Art Journal? Neuro-art? Knitting? Too many things swirling around in my head!

I have so many projects and things I want to do and I seem to be in a phase where I am jumping from one thing to another and can’t seem to settle my brain. I started a piece based on some work I saw about Neurographic Art, where you begin with a distinct drawing of something – the ones I saw most often were hearts, although I’ve seen quite a few of tigers lately – apparently it is the year of the tiger, so that explains that. That gave me the idea to do a piece using the year numbers. If any year needs the “corners rounded” I think 2022, the third year of the pandemic, is the one. My base piece looks like this:

And I then scanned that so I could print out copies to play with before working on the original (micro pen on watercolour paper) and messing it up. And I did two-a-page so I could test a few things.

I am still not a lover of coloured pencils abut they do seem to be the medium of choice for a lot of neurographic art. I thought I would have another go. Problem is the print I did was on my coated cardstock, and that really doesn’t work great for pencil blending. The larger piece is the coated paper while the small piece is watercolour paper:

The other bits you see are Copic markers, which worked only OK on the coated cardstock, and watercolour markers, which were tragic, at best!

So there you go. A lot of time spent and not a lot accomplished, although I did learn a few things. But I am no closer to getting that piece done. I will think on it a bit more, I guess.

{sigh}

Incomplete Art Journals

When I was contemplating making a page, I had to drag out all of my partially finished art journals. Too many.

Most of them have a few pages in them, but the one at the right is I think my first Art Journal where I seriously attempted to journal on a more regular basis. I was flipping thru it and came across this page I made in the very early days of 2020:

Feel free to laugh, sardonically. I did. Hey ho. That was the journal I used for the current page. It worked, but the paper bag pages are really quite thin and insubstantial. Not sure I would make another. Counting, I have nine sides, three of which could be double page spreads if I so choose. Adding the newest page to this journal makes sense. but now I have to decide if I will just work in this one till it’s done or not. Tricky decision. I kinda let the creative spirit move me when I am considering a page, and deciding on the journal is as much of the process as making the page is! So who knows?

I don’t really know why the lyrics of Flash moved me, at this particular moment, but I do know when the universe speaks to you. listen. I will add this to an interesting new challenge over at the AJJ called What’s Your Style? I have been flipping thru my old journals and trying to identify common elements to see if I can figure out what, exactly, my style is. So far it’s been quite an interesting process!

Finally, an Art Journal Page, in progress at least.

I decided to just MAKE ONE. Not a lot of thought, using the neurographic art technique that I have done before, jut to make a page. Like dipping my toe in safe waters.

I had cut this back when I was playing with neuroart originally, starting by creating the neurolines on fun foam, then using an craft knife to cut out the open spaces. I have another version on my desk someplace, which was made by drawing deeply with a ball point pen on the fun foam then using that as a stamp, but I can’t find the darn thing.

As you can see this one is un-inked so not really sure how it will work. But I think it might be fun as part of a gel print. We’ll see.

Beginning, as ever, with the neurolines and rounding the angles.

I always really like the stark B&W stage and am tempted to leave it as is. That one I made that only had the Stabilo All shading is still one of my favourites.

This page had some gesso on it but I went ahead and used the Chromatek pens for the colour and then…

…wondered where I was going to go with it.

I had spent quite a bit of time, over a few days. compiling a couple of playlists. After far too long not listening to anything in my craft space, I now have a selection of songs marked Art & Chillin’. Nothing too quick paced, a nice mix of mellow goodness. One of the songs that I hadn’t heard in a while was Flash by Joan as Policewoman. For some reason the lyrics really spoke to me. I think they are going to form the text of the page, I just need to decide in what form.

Ffrankly, it feels good to be doing something, but now it is night and I am always better in the AM hours so I’ll finish it tomorrow, I’m sure. But so far I am quite happy with the progress!

Coloured pencil neurographic art…

To quote one of my favourite podcast hosts, “It’s not great, Dan.” {sigh}

Perhaps part of it is due to the widely varied pencils I have – Prismacolur, EK success, Crayola, some LIDL ones… Not sure how they all should work together. Additionally, I am doing the colouring on some quite old, slightly fragile book paper. And my skill level is quite low. I am not sure if this is something I am likely to explore further, honestly. Like I said, I get no joy out of it. Like Zentangling. It’s OK, mine always look a bit crap, and in the end I feel the pressure to make “good” art and can’t. Don’t need the stress, honestly. BUT I did want to have a go on some of the watercolour paper with the ball point pen neuroart on it. Just to see if I liked either the process or the results better. Not sure:

I’m still not very good at it, although I do quite like the blend in the middle circle ok. At the end of the day, I feel like the watercolour versions are way better and (certainly for me) far easier to achieve!

I have to admit I was slightly tempted to buy pencils – I have this bad habit of thinking that better supplies will create better art. But really even cheap supplies in the right hands can create a masterpiece. My hands are not those hands LOL! As a side note, I’ve never really gotten on well with watercolour pencils either. I’m pretty OK with actual watercolours, a bit better with the watercolour markers, but the pencils never blend out as well as I would like. It was a worthwhile experiment and it did make me drag out and assess an old supply.

I am having a thought…. It might be worth taking all the things I don’t really use much anymore (coloured pencils, Radiant Rain glimmer mist, pan pastels…) and label them and put them in a box. So keep them (cause I always dip back in at some point) but get them out of my space to make more room. Not sure. If it is too much work to resurrect them I might not bother.

{sigh}

Veering off in a different direction tomorrow….

WOYWW 659 – old supplies with a new technique

Hello WOYWWers! I am still enthralled with neurographic art and still exploring the technique. I dragged out some old supplies, coloured pencils, and am in the process of giving that a go. My desk is quite the mess, as I lost yesterday to the hospital visit. More on that later. This is what you are here for:

I have never been very good with coloured pencils. I am seeing I haven’t miraculously improved with time (but no practice) and I think at this point I am not likely too. I just find the whole process quite tedious. I’ll share this when it’s done, but I can’t say I’m feeling the joy in creating. Hats off to true pencil wizards. But, yeah…Nope. Not for me.

I also played about with some Stabilo pens (ball point pens but seemingly permanent ink) and that was interesting too! Actually the top larger one was a different set of pens and that one was NOT waterproof as the colour bleeding was all from the pens. Still quite mesmerized by the circles.

My other desk is kinda clean, as I was tidying up in advance of trying some gel printing techniques but never got around to them. All that is there is the If you HAD to ... cards. I should clarify something. The game is played by each person playing a card and then justifying why their one is the WORST choice, not by picking the better of the two. I tend to try to figure out which one I could live with, but more often than not both of them suck!

I could maybe live with #163, because it is pretty rare for me to watch TV that has any kind of advert on it, and we have YouTube Premium so no ads there. I rarely read magazine anymore so I don’t see ads there, but the rest of the internet might be tough to avoid. In MY current physical state as a running back I expect I’d last one play then be in hospital for the rest of the season – or sit on the bench all season so maybe I would survive that. So yeah, either one might be OK-ish.

And on that hospital note…I will be off to the hospital for another 4-day round of IVIG. Feeling optimistic as my rheumatologist seems to be thinking that we will settle in to an every 6-months schedule AND reduce my steroids, but v e r y s l o w l y. Yippee

Not sure what to make of this – Neuroart and Circle stamps?

I gathered up a bunch of my circle stamps to have a play with an idea that was buzzing about in my brain. I stamped some of them on a bit of cardstock

And then added the neurolines around and thru them

and added the rounded intersections as well as more stamped circles where they fit in

It’s an interesting process but feels slightly … out of control maybe? Not sure how I feel about the final piece

I had a play with another version, where I stamped and masked bits so the circles overlapped initially and I think I like that a bit better

I think the issue is you have to plan. With both if you just carry on willy nilly it all looks a bit of a mess. I think there is some merit in it, but I’ve yet to work out the best method. I’ll think on it a bit more. WOYWW tomorrow and I’m be at the hospital for my Rheumatology appointment today. Hopefully some good news for tomorrow…..

Neurographic Circles

I have been finding that I love the circle part of the neurographic art best of all. I had the idea to throw the therapy part and the neurolines out the window and focus JUST on the circle part. I also was finding that making the nexus quite fine, and not thickening the lines up a lot, gave me something I preferred.

I also liked breaking up some of the odd shapes and making them more circular added a lot more interest. Better to see in this sample:

I was thinking I might use a different method for colouring and as Keren used watercolour markers for her original I decided to use those. I have a set of Chromatek markers with lots of choices

Note the website – the tutorials are quite handy and well worth a look. I was trying to make it so that when two circles overlapped the colour would be a blend of the two. I went a bit wrong with the blob of pink in the middle LOL! I also went a bit mad with the dotting, although I do like it overall.

Now I have another experiment to try and we’ll see if that comes to anything useful or not. I have an appointment at the hospital tomorrow and then (fingers crossed) a treatment next week. I’m feeling weaker every day and a bit wobbly with it so sitting at my desk and drawing like this is one thing I can do for sure. Nice to have a fall-back plan IYKWIM.

A great way to complete an Art Journal page using Neurographic Art techniques

So NOT my last AJJ challenge then. LOL!

I have this little art journal that is full of pages that have random stuff on them. A lot of the pages look very much like this – colour, pattern, but no real sense of order at all.

As a way to easily add interest, I started with the neurolines and then some circles, using the usual process:

Add the lines

Add circles and round the intersections

And in the end it looked pretty cool.

I was amazed to find one of the circles was pretty much the exact size of one of the Dina Wakely stamps! Result!

I tarted it up a bit with a swipe of Stabilo All and stuck it in place.

Again, the words had been printed some time in the past, on label paper, so I made use of them. They seemed to fit. I am sure I will do this more often cause I do love the look.

Only halfway thru the month and so many face pages! DOH!

My first Neurographic art finished

Well that was bags of fun. I mentioned watching a video by Keren Tamir about Neurographic art, and after watching it had to have a go. She explains a complex process and theory pretty well in a lot fewer words and in a lot less time than the other people who popped up – and in English, which for me is a big help. Just looking at images on Google shows the huge possibilities of the work. While I am not 100% into the whole therapy part, I will say that much like Zentangling, the meditative aspect appeals. The big difference is that with Zentangling I always felt more pressure for the work to look good at the end. And I am not sure if the neurographic process just looks better no matter how you do it or if I am better at it, but I don’t get that sense of disappointment at the end.

I looked at the final piece from yesterday and as the white paint pens were on my desk from the AJ page, I decided I’d tart it up. To begin with, it was looking a whole lot like what my Mom taught me to do as a child in the 60s – scribble drawings. Colouring books were expensive, but my brother and I could cover plain white paper with black scribbles and colour in the loops all day long for pennies.

I did a big dot on each nexus then used a variety of pens to vary the dot size and ended up with:

Closer:

Also quite a meditative process! I did a second one and used only my Stabilo All pencil to colour in the loops in shades of grey.

Really liked that on a lot. I ended up using some copper acrylic ink and a dotting tool (from my darling daughter’s nail art supply) for something a bit different:

That one looks very cool as the light catches it. So I had a bit of an idea as a way to test out a few more extra additions that may or may not result in something use-able. More on that tomorrow. But I can see me playing with this for a while as it is very relaxing and quite focused. Plus it uses only a few supplies at the beginning so maybe easier that knitting if I end up having a 4-day IVIG session in a few weeks.