Less Work. More Play.

Isn't it about time for a three-day weekend?  Whoo hooo...why, yes, it is!

I've fallen in love.  With Stencils.  And painting with stencils.  And spraying ink with stencils.  And layering with stencils.

I took a class with Dina Wakley up in Charlotte a few weeks ago during Art Journaling Live and am hooked.  After a rough, challenging day at work on Monday, I snuck out early (1730...5:30 p.m.) and planted myself at my painting table for about four hours.  It was perfect!  The piece above is one of the most finished set of pages.  I probably worked on about 25 different sheets of paper or pages all at once just because the palette I had out was so fun to play with.

I find that the more paint I have on my hands the better my piece will progress!

I also practiced planning my color combinations.  I tend to just use what I like...pink and orange...but on Monday I experimented with some actual color wheel-based decisions.  Complements are hard since I'm all about making mud, but a little patience actually helps.  I guess I'll just have to keep making more messes, mud and all, to experiment!

Happy Happy Joy Joy

Joining the Art Journaling Ranks

I left every meeting during my duty day today with my mouth hanging open in awe.  I am in awe of the challenges ahead for Fiscal Year 2014 and the radical cuts that are coming in the programs my squadron owns and manages.  I've been in the job a little over four months and today it became clear that the rest of my tenure will be focused on managing the cuts.  My worklife will be focused on coming up with options and priorities...what activities are more important to readiness and which ones can we do without?  And I thought I was feeling stressed lately...it's only the beginning!

But, that leads me to my set of pics for today.  In an effort to find healthy stress relief, I have been digging into my massive hoard of art supplies.  I spend a couple of nights every week at my work table painting, glueing, drawing, coloring, studying, cutting, imagining, writing, and all-around escaping from the "real world" into a world of color, texture, mistakes, messes, fonts, brushes, markers, and joy.  

It's awesome.

It really all started a few weeks ago when I met up with my friend, Michelle, for a day of art play.  We totally took over her kitchen table and for almost eight hours never really took a break from just playing.  She got me started with inspiration from artist Mindy Lacefield. Mindy is all about getting back to basics...making art is like making magic and should be fun and exciting and serious and frivolous all in one.  She has a particular way of painting a face and share's the technique in her new book, Wild Surrender.  There's really no one who could copy her spirit, but I looooove the basics of the faces and have wildly surrendered into making lots of them!!

Michelle pushed me to go with the flow and at the end of the day I had several little people added to my life!  Their personalities are all different, but they all look back at me as if to say...you are a pretty cool chick and these bright colors and textures Rock!  :)  I respond with a generous thank you and a sink full of wet, rinsed paint brushes and a stack of journals in the works.  Oh, and then I take them all in for show and tell at the office in the morning.  It's probably weird that I'm the boss and I want people to tell me my stuff is cool, but I do it anyway!  haaaaaaaaaaaaa

Here's one that's based on my feelings of freedom and escape while running on the beach at the Isle of Palms.

And here's one celebrating the simple joy of squares and circles.  And a little girl who's magic wand can make her into a princess!!

In reality, it's just this table that is my magic making studio and my wands are the brushes and pens that are becoming more and more familiar to me.  I may not be a master artist by most standards, but I am certainly mastering how art can bring peace and joy into an otherwise overwhelming world of decisions, stress, and unbelievable challenges.  These little journals provide a window that I can jump through into another time and place.  

I have now officially joined the ranks of art journalers and I'm happy to be following and leading all at the same time!

Week 17 - Can't Get Enough Color

My Week 17 picture is all about color and the joy I had making a mess with it at Art & Soul in Virginia Beach!  This was my Friday class: "Tango with Acrylics" with Sandra Duran Wilson.  It was awesome.

I've been getting into painting more and more and really want to be able to add depth to my two-dimensional work.  (Wait, that would make it less two-dimensional ... hmmmmmm).  We spent the entire day playing with various mix-in media that can be used with acrylic pigments to get all kinds of great effects.  My friends Bette & Laura were sitting in front of me and Bronwyn was sharing my table.  Sandra gave us excellent direction on all the various "white pastey things" we could use to create new textures and glazes and such.  Then we had plenty of time to play.  As you can see from my tidy workspace, I had a bit of fun trying out various techniques with all my favorite colors.  I ended up with a few great journal pages and lots of works-in-progress.  Plus, I took the paper from the table when I left because it was one of my favorite color mixes from the whole day!

And so I share it here, a week late, but with all the enthusiasm a Week 17 post can have!!!  

One Purple Crayon Preparation

Purple.  I like it.  It's a good color.  I picked it as my "one crayon" in Sally R.'s challenge that's due to post on Saturday.  So, for the last several weeks, I've been focused on purple.  I want to go mixed media...not just jewelry.  So, I started with some painting.

I actually had a ton of liquid media in purple--ink, markers, and dye.  But, alas, I needed an excuse to run to Michael's late on a Saturday night so I decided to try some acrylics and bought about a dozen different hues of purple.  I then went to town with some experiments on several different surfaces.  Determined that I'm a bigger fan of paper and watercolor-y-inky styles than acrylics.  But, that being said, I have some kinda cool effects to use as backgrounds that I was able to come up with on some wood pieces.  Now I just have to figure out where to go from here.

I made a few sketches and then went shopping in my second-bedroom/craft-disaster-room for anything I could find that's some version of purple.  I was able to come up with a pretty significant stack of goodness which, of course, has been piled up on my kitchen counter now for two weeks.  Apparently if I look at it 50 times a day it will inspire me more.  Uh, not exactly.  

 Instead I just take pictures of the pile and dust around it.  All those round shapes and soft yard and ribbon edges make me want to do something linear.  Is that strange?  I found that while I was in my collage class at Art & Soul a few weeks ago that I tend to put things in straight lines.  I guess it's a throwback (or throwover, since it's still there) to my military side.  We tend to line things up in straight lines.  Or, for those of us who've been around a while, we used to...nowadays the youngsters aren't quite so straight and narrow.  haaaaaaaaaa  Now that I'm over 20 years, I can talk like that. 

 Anyway, I'm excited to sit down with this mishmashmosh of goodies and see what comes out.  Think amethyst rocks, bright purple coils, and a delicious painted background.  Will it work?

Splashing Colors Instead of Studying

I was restricted to the apartment this weekend with the sole purpose of writing a five-page paper about international security for my continuing Air Force education.  Needless to say, I was less than enthused about the paper, so I found every avenue of escape from my responsibilities.  The most fun of these were my painting adventures. 

I haven't played with dyes and inks and water and paper since my big Art & Soul weekend, so I dug everything out and practiced some of the techniques I learned from Cathy Taylor.  The piece above is painted with India ink and then, when fully saturated, I put a big piece of wax paper into the moisture and then let it dry.  This is how it turned out:

Then, I did another piece with some swirled color and plastic wrap:

Here's an example of the plastic wrap treatment results:

I love the way it came out all wavy!  

I started playing more with the alcohol inks and Dye-na-Flow pigments to see what would happen with the blending and am tickled with how things just starting melting and blending and being awesome 

 I tried a variety of applications including dripping and splattering

 I got a big variety of effects that I couldn't have predicted

 This was "warm color" night from Friday.  I have cool colors to show off from Saturday night but will wait for another day for those!  I have to go finish that paper now.  :)

A Hint of Storm

India ink is one of my new fave things.  I've never really painted before so I don't know any "official" way to manipulate ink or watercolors.  But, that didn't stop me from going to town sweeping big brushfuls around onto watercolor paper to see what happens.  My intention is to cut the papers up and roll them into beads.  I'm so excited by these color mixes and the unplanned but but completely awesome drips and blends that it might be hard to slice them apart.  But, then I reminded myself that I can make more...as long as there's a sale on paper and ink at Hobby Lobby...haaaaaaaaaaa  Oh, and this post got its name when I showed these to Curt and he commented that this one looked like "a rainbow with a hint of storm."  My very non-artsy-craftsy husband came up with such a lovely, descriptive thought...what a sweetie. :)

I love this yellow and orange piece...brings saffron to mind.  

And this big mix of sunset reds, pinks, oranges, and golds...luscious!

Whooo hooooo....have a colorifically wonderful day!