I keep two notebooks consistently: my sketchbook and my daily notebook. My sketchbook captures ephemeral content from my right brain: sketches, doodles, scribbles, random creative inspiration, and color combinations. This is the notebook I also take to meetings and workshops, where I can let my right brain run loose while the left brain pays attention. My daily notebook stays with me all day to capture the mundane contents of my left brain before they leak…
I don’t buy greeting cards. I make them. It lets me be creative, and I never have to fret about Grandma receiving the same card from us and from one of the cousins. (It also gives me an excuse to horde decorative paper, but that’s fodder for another post.) My cards may not be as sappy or as snarky as the ones you buy down at Walmart, but they do come straight from the heart. About the…
I’ve neglected my blog for several months, but I have spent the time doing other creative things and taking photos of them as I go. Here are a few shots that explain how I collage backgrounds for my mixed media works. On a small canvas board (or canvas) and use tinted gesso or a light wash of acrylic paint to establish the base color. I tear small pieces of printed scrapbook paper and paper ephemera,…
I’ve been working on both versions of my art journal workshop exercise off and on for the past few days, squeezing in a scribble here, a smudge there, and a swipe of the paintbrush in passing. Right now my desk is covered in supplies — my color journal and my art journal, various watercolor pencils and watercolor crayons, pens, brushes, paints, and various other implements of artistic nature. And — most significantly for this story…
My first attempt at the Strathmore Visual Journal workshop exercise was less than satisfying. I didn’t like working with the oil pastels. I thought the charcoal dirtied up the page. I didn’t have gesso, so I used a semi-opaque watercolor instead. So I decided I needed a do-over, using materials that I’m more comfortable with. After all, they keep saying it’s all about the process, right? Steps from Lesson 1 I resized the sketches and…
