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Description
I know what you're thinking.... what the... ? and also... why?

Well if you've been following my little blips about this art journal you'll know that it began as a bit of fluff for me to use to teach an art exploration journaling style course for a local craft store so it's not like I was trying to win any awards >_<
I just wanted to encourage people to explore art and feel joyful about it.
I also wanted to shut down any of the typical whining from people who don't consider themselves "artists" but clearly are since they are seeking out an art journaling class... who love to huff and puff and say to me: Arms firmly folded : " But I CAN'T draw my drawing is TERRIBLE"
So in the first bits of this book I've filled it with super easy mixed media techniques that even self proclaimed "art failures" can easily replicate, enjoy and turn into something they appreciate.

This page shows the efforts I made to explain how you can turn an accident into a "happy" accident or mistake - Thanks Bob Ross. Or that you can go wild with technique exploration and discovery- and then add a touch of elegance.

In this page I was attempting to show how to make a background with paint bubbles. Unfortunately I do so favor my watercolors but this is NOT watercolor paper. I really didn't have much luck save for a few visible bubble bits in the upper center and right. Other wise it looks a bit of a mess really.
Ah well. That works too I guess.
I also then decided to add watercolor coral like I did in the fish with legs page that precedes this one but this time in dark purple. It was alright looking.
Finally after everything had dried a third time I took a printed image from some old Art Nouveau fairy tale book or something I found somewhere.. I'll link it here if I ever find it again...
I used the graphite transfer technique to transfer it right over the top of my watercolor background.
Then I painted the whole thing in with acrylic paints and to my horror... I discovered that the image just sunk right in to the background. Well f*ck I thought. How do I fix this?
So I went over the lines in black ink.
It faded even MORE
So I went over the lines in silver and gold gel pen... and it... helped? A little?

This whole page sort of reminded me of an acrylic painting I did for one of my classes back in community college. It was a home - painted piece and It had to be a still life of shoes of all things. (love that painting actually I've been meaning to find it again too... I thought I did get a copy of it somewhere... hm... I'll have to go searching) Anyhow.. as it happened the crummy apartment I lived in had this 1970's shag carpet that was blotched with all these hideous brown shades and as it happened... I had this weird habit at the time of throwing pennies onto my carpet for whatever reason... I was working as a waitstaff to keep my apartment and I got pennies in with my tips all the time and you know.. pennies are useless so I would just throw them onto the carpet everywhere...
We had to paint exactly what was there so I had to paint in both the carpet and the pennies.
Shiny copper pennies on blotchy brown carpet.
Even when I used a metallic copper paint they just looked like weird blotchy blobs. They faded right in just like these fish and Lilly vines in this picture.
I remember my teacher at the time suggested I add a shadow to the lips of all my pennies and the moment I did that they popped right out of the image and looked exactly like pennies.
I wish I could figure out the trick to this piece.
I've thought about going back over the lines like - beside them... possibly with a dark colored pencil but I have a memory of outlining the whole thing in dark colors already and that didn't work so Idk... perhaps I'll work it out someday.
For now it remains this kind of frustrating chaotic fading image.
Sort of like a magic eye picture that you can kind of see the image within and kind of not.

Perhaps I'll come back to this and fix it at some point. I'd just like it to look a little more solid and satisfying. We'll see.

Description
I know what you're thinking.... what the... ? and also... why?

Well if you've been following my little blips about this art journal you'll know that it began as a bit of fluff for me to use to teach an art exploration journaling style course for a local craft store so it's not like I was trying to win any awards >_<
I just wanted to encourage people to explore art and feel joyful about it.
I also wanted to shut down any of the typical whining from people who don't consider themselves "artists" but clearly are since they are seeking out an art journaling class... who love to huff and puff and say to me: Arms firmly folded : " But I CAN'T draw my drawing is TERRIBLE"
So in the first bits of this book I've filled it with super easy mixed media techniques that even self proclaimed "art failures" can easily replicate, enjoy and turn into something they appreciate.

This page shows the efforts I made to explain how you can turn an accident into a "happy" accident or mistake - Thanks Bob Ross. Or that you can go wild with technique exploration and discovery- and then add a touch of elegance.

In this page I was attempting to show how to make a background with paint bubbles. Unfortunately I do so favor my watercolors but this is NOT watercolor paper. I really didn't have much luck save for a few visible bubble bits in the upper center and right. Other wise it looks a bit of a mess really.
Ah well. That works too I guess.
I also then decided to add watercolor coral like I did in the fish with legs page that precedes this one but this time in dark purple. It was alright looking.
Finally after everything had dried a third time I took a printed image from some old Art Nouveau fairy tale book or something I found somewhere.. I'll link it here if I ever find it again...
I used the graphite transfer technique to transfer it right over the top of my watercolor background.
Then I painted the whole thing in with acrylic paints and to my horror... I discovered that the image just sunk right in to the background. Well f*ck I thought. How do I fix this?
So I went over the lines in black ink.
It faded even MORE
So I went over the lines in silver and gold gel pen... and it... helped? A little?

This whole page sort of reminded me of an acrylic painting I did for one of my classes back in community college. It was a home - painted piece and It had to be a still life of shoes of all things. (love that painting actually I've been meaning to find it again too... I thought I did get a copy of it somewhere... hm... I'll have to go searching) Anyhow.. as it happened the crummy apartment I lived in had this 1970's shag carpet that was blotched with all these hideous brown shades and as it happened... I had this weird habit at the time of throwing pennies onto my carpet for whatever reason... I was working as a waitstaff to keep my apartment and I got pennies in with my tips all the time and you know.. pennies are useless so I would just throw them onto the carpet everywhere...
We had to paint exactly what was there so I had to paint in both the carpet and the pennies.
Shiny copper pennies on blotchy brown carpet.
Even when I used a metallic copper paint they just looked like weird blotchy blobs. They faded right in just like these fish and Lilly vines in this picture.
I remember my teacher at the time suggested I add a shadow to the lips of all my pennies and the moment I did that they popped right out of the image and looked exactly like pennies.
I wish I could figure out the trick to this piece.
I've thought about going back over the lines like - beside them... possibly with a dark colored pencil but I have a memory of outlining the whole thing in dark colors already and that didn't work so Idk... perhaps I'll work it out someday.
For now it remains this kind of frustrating chaotic fading image.
Sort of like a magic eye picture that you can kind of see the image within and kind of not.

Perhaps I'll come back to this and fix it at some point. I'd just like it to look a little more solid and satisfying. We'll see.