Painting a nightmare

I woke up in the middle of the night feeling black birds in my hair. The noise of flapping wings and movement felt so real... I tried to escape the feeling, but it followed me through the day. Finally, I gave up, and put it to the paper in the best way I could. 

My big moleskine journal is the best place to catch anything I want to express.

 I didn't paint it on the easel (pictured above), just wanted to see how it looks. I am so extremely in love with my easel that I have to see how anything looks on it :-) I painted it on the table (as seen bellow) using only a brown and white. 

Black birds are gone. Colorful ones are soon to come.

Empty Journal Spreads

This is a big, thick, heavy journal and it doesn't look like it in this picture at all.

Which probably means that I have a freakishly large hand...

I LOVE my journal, but I'm almost not using it at all. Last year I managed to easily fill in a whole book, but this year.... many spreads are left without one single word. I think it is a thing of habit; I either write almost daily, or stop completely. Right now I stopped even painting in my journal, because it feels wrong to have so many "unfinished" pages.

You may have noticed that I don't really work in "spreads". Sometimes, when I have leftover color or feel like it. Mostly I just open to a blank page and don't even think if it looks good with the page next to it. As my daughter once said, "I wish I had a word counter in my head. It would probably be a scary big number of words that constantly go through there." Maybe I should sit down and write something now, as I too have a scary big number of words in my head and they might like to get out and live on these pages.

Waiting for words

I love when images that were not there before show up on crisp white pages. 

I used the same shapes I did in the exercise I blogged about here.

But then she showed up... and I can't really read her expression. Worried? Troubled? Tired?

Dreams

Run. Escape. Hide. That's what I've been doing in my dreams lately. Somebody, something is chasing me.... and it's not pleasant. I don't know why it's happening, but I know that I can deal with it through art. So I pulled out my big moleskine (16.5 x 11.5") and let the colors come out.

I don't know why these two ladies showed up, or the moon/bird or whatever it is, but it felt good. Hopefully the bad dreams will stop and I'll feel serene as the lady on the right :-)

My art journal... after a long pause

Hello! I'm watching you!

Not really. The eyes belong to a face that's in my art journal.

I haven't played in my journal in months, but now I feel the need again. Out came all the toys - paints, pens, collage sheets, watercolors, pogo printer (love it!) etc. etc.

I hope to make journaling a daily habit again. But before that I really need to clean and reorganize my studio, and make it a welcoming place... Right now it is difficult to find a spot to journal and that is very frustrating.

By the way, did you know that if you ever considered buying one of my collage sheets you have to have a pretty deep pocket to afford them? Look at the price I put on this kit:

Not bad for three sheets, right? All joking aside, I am glad that I noticed the mistake and corrected it quickly, because it would have been really embarrassing to hear what people think of that price. Do you know that etsy people enabled immediate download for files, so now it is easy to play, no more waiting for sellers and emails and attachments. I think that's great for sellers and buyers (I am still working on updating all of my listings).

Hope that you are doing something fun this weekend!

xoxo

Cuteness in my journal

A line of sweet characters lives in my journal. Ok - the last one on the right is not cute at all and I don't like her and she might quietly disappear into the night, but the other three are sweet enough to make me smile.

I love taking online workshops! As there are more and more of them, I became very picky. But I still do it because I am curious and because they make me feel like I'm not alone in my studio. I adore watching how others paint and how their magic happens.

"Paint Happy" - a workshop by The Secret Hermit (aka Micki Wilde) made me really happy. It is probably one of the best workshops I ever had. It made me want to paint - you know the feeling when you can't wait to wake up in the morning so you can paint? That's pretty much how I felt.

I actually did many of the exercises she shows. One of them is a combination of words and paint, but in way that I have never seen before. The process was really healing so I plan to use often.

So that's mostly what I've been doing this week. I made something less cheerful too, but I will leave it for a separate post. It's Friday and almost June! Happy weekend!

Journaling with iPad mini

No matter how busy my days are, I am still having fun making daily pages on my iPad mini. Sometimes I spend only a minute on a page, and some days I spend much more time. Like yesterday...

I wasn't feeling the best, so I snuggled with my iPad and started drawing in app named Procreate.

I love that it has levels that enable me to move things around, add a background, remove it, put it back again etc. without starting everything from the beginning. You can see the progression of the drawing (painting?).

It is difficult to stop, as you can continue working for days, so I usually stop when I know I don't have too much time left to play. After that, there is another big decision to make - do I want to put my painting through one of many photo apps, and if I do - what kind of effect I want to use? The following nine versions were done in a matter of minutes. The possibilities are limitless, so I try to make a quick decision.  

This time I decided that I like my painting as is, and left it that way. I uploaded it to Noteshelf, which is  what I chose to be my journaling app. I typed in the recipe, journaled by writing with a stylus (love that!), doodled a bit and called it finished.

I hope that no viruses are chasing you, but if they are - try the recipe. It worked magic for me (and it's pretty tasty). xo

A fun technique to try

I usually don't have too much time for art on weekends, but try to sneak something in when I can. This is something I did on Sunday in less than an hour. I used my very inexpensive sumi ink and a brush, and on regular office paper very quickly made many sketches of birds. 

Working this fast and with a brush that I can't really control allows wonderful, imperfect characters to show up. And it is deeply relaxing, which for me is always a plus.

Now I have many drawings to play with. I chose a random one to add to my journal. Since the paper is thin, I simply glued it on - not worrying about the edges showing, and then painted over it and around.

As silly as it is, I really love this face. I don't think I would have ever done it if I tried a more careful approach with my brush. 

I wanted to see if the ink will transfer - and it did! You can still see some paper fuzzies on the image bellow, but I was happy how quickly and how well it transfered to an already textured and painted background. 

So there it is... something quick and fast to try in your art journal.

I hope you'll give it a try.

An armful of happy

"I saw these beautiful sunflowers and thought of you..."

What a way to steal a heart that's already been his for ages :-)

Finished!

I did it! There was some blood (never hold your fingers under an awl - it hurts), mishaps (realized that I'm short 4 inches of thread when I almost finished the stitching), but all in all - it is done and I am happy how it turned out.

I looked through Keith Smith's book (Non-Adhesive Binding Volume II) and wanted to do the binding shown on the right. Unfortunately, I didn't read the description well (the third binding is not even described in the book) and ended up with the middle one.

Not what I wanted, but still interesting enough.

This binding is done with two needles in two steps. You can see on the next photo my first try - how I came almost to the end and didn't have enough thread. 

Here are my two journals - last years, and the new one.

You can see the difference in papers - how filled and colorful is the "old" one and the pristine white pages of the new one.

I am usually not afraid of the white page (or canvas), but for some reason now I feel blocked and have no idea or inspiration what to do... how to start it. 

Do you mind giving me some inspiration?
Maybe suggest a medium, technique or image that you would like to see me try...

I feel like I'm in a deep sleep and need some artful waking up :)

xo