More Journal pages

A letter to my 60 year old self in the future.
Don't fuss over the little things,
Eat what you want when you want,
and Travel your Ass off!

As you know I journal everyday. I have been working on a journal of style, I guess you would call it.
In this journal I am trying out different styles of art journalling, inspired by other wonderful artists.
I am forever on a quest to find my own individual style and I thought that i would try a bit of everything to try and get to my own unique place.
Lately it has been Teesha Moore and I have always loved Gritty Jane.
So  here are a couple more art journal entries I have made over the past few days. I even incorporated Carla Sonheims, Blobimals into some of my pages.

Teesha's style plus my page from August prompt of "Square" from http://art-journal-journey.blogspot.co.at/

                                                                     Paint aND CollAGE

I wanted to play with pastel colors and loved this girls face. You can see my two blobimal characters as well. Still needs some journalling to finish it off.

Which page grabs you the most? Do you have a favorite style of journalling. I would love to hear from you.

My Blobimal creations

How much fun can one have with art? Carla Sonheim's mini art course, Blobimals was such a great experience.
I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to create cute animals with so much ease. The course opens up your mind and takes the stress out of trying to be the perfect drawer.
Quite simply, you really do feel like you are just having a nice play like you did as a child, however you end up with a wonderful looking creature, animal or blobimal as Carla calls it.
In the online course we got to make 3 different books all with our magical blobimals.
I am still working on my first book as it takes quite a bit of time, but here are my two others and I just love them.

2nd book

The cover still needs some more work

Blobimal!

Hi all!
Im very excited today, as I have just signed up for Carla Sonheim's, Blobimal art class.
I only just discovered Carla this week but I am so happy that I finally did find her.
Blobimal is a cute and fun way to paint and draw your own imaginary creatures. I believe you also make a book with them in it at the same time, which is so adorable!
I don't have small children but I just love this free way of making art with blobs! If you do have smaller children and you take this course and create these creature OMG your kids will love you!
I also love the idea of Blobimals being created with watercolor, as I haven't played with mine for a while now.
Any how I am still waiting for my class access so in the meantime I managed to make my own blobimals in my art journal last night using acrylic paint. With the acrylic I had to just smooth it around randomly with my fingers to create a shape. Here is how my page turned out!

Seize the Day

Today I took a journal cue from http://artistsinblogland.blogspot.com.au/search/label/challenge  where a journal challenge is set monthly. The prompt for August is to Seize the day.
It is open to anyone's interpretation, so here is mine. I used some old artwork of mine for the face and a vintage picture for the clothing. Sometimes don't you feel like you need roller skates and octopus arms to get you through the day? Someday's just don't seem to have enough hours in them.
Just like this very minute when I am trying to get this post on line and am watching the clock with one eye because I have to to pick my daughter up from school within the minute, then its homework, dinner time, together time and bed!

     

Step by step

Today is my day off from my day job, so last night I made sure I was all prepared to get busy first thing with my journal. I spent a good 2 hours cutting images from magazines clippings  to use for borders on my journal pages. I now have a whole box full and it was really fun to do in front of the box.

As I mentioned in my last post i have always found it hard to write on my art pages so I decided to make a list of ideas to journal about, and realised the writing will just naturally come.
The idea came to me, to journal about something I don't like about myself or would like to change.
The answer to this  for me, was how I can't swim. It really bothers me. People say just take some classes, but I have whole other issues, like hating water in  my eyes and not being able to stand water in my ears or nose, and also hating the pressure of my head underwater. Its just something that I can not overcome, or maybe not willing to overcome.

So a new journal page was born. I thought you might like to see the progress of my page and how I went about it.
Step 1:
 I work inside an old childrens book so I gessoed the pages first to prepare them. I liked the picture of the ship illustrated on the page so I decided to keep it. I then painted my pages with blue acylic paint and added my borders when the paint was dry.

Step 2:

I was a little lazy, so I decided to use an old sketch I did when I was playing around. This will be my head for my fish body.

Step  3:

I used my aquamarkers to color my little face in, cut it out and stuck it to my fishy body.

Step 4:

Playing around with these two dolphins seeing where I want them. They are from an old calender my daughter had last year.

It's at this stage that I become blank and need to think about what drawing I want to add to my page. So I have a break and make myself a cup of tea and ironically some tuna on toast...

Step 5:

Okay, I decide to draw myself as if I was swimming. Here is my initial sketch.

Step 6:

I have added some more color, some more collage and have started outlining. I take another break, as it helps me see where I'm heading better.

Step 7:

Finishing touches and adjustments.

Hmm going to have to fix the word 'is' and 'Dream'

Finished.

Today's journal page

Hello this Sunday!
I have been a little inspired by the very popular Teesha Moore. I have always found it hard to find things to write on my art journal pages. Sometimes I just simply want to draw and paint a lovely picture and it has nothing to do with the way I am feeling.
It's not that I don't want to journal about deep down feelings, its just sometimes better for me to just play.
It also bothers me when I see journal pages with all these deep deep thoughts all over the page, but the art has nothing to do with it. But that's just me and everyone is different. I do however, love Teesha's way of lettering and her use of glossy magazines. Sometimes I just don't get the image that goes with the journaling but I'm sure it all makes sens to her. Maybe I'm a bit behind the ball LOL.

Which brings me to today's journal page.
I started this page off with two very cute dogs I found in a magazine. I am a big dog lover so they immediately appealed to me. I didn't have a plan for the page at this stage and just stuck them down on the pages.
Following Teesha's cue, I started looking for bits to add to the dogs- hence the eyes and hair on the smaller dog:) That's when it all spoke to me and I realised the page was about my teenage daughters and my relationship.
 My daughters are very different from me, when I was a child and sometimes I have a hard time accepting that kids don't really play that much anymore and ipads and ipods and iphones have taken over from  playing outside all day.
Also my eldest who is 14, going on twenty, loves wearing makeup and spending hours on her hair, something that drives me insane some days. My journal page ended up reflecting this.

The page all came together easily when I realised the smaller pup was my daughters. It was so much fun making this page come alive and it gave me a chance to practice my journal lettering, which is something I really want to work on. Like always I had to have my own little hand drawn picture in there as well.
Feel free to read the smaller writing as well, if you wish. I'm sure there are a lot of other mothers who feel the exact same way.
Hugs, Sonya

Playing with art

Today was the start of something new again for me. I had so much fun with the Joynal class by Jane Davenport, learning to draw better, I now feel confident to start something fresh.
As you all know, I am always looking for a new art technique to explore. I spent the last 48 hours roaming the net and couldn't find a single thing that was like what I had in mind.
So what to do? Just dive in and make it up as I go. Sometimes the best art comes out when your not thinking about it too much or learning from someone else.
I am totally obsessed with my journals at the moment, in particularly my old children's book journals.
So I begun my new page.
I used my altered vintage girls annual childrens book journal, gesso, paint spritzers, magazine clippings, acrylic paint, graphite pencil, prisma pencils, tombow markers, gel pens and a white and black paint pen. I really wanted to incorporate my own drawings with the shiny magazine clippings.
So here is my page for the 1 August 2013.
I love the whimsy and the different textures and colourings. I am really happy how it turned out and hope to fill my journals pages with this new look I have made.
Thanks for visiting!

Developing a character

This morning I woke with one task in mind. Developing a brand new original whimsical character for my next journal. If you have ever tried this before you would know how hard this is.
You have to think about face styles, body style, hair, choose from millions of types of lips and eyes and ears and noses and hands and feet and clothes...lalalalalalala
Oh my gosh.
Well how did I go about it all you may ask?
First I started with a little research on the ever so faithful google. I looked up favourite artists, downloaded other peoples cute drawings, looked in books and even resorted to looking at a few cloth dolls I have made.

I got them all together on the kitchen table and started looking at what I liked and disliked about each drawing I had gathered. I then tried to sketch all the things I liked into the one character. Sometimes this doesn't always work because they just don't match. For example you can't have a cute toddlers head on a long thin body etc.(Well you can if that's what your after, but I was not.)

With a lot of thinking and a bit of practice I did manage to come up with a new character that i feel fairly confident in capturing over and over within my journal pages. As this is the main thing to look at, you must be able to redraw that person in close likeness each time.

I found that I had a tendency to like certain features such as a flatter oval type head, long flowing hair covering one side of the face, lolly legs and a quite simple face with rosy cheeks.

Below you can see my sketch page surrounded by inspiration, with some practice sketches and in the middle of my sketch page is a little character that started developing.

At this stage I'm still not quite happy. She isn't quite my own yet. So I kept on. Here are some ore rough drawings.

it was at this point that I felt the nose and eyebrow were right and the little cheeks, but my character still needed some fine tuning. Kept on experimenting with hair and faces and her little body and clothing will develop later on. A lot of people name their character of course, now this is the super hard bit. I think as I develop a sound understanding of how she is drawn her name will just appear.

 Ill keep working on her tomorrow and show you the end result of my new character in my journal as soon as I'm finished altering her. She still needs a full body to work on and a clothing range. I want to try and keep it all as whimsical as I can. I think I need to also work on a mood board for her. Basically a mood board is her face done over and over with different expressions such as, happy, sad, angry, etc.

Well this sure has been fun. If you have developed your own little character I would love to see, so let me know!

Bye for now,

Sonya

Journal Play

So I have been so happy in the course I am doing right now with Jane davenport. Throughout the lessons we have created pixie's, mermaids, fairies, unicorns and I have learn't so many drawing tricks. I am in  love with the mixed media journal I have created. It is by far my favourite journal now.
Yesterday I created these whimsical giraffe twins. The aim was to put a whimsical face on any animal we desired. Jane added antlers and ears to her whimsy sisters. I chose lovely long necked giraffes for a bit of quirky fun. Here they are. I am all ready to add my journalling.

Today I also played with a bit of my old art. Using my photo computer program which was just a bit of fun, I tinkered with my images. It was great to see how my art takes on a totally new look with a bit of color saturation and tweaking. I think the images would be great to use in another journal. Really the possibilities are endless. i feel some more creative juice about to start spilling out onto my pages.


Original                                                                              Enhanced 1

                    
 Enhanced 2

 Original

                     Enhanced
                 

                                              and I particularly like how the following ones turned out.

    Original                                                                                        Enhanced

                                                                   

                                       

 

                        

A New Art Course

Hi everyone!
It has been some time since I have posted as I have had a bit of a art vacation. Meaning I've been knitting and crocheting instead LOL.
So now after knitting 2 jumpers and a scarf and my arms are killing me, its time to get back to my true love of drawing and painting.
Many times after having a break from art I feel the need for an online 'inspirational' course, to get the good juices flowing through the fingers once more.
This time I have selected a course by the wonderful fellow Australian artist, Jane Davenport.
I have taken a course with her previously (I heart drawing), learning to draw fashion type figures and faces and although not really my taste of art, I learnt many things I didn't know about illustrating the human figure. (Jane has some great secret tips she has designed herself to teach you)  Before that course I only drew faces, and after time that can become very repetitive.
Now I am taking the exciting online course called 'Joynal'. Joynal  is all about whimsy and magical fairytale creatures and beings in a beautiful journal. Again we will study faces and figures, but this time, leaning more towards whimsical rather than fashion or realism.
The lessons are quite pricey at $165.00 and it has taken me a year of consideration to finally take the plunge but now that I have started I wish I had leapt sooner. It is so much fun and Jane also shows you how she alters old children's books into art journals which I absolutely adore!
If your interested in Jane's courses she has a few different ones to choose from for all levels of artists and different prices. Visit her at :  www.janedavenport.com
Our first lesson is to do a warm up drawing of a face and the second drawing of a figure. Here are mine.