Home Page: written down

Decided to go with the circles theme here, sort of progressed from thinking about wheels and journeys to my everday journey through my life. Sorry Shim by passed the whole white photo thing. Doing this journal has made me realise from a creative view point, my journaling is never, ever going to be in my hand writting (sorry boys !!) apart from a couple of personal never to be viewed by the public, notes to my children. Also messy art and me were never destined to get on, at all, ever. I am definitely happiest with what I now I can work with, my PC, text boxes, word art and TEXT, words and letters.
Louise + Design = Text as Texture

Comment

After reading this week’s challenge – I knew that I wanted to incorporate a train – I spend 5 days – morning and evening going to & from work in the City – 30 mins each way – Sydney – an awesome place to work and live – home each night to my wonderful family! The train gives me the opportunity to read and just escape for a short time. A friend of mine who is a great photographer gave me a tip on how to take a night photo – I used my digital camera – put it on manual – set the camera on the bridge railing – and kept the shutter open for a few seconds – to make an image blur – to show motion – I think it turned out pretty good – I tried the white paint on one side of the station and used pencils to colour in and wrote my thoughts over that image – I used old train tickets and the sun rays I ripped from a train schedule. On the “sun” is a riddle – Q. I travel around the world in seconds. You may get me whether or not you want me. I don’t need a key to get inot your home. I’ll help you get your message across. What am I? A. I am E-mail. What a great way to “travel” -to stay connected with family & friends around the world without leaving my chair!

Comment

I finally did my cover. I’m really happy with how it turned out. This is one of my favorite quotes. Thanks for looking!

Comment

My take on the subject of wheels. Completely hand-drawn (well, obviously apart from the head-shots). These are not original car drawings – I’m not that creative. What I am good at, however, is transposing already drawn things onto another piece of paper, without the aid of tracing boxes, tracing paper or grids to line up. The two cars here were chosen as likenesses to our current set of family cars – my silver Vauxhall Vectra, and the family old rust-heap, a blue Vauxhall Frontera.

I wanted a somewhat cartooney and upbeat graphical image on this one, and to deal mainly with black and white (with minor colours used) because the journaling itself (written simply around the pages) is actually not that upbeat. In my journaling I deal with the constraints that wheels nowadays have on me – the long commutes too and fro work, and even to the local supermarket in the weekends. And I discuss that feeling, as leaving in the morning, of not knowing if either my hubbie or I will make it back that night.

Comment

It just occurred to me that I could invite y’all over to see the entry in my new online journal, (which is happening hand-in-hand with my new artist’s journal)... it’s the entry I made when I received the wheel prompt the other night.
Consider yourself invited…
xxx

Comment

Started out with the “circle” prompt, and ended up with two pages that don’t have much to do w/ the prompt at all. Oh well, that’s how it goes.

Did the first page by applying gesso to the page, then various colors of acrylic paint. I didn’t like it, so I coated it with gesso again and used sandpaper to take off some of the gesso coat so the paint underneath pokes through. Applied various glazes according to my whim & fancy. Then I added the collage elements. At one point I had added something that I didn’t like and I ripped it off…and it left a mark that I kind of liked. So I didn’t try to “fix” it. I overstamped w/ white pigment ink and the harlequin stamp from Cat’s Life Press.

The second page was gessoed (is that a verb?) and thev painted & glazed. Tried my hand at funky writing, didn’t turn out great. Oh well! Thanks for looking.

Comment

I’m doing alot with this now…Once I sat down and read the whole book (Collage Discovery) I began getting a bunch of ideas. Luckily I’m one who saves EVERYTHING (receipts, business cards, train schedules, metrocards, etc) so I have alot od “junk” to use now.
Used the peeling paper technique, washed over it, and wrote on top. Very fun.

Comment

I just joined this class last week, so I’m a bit behind, but hope to get caught up straight away. I haven’t done my cover yet as I want it to be indicative of what’s inside, and this is so new to me, I have no idea what this thing will look like when I’m done. As soon as I have some sense of that, I’ll create one.

I have 2 reasons for joining this class. Reason 1, having become a 98% digital scrapper I was desperate to do some creating with stuff I could feel…I really miss the textile part of creating, tearing paper, smooshing paint around, all of that. Reason 2, my daughter and granddaughter have lived with me for the past year, since my granddaughter was born, and just got their own apartment. Besides missing them horribly, I’ve been worried that my life is going to get boring and routine without them so this class was a way to prevent that. All that being said, this first assignment being about new beginnings seemed like a great way to express this change, however this piece turned out a bit darker (not color, feel) than I imagined it. My intent was to show the positive things this change will bring, but I ended up getting stuck in how much I miss them (which is where I am right now).

I used acrylic paints on most of the background. Tore up little pieces of white paper and some white mulberry paper which I glued down for the journaling. The word ‘transition’ was printed on a transparency and attached with brads (I may go back and color the back side of it so this will stand out more). The picture of me I applied “Dave’s Midnight Sepia” action to in Photoshop. The lock and broken key stickers are from the Nostalgiques line. And the window is from Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas. Thanks for looking!

Comment

Joining up late…here is the first page (always the hardest!)
Went out of my comfort zone with a picture of me. Added an a-z list of the first qualities/attributes that came to mind about myself—some good, some true-but-not-so-good. “Discover” and “begin” definitions…discovering me!!

Comment

While I’ve been thinking about the whole “wheels” thing this week (haven’t done anything with that yet!), I’ve also been trying to live up to the commitment that I made in last week’s “risk” entry about living up to my full potential. So last night, I drew this in my little art journal. Not Rembrandt by any means, but a start at getting back in touch with something that I love—drawing. I haven’t picked up a piece of conte and drawn in probably over a year. I’m rusty. There’s lots of room for improvement. But it’s a start. And with continued practice, I know that there will be improvement. For right now, though, I am just really enjoying the process. It’s like using muscles that you haven’t used in a while—they’re a little sore—but a good kind of sore.

A lot of people in this group have said that they “can’t draw.” Until a few years ago, I thought I was one of those people. Then I took an art class with my brother that totally changed the way I think about drawing. It was based on the principles from the book, “Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain” and it was magical. Cliff notes version of the classes: the secret to drawing is in learning how to turn off the part of your brain that “knows” what it is “supposed” to see—and instead, concentrating on drawing what you truly do see. Lots of work with being able to discern positive and negative space. Lots of work with turning things upside down and drawing them, so that your brain doesn’t try to “fill in the blanks” on your page because it “knows” what the thing you’re drawing is supposed to look like.

I’m rambling, and don’t mean to—but it just felt so great to get out my stuff and do this again. It felt like such a breakthrough. And I don’t think that I would have been so anxious to do it if it hadn’t been for the amazing things—and the amazing courage that I’ve seen here. So thank you—all of you—for putting yourselves out there for all of us. You’ve been an awesome source of inspiration for me.

Comment