. If you are like me, you collect brown paper shopping bags – I just can’t seem to throw them away because, you know, they might come in handy, recycling etc, etc. This project uses paper shopping bags that are different sizes (bonus if they come with pretty patterns), to make a paperbag journal that the kids can go mad in with paint.
As an added bonus, this project uses supplies that you should have lying around the house.