Painted papers – one I like a lot, one not so much

I always begin a painted papers session with the best attitude, and in my mind’s eye I see the beautiful results. The reality is not always that way.

It began promising, working on two papers at one. My desk is not that big, even when it is clear LOL!

As usual I am prone to circles rather than swipes, but I did try to vary them. That is when it all goes pear-shaped. I start adding more and more stuff, thinking about the steps from the videos, using pens and pencils and paint crystals and alcohol ink, try to get some dark stuff in and before too long it all looks…like this:

Sigh. I try to focus in on what R-M says, that this is never intended to be a whole piece, it is meant to be torn up for collage. So yeah, maybe there are areas that I kinda like, that might look interesting in bits, but overall it really is a hot mess. So of course I reigned it in on sheet two. Limited the darks and left it more…pretty.

You can see the difference! I really like the softer one, and think it will be pretty scanned and used for one of my Daily Journal covers, maybe even altered digitally into a few more options. I might work on that later and report back tomorrow, as I am still feeling more on the dreadful side from the meds. But overall I really do like it. I do think that the dotty stamp is looking a bit…regular, I guess, and less random than intended. I feel it MIGHT look better with some subtle doodling on it, we’ll see.

But cause I know I am as likely to like it LESS after than MORE, I will probably scan it first. Then at least I can reserve the sheet as pristine at a point I like and then experiment.

It’ll be interesting to see where it ends up, right?

😀

Painted papers

Blimey but that was both fun and scary. I had no idea how it would turn out, especially at the point that I veered away from slavishly following the outlined steps, but what I made in the end, I really love.

Where it began:

And where it ended. Well, almost. I added a few more bits after I took the photo:

Some of the paint etc and the colours

The overall pieces are cool (well, to me!)

but it will but used in smaller bits, and some of those I love – not even sure why, but I do! That corner with the watery purple wash is just YUM.

Now what? Hummm….

Busy week…

I will speak about this a bit more, but I joined a new art community and am working on a journal for use with it. The first step is painting some fabric. I am going out on a limb and using watercolours and some other things and will experiment with fabric medium to seal it. Not entirely sure if I will actually use this piece for my cover, but I am enjoying the free-flow play.

I am also using some non-reactive things like a china-graph pencil and oil pastels and sprinkles of alcohol ink as well.

It’s not the best thing I have ever done but it is an experiment after all!

Such a crazy busy week I’ve not managed my WOYWW visits yet. As there is a far-flung Drs. appt today it may take me a few more hours till I can.

{sigh}

Making use of fodder

I may have mentioned that one of the classes was a lesson on watercolour painting apples and mushrooms. I have some in my keeper here, along with some other bits, stamped and watercoloured spirals, not from a class, just an idea I had that I thought would be good.

The apple turned out nice too so I decided to actually USE something I made on an art journal page – I know, what a surprise, I actually made a page, right? I used the apple and some stray magazine text on an already decorated background that seemed to work.

Not sure what an apple has to do with the quote? Only that my watercolouring is definitely progress, and definitely NOT perfection LOL!

For as little effort as making the page was I really, really like it, and it feels good to work in my journal again. Can I keep it up?

Hummm…..

Watercolour flowers

I am still working on that “real” Fodder Keeper” and I managed to screw up a couple of my file-folder replacement sheets so have had to adjust. The originals were done with a brayer technique, which, in these damp summer days take FOR E VER to dry. I switched to laying down the base using the gel plate and with add some brayer touches at the end. Ugh. I HATE messing up, especially something I am really happy with! Pretty, right?

Instead of progress on the keeper, I will share a few watercolour flowers. I’ve looked back and cannot see I have shared them before so better do it now before I forget!

Bear in mind I am pretty rubbish at watercolour. Honestly, the lesson was so clear and so blinkin’ simple, even I was able to get what I think are pretty decent results!

I mean, ME. I did that! And I have a bit of a pile of them.

I am not 100% happy with the leaves, but with a bit more practice I might manage to make them a bit better.

I have also done some mushrooms from another lesson and an apple – also not horrible! Yay ME!

Oh that thin, thin paper again!

I was warned, yes, of course, and I really TRIED to take not and use very little water but…

It isn’t just that the paper is so thin it buckles, but even the lightest touch seems to make the paper pill and almost dissolve.

Pilling

Don’t get me wrong, I do really like the last one, for example, all misty and sea-foam-y, but it’s challenging to get full sheer cover without having to use too much water. I did have an idea, to use watercolour for mark-making, to kinda combine two lessons in one. I liked that pretty well, a totally different feel t the mark-making with acrylic.

Now, to be fair I didn’t layer the marks in quite the same way but with acrylic, you can start dark and layer light over it and it’s fine. With watercolour, you really need to move from light to dark and try not to obliterate the light by the end! Or leave enough of the white background that you can add a layer of light later and still have it show. Here is another more layered page that I really like:

I am getting to the point I will have filled every page with an initial layer. Not sure how I should have proceeded thru the lessons, maybe watched them all and grouped them in a way I found helpful, rather than just going in order. Whatever. The next post I’ll combine two lessons, neither I’ve ever seen before but I really like both. I may watch a few over the weekend, although I think I did book in to a couple of taster weekends/weeks so not sure hoe to best allocate my time…hope you will bear with me while is figure it out.

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}

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.

This and that – Saturday Play

Well I blew the idea that when my CK levels are high, my back is impervious to clenching up on me. I have been taking painkillers and lounging about since about Tuesday. Can’t tell from my posts because I had a few scheduled. Today I am able to do a bit, but not much as you will see from this post. Hopefully by tomorrow I will feel up to more.

I have been playing with some Lynne Perrella stamps and trying to work out what I want to do with them. The first play was comparing colouring with watercolours and with Copics.

Not a lot in it really, and both bleed outside the lines. Paints left, Copics right.

• 

• 

Then I tried stamping them on some Collage Collective paper. I had an idea but in the end I think I picked the wrong paper, because I think the cut-out words aren’t quite right.

I mean, they’re OK just not striking, or inspiring. I might finish them off, not sure yet. I want to play with stamping them on white card and colouring them then cutting them out. I’ll see how that works. I also wanted to show my version of the pressing device a lot of people use on stamping platforms to get good even pressure all over it. Mine is not as swish as some, no big doorknob or drawer pull on the top, just a simple block wth a furniture pad on it. But it cost me nothing, since I had both of those things hanging about.

• 

• 

Took me a total of 5 minutes to find the bits and assemble. And it works perfectly. I think the bit of the Grand Calibur embossing mat that I cut and stuck on my (cheap) stamp platform helps a LOT. I suspect sticky back fun foam would do similar.

• 

• 

That is a single pressing, not a double one. Not bad at all.

We’ll see what all of this play turns in to. Maybe nothing, maybe something. I’ll share if it’s something …

Watercolour ATCs – a struggle

I had an idea for making a set of ATCs using my watercolours. I enjoyed the swatching process a week or so back and thought it might provide a nice base for some cards

Keeping the lines straight was the first challenge! Once I had the whole sheet full of blobs of colour I used an ATC sized window to audition areas. The swatches were all a bit random so just cutting them to size as a grid was not really going to work. And at least one card ended up being seriously wonky to the point of being unusable as a base. Once I cut the cards, I doodled a bit with some white gel pen, ome black Micron pen and some gold ink and a dip pen.

• 

• 

But then I really struggled with the toppers. Would it be just text? and image? would it be stamped over? I did photo two of the most promising options:

• 

• 

I liked the birds as they were watercoloured as well, but in the end the quirky people spoke to me louder LOL!

It isn’t obvious, but the words were available as…well, WORDS, but I preferred them as LETTERS so, yeah, I cut them all apart, inked all four edges of each letter block then stuck them back together as words. Cause that’s how I roll…. LOL!

• 

• 

• 

• 

Now what next? I don’t know but I have some ideas….

Some of my traded ATCs have begun to land in the USA – I have yet to receive any back yet. I hope I do soon. I am anxious to see that international mailings are problem free….