Tuesday, January 22, 2013

365 Week 4


Wow!  I am so proud of everyone who’s still following along with our 365 challenge.  Can you believe we have made it through three weeks?!  Twenty-one prompts if you’ve followed along every day!  Even if you have missed a day or two, that’s okay…you can either catch up, or just pick up where you left off!  So how do you feel?  Are you still stoked?  I am, and I can’t wait to share with you all the cool art projects Christen and I have been doing in our journals this week!

Day 15:  What Keeps Me Awake at Night

This piece was actually inspired by Christen’s piece on Day 7, “Square”.  If you see it in the Flickr group, you will notice a couple of squares with cartoon eyes in them.  I thought the eyes in the dark were a perfect way to illustrate the creepy feeling I have when I’m lying in bed at night and can’t sleep.


Day 16:  Angels

I had a lot of fun with this prompt.  I really wanted to explore the idea of adding texture to my mixed media pieces and I was intrigued by other art journals I’ve seen where they do creative things to magazine cutouts.  The wing is made from cardstock covered with mulberry paper.  Her dress and headscarf were colored with an Elmer’s brand pearlescent paint marker.  The quote is from a song called “I believe” by Diamond Rio.


Day 17:  A Piece of Cake

I picked Christen’s cake piece because I just love what she did with the magazine clippings – it’s a skill I admire and am working to improve.  I would share her description of the piece, but the silly girl didn’t send me one!  I do know that she made her background using a silicone baking mat much in the same way as you would use a gel plate.  I haven’t ever used one, so I can’t comment on the details. 


Day 18:  What 3 Words Would Someone Use to Describe Me?

This piece has several layers of symbolism.  I used a technique I learned in grade school to illustrate my three words.  I started by choosing three negative words about myself.  These are words the insecure side of my ego thinks people use to describe me.  I drew those on the page and colored them in.  Then I drew a random swirly pattern all over the page and colored those spaces in as well.  I used markers for all of this.  When the whole page was colored, I went over it with a black crayon to symbolize that I’m burying those words because they aren’t relevant.  When I had a solid, waxy black surface, I used some stencils and assorted tools to scrape away the black in the shape of my new, more positive words, revealing the multi-colored paper underneath.  I had some extra space, so I used a brass stencil of a butterfly to do the same.  I’m pretty happy with the results but I did learn a couple of things: 1) it really works better with bright crayon coloring under the black instead of markers, 2) you need to put a piece of tissue in the book when it’s closed or you will have crayon all over the opposite page, and 3 you cannot heat set or emboss on the next page!  Oops!  I now have a kind of flat, melty spot in one area.


Day 19:  What Was the Last Thing That Made Me Cry?

This fun little collage was also made by Christen.  I love her color combos.  For the background, she used several different stencils, including a die cut of a muffin tin.  I think the patterned paper hair really sets it off.


Day 20:  Someone I Look Up To

While digging for crayons in my “kids drawer”, I discovered a set of Crayola watercolors that I didn’t even know I had.  I’ve been complaining for nearly three weeks that I didn’t have any to play with, so I definitely had to do at least one page with them.  Here’s what I did.  I’m really surprised at how vivid and lovely the colors turned out.  These are higher quality than I would have thought.



I wanted to show you Christen’s take on this prompt, too.  While shopping on Saturday, we stumbled across a rack of free magazines and newspapers just inside the door of the restaurant where we ate lunch.  Needless to say, we each grabbed a copy of every magazine there – this is a great source of pictures for our collages.  One of the magazines was a health and fitness-related one, and in it she found a photo of this white mannequin.  The splatters are actually a stamp Christen owns.  The dotted lines were already on the mannequin, and Christen added a few of her own and some flourishes to the background.


Day 21:  Introvert/Extrovert

I was determined to revisit the zentangle/doodle technique.  This time I played with adding some bigger shapes and doodling around those.  I fully intended for this one to be colored in at some point, but it took me so long to get the outlines that I gave up.  I can’t decide if I want to go back and color it or just leave it as is.



Wow!  That was fun!  Here are the prompts for this week…I’ve already started on mine!


22.  Worry
23.  I recommend
24.  Negative anagram of your name (faults and vices)
25.  Define grown up
26.  Rules are meant to be broken
27.  I will
28.  By the numbers

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