{be creative everyday: 2013} MARCH 8

{be creative everyday} MARCH 8 :: gelli print collage, a photo by Vickie @ In My Head Studios on Flickr.

Gelli Print Collage - work in progress

paper collage of acrylic monoprints, gel pen, ink, handmade stamps
5.5" x 4.25"
© 2013 Victoria Porter

This isn't quite the finished version. I added a little more detail to it after I took this photo with my phone. 

All of these pieces of paper were printed on my gelli plate. Some were already printed with text, like the Japanese newspaper I picked up on a visit to Austin, Texas, and some dictionary pages. Using my hand-carved stamps and black archival ink, I stamped some designs on some of the pieces.  

I'm deciding whether or not to send it through my sewing machine for some random stitching. It feels disparate to me and needs some cohesion. 

What do you think? Stitching or not?

Happy Monday!

- Vickie

Challenge! Index-Card-A-Day 2012

I am jumping into the water over at DaisyYellow for the 2012 Index-Card-A-Day Challenge! What am I talking about? Here are the details!

The 2012 Index-Card-A-Day challenge runs June 1 to July 31, 2012. Make something on an index card every day for 61 days. If you start after June 1st you do not need to catch up, really, truly, seriously, just start. This is not a fancy schmancy challenge. You don't have to be on twitter or flickr or facebook or have a blog. Just index cards!

61 days, you say? That sounded like quite the commitment... until I realized...

It doesn't have to be the Mona Lisa every day for 61 days!  

Just do something!

Well, that sounds better. All I have to do is SOMETHING. Particularly a 3" x 5" something on an index card - because that's the size I have handy. And, since I am working on practicing more kindness towards myself, there will be no beating up of my self-esteem if I miss a day. (Got that, brain? I'm talking to you.)

I can always catch back up. After all, this is a CHALLENGE! So, yeah, it's sort of going to be a challenge for me to spit out something everyday - especially on days where I can't even lift my own head. 

Plus I am starting late due to my vacation and I absolutely do not feel the need to try to catch up on 7 cards unless the mood strikes me. And that's OK! 

The card pictured above is my card for yesterday - Saturday, June 9, 2012. It was created with watercolor, colored pencils, inks, stamps, stencils, and a bit of gel pen. I like the colors on this one. It had me craving mango smoothies later that night! 

   

My Index-Card-A-Day 2012 for June 8, 2012. Created with watercolor, Pitt pens, and Copic marker. I intended to keep this one simple to start with, but the juicy watercolors were calling me and I painted this with a small waterbrush. Now I am glad I took the extra time on it.  

An amazing number of folks are getting involved! Check out the flickr group! 

I hope you will join us! Get your friends and family involved - even if it's for just one card. You will most certainly have a fun time with them making art!

I am now off for a lazy Sunday with Mr. M and hopefully more mango smoothies!

- Vickie

Doodles Unleashed Workshop: Week 2

I am so very excited to take another awesome workshop by Traci Bautista called "Doodles Unleashed".  Traci is the author of the new book Doodles Unleashed. You may know her from her book called Collage Unleashed. I already bought Doodles Unleashed online and am waiting impatiently for its arrival.

What is even cooler about this workshop is it's a FREE course offered by Strathmore Online Workshops. 

Strathmore is an art paper company. They make many of the papers with which I work. Traci is recommending for this workshop the 400 series of Strathmore papers made for specific uses such as mixed media (which is a thicker paper able to take the abuse of mixed media work). I like the acrylic paper in the 400 series, which has a nice faux canvas texture that also holds up well to mixed media use. 

The image above is my Spontaneous Watercolor Background from Week 2 of the course. We were encouraged to play with the watercolor like mad scientists. This was my third attempt at getting it how I wanted. The first two were overworked and muddy. I will probably keep them and chop them up for other uses. [Image above: 11"x15", watercolor paper, © 2012 In My Head Studios]

I took a bunch of photos of this piece for future reference. I like to get in really close and get the details photographed. I love the macro setting on my camera. It's awesome. These images are good for making note cards and promotional materials. Also I print these photos for use in an art journal or other collage project. I like to make the most use of my work in this way.

Below you can see the close ups. Don't you love the splotchyness? That big splatter of orange hit that wide brush stroke perfectly. I was thrilled when that happened. Never underestimate the power of throwing paint at your work!

I'm practicing painting circles with a small round brush. For some reason this ability eludes me. I am happy with these circles because I remembered to keep my brush loaded with paint. (You can't paint without paint on your brush!!)

Love the splotchy splatters! Yes, I got paint all over myself.

I waited for the first applications of watercolor to dry so I could go back over them with contrasting colors without making a muddy brown mix. When I say "waited" I mean I impatiently shot the heatgun at it until it dried.

I highly recommend signing up for this class if you like to doodle, experiment with paint, or want to increase your skills in these areas. Traci takes doodling to another level with paint. Doodling is a really important part of our creative development.

So get outta here! Go! Run right now to sign up for this class! I'll see you in the forums!

 

- Vickie 

p.s. I have not received any compensation, product or otherwise from Strathmore or Traci Bautista. I'm writing this to present cool stuff - not to make a profit off blogging. My opinions are my own. I am not affiliated with Strathmore or Traci Bautista.

"What's On My Art Table?" Wednesday

This page began as part of a workshop assignment to paint circles and then doodle over them. I am still working through Traci Bautista’s workshop called {31} daily inspirations. Yeah, that class I signed up for in early 2011. I’m really just now getting around to it.

I started with a white piece of 8.5” x 11” cardstock. Several thick layers of gesso were added to bring in a little texture to the paper and to seal it.

I acquired a new tube of paint I wanted to try called quinacridone magenta (Golden heavy body acrylic). When I opened the tube and saw how lovely it was I knew the perfect color combo would be phthalo blue, a hint of desert turquoise craft paint, and a little white.

The plan was to paint some loose circles and keep it simple. I was making a simple page to cut up to use for other collage work.

Uh. Yeah. Got a little off track there.

I saw the bigger circles had smaller circles in them. So I started working them individually thinking, “Ok, I’ll just cut this up in sections now for use on domino pendants and other smaller collages.” No problem. I have done that before.

So I began to think of the page as sections I was going to disassemble. They were not related to each other on the page. Just conserving paper by doing this prep work on one sheet.

But then it started to kind of take on a cohesive look. And got more detailed. And then my mom stopped by and she gasped loudly when I said I was chopping it up for other uses. Now I don’t know what to do with it.

I think it might be about six paintings living in one as I explored many techniques and media here… maybe too many. I suppose if any deconstruction occurs it will be mentally breaking down the parts for other new works.

Also I recently discovered on my own that I could continue my long, torrid love affair with oil pastels! They can be sealed over with matte medium without destroying them and then they do not smear. Joy of joys! You can even write over them with a gel pen! Unheard of! There really isn’t anything like a nice, bright, crayon-looking oil pastel mark on a page for some interest. I had hung my oil pastels up to (never) dry since the mess was always a problem when doing so much mixed media work. Now it’s solved and we are back in love! <3

This is a close up of a flower created with gel pens and circles punched from an old dictionary page. I really like the lettering in the background on the left. That was done with a Copic marker and a stencil. The colors compliment wonderfully.

This is a mix of a little bit of everything: paint, colored pencil, gel pen, book page, and pigment ink.

Circles stamped with found objects. The 1/4" hole punch dots fit in the circles perfectly! There's a little gel pen, too.

More book page and gel pen. The flower petals and the very small dashed lines are stamped with stamps I made. The tiny dots were done with a stencil I made with my 1/8" hole punch.

I aged these book pages more than the others with Distress Inks. I like how they are layered. The depth in the background was created with two colors of Copic markers. You can see oil pastel on the edges of this photo. Welcome back, oil pastel!

More tiny text dots. More found object stamp circles. This found object stamp came from a disassembled adhesive tape runner. (Nothing is safe from being taken apart and inked or painted in my house!)

Do you see what I mean that each of these close-ups could be their own painting? I must explore this further.

The details: acrylic paint (Golden heavy body and the craft kind), matte medium, oil pastel, vintage book pages, gel pen, Copic marker, Sharpie, colored pencil, pigment ink, stencils. On paper. 8.5” x 11”

So now I am back to the painting board to make some simpler pages for chopping up!

Happy Middle Of The Week!

- Vickie

Graffiti Art Painting

I have not really made anything in weeks. So I was getting a hard core art jones going. Inspired by the class I’m taking from Traci Bautista I sat down in a few spare minutes yesterday to make this.

It is created on 8 1/2" by 11" ivory cardstock with gel medium, acrylic paint, and Sharpie paint pens. The yellow decoration down the left side is paper tape.

I will be sending this along with some paper goodies for a swap. I suppose it could be used like a collage sheet and torn up and used in other artwork. Or it could be framed as is.

It was really fun to make and I thing I’ll do some more work in this style. I seem to be getting caught up in a lot of planning and that's starting to stifle me a bit. This page was just a big, fun doodle. I need to let go more and trust the process!

Etsy Twitter Team: Shop of the Week: A Cagey Bee

I like the creative name for this Etsy shop. The artist is Kris G. Brownlee – or KGB = A Cagey Bee! Very clever!

“I'm a painter, so my first love is creating the actual paintings - from sketching to swirling the paint around my canvas. But because I know a lot of us can't afford to buy original work, I try to offer a variety of lower cost reproductions: prints, notecards, and even little pendants with my characters!

I want my customers to know how much heart and soul and pure joy is poured into my work. I think most of my customers *do* know this, but it's not always easy to get a sense of who someone is via the internet. I was a very quiet, shy child and spent years creating elaborate stories for my imaginary friends. It's really no wonder that I've started to bring some of them to life in my paintings. The idea that I get to share that with my customers? That new friends from all over the world look at my girls and smile? I couldn't have dreamed up a better possibility for my life. :)”


What inspires you to create? “Everything! Favorite storybooks, movies, lyrics to songs, interesting characters I meet in real life... my biggest fear is that I'll never have enough time to paint all of the things I want to paint. If I ever run out of ideas, I can just walk out my front door and almost always see *something* interesting. There's this one woman in my neighborhood that I see every so often who I've been itching to paint since the first time I laid eyes on her. She walks this pack of 6 or 7 dogs - those giant long haired Afghan hounds! It looks like a scene straight out of a cartoon with their hair swishing and bouncing and swirling along!”

What are your Twitter tricks of the trade? “My newest favorite Twitter trick is installing Friendbar. It adds a toolbar to your browser so you don't have to load the Twitter page to tweet plus it makes it really easy to just click 1 button & tweet about the page you're currently viewing, including an already shortened URL. You can set it to update your Facebook status too. Very handy!”

Read her blog at www.acageybee.com
Follow her at Twitter: twitter.com/acageybee

As a special thank you to her Twitter pals, all prints in her shop are 2 for the price of 1 this week. Buy one print and simply enter the name of the second print you'd like in the notes to seller box. Double the cuteness!

Etsy: Your place to buy & sell all things handmade acageybee.etsy.com

All photos copyright to Kris Brownlee/A Cagey Bee

Reposted from my original post at: Etsy Twitter Team: Shop of the Week: A Cagey Bee