Love begins

This was a recent art journal page I made & had a lot of fun with.  I used water color crayons & water to create the background.  Some gesso to tone it down in spots.  A Sharpie Paint Pen (that became too messy for even me) & then a white Signo for lettering, details, bits of the houses.  Acrylic paint & Faber-Castel pens for the houses.

A few recent art journal pages

 

A bit of an oops with the words going over to the next page but such is life :)

Do you see...

watercolors (maybe they were opaque but watered down), salt & random pens.

It was a lovely summer day...

 

unlike most. Quite comfortable.

I am admittedly a weather wimp. Anyone reading this will probably laugh knowing that the weather we get in this part of Southern California doesn't compare to many other places as far as the extremes...but it was 48 &, therefore freezing, when I took my kid to school at the insane hour of 7:25 am (the kid starts at 7:35 am). Anyway, my point is that it's nice to look back at page I painted in August when it was "just right" outside & I wanted an excuse to experiment with my then brand new opaque watercolors.

I got this idea on the way home

 

Well, actually, I got part of it at my "Outside the box" group (formerly known as Scrapbook Book Club but we still often call in "book club" tonight).  We were visited by Cheryl Waters who had just stopped by Stampington.  She brought by a number of Stampington magazines that we passed around & perused.  While there were so many beautiful photographs & various types of art, several of the art pieces caught my eye that had a painted background with some areas of lighter area where the artist wrote different things.  On my drive home I got to thinking about how Melanie Testa uses tracing paper in her work & I wondered if it might lighten things up enough to see what I wrote on top.  I started out by writing out the basics on the tracing paper first.  Then I glued it down & kept playing.

If you can't read my writing ;) it says:
I so enjoy pondering. Playing Reading Being ridiculously silly Drinking coffee Living in a town with an ocean view Music Making things Friends

In progress: a background

I started this page a while ago with watercolors, color wash & glimmer mist.  It ended up really dark but yesterday I added some opaque watercolors, spritzed the page with water, tossed a bit of salt on & blotted with a paper towel before letting it dry a bit.  Where it had been heavy +dark blues & purple, it's more colorful & definitely lighter.

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog!  I've decided to open up this new one to share my more artsy side and to participate in a few challenges. 

I'm making a commitment to art journal (almost) every day and to participating in "Art Journal Every Day."  It looks like it will be a lot of fun (& maybe a bit of the kick in the butt that I need to work on things...more, well ...daily ;-) ).  I'm thinking 10 minutes each

I'm also planning to participate in The Sketchbook Challenge.