Pink Bird Studio

Art Journal Tangents & Tactics #7 and Bold Pattern Play

Tammy from Daisy Yellow was recently featured on the Create Mixed Media blog with a free tutorial called Bold Pattern Play.  In this tutorial, Tammy encourages us to play with bold patterns on small squares/rectangles and then assemble them into a larger piece or journal page.  I had to play along.  By the way, that blog looks like it has lots of other great ideas and inspiration - I will be checking it out further soon!

I mounted mine on a piece of black cardstock and doodled in some of the gaps with my white gel pen. 

Next, Tammy also published her seventh in the series Art Journal Tangents and Tactics.  A similar technique but using loads of colours.  I eneded up with enough doodles to fill two journal spreads in my little journal.  These were both great fun and I encourage you to try them!

Art Journal Tangents & Tactics # 6 - Quirky Girls

Let me begin this rather long story of Daisy Yellow's 6th installment of the Art Journal Tangents and Tactics series at the beginning.  The first part of this exercise was to draw a grid and fill it with faces.  Faces that are also drawn.  By hand.  What?  But I don't draw I protested (to myself).  I'm just not doing this.  But it looks like fun!  I have these angel/devil conversations with myself fairly frequently...  Ok I will try it, but I'm not going to post it if it looks really bad...oh what the hell I will post it anyway.

As you can see, I will NOT be quitting my day job to draw portraits, but it was pretty fun I had to admit, and you can see they are human cartoon-y type faces that your average four-year-old might draw right?

The next step was to make an acrylic background and "draw" a face onto said background with high-flow acrylics, and then spray it with watered down paint to make it more abstract.  I used gold "Smooch" spray ink instead of watered down paint.  I'm lazy like that because I would have had to mix it up in a spray bottle, etc. where I could just pull the ready-made spray off the shelf!  And I like the hint of mica.

 

I wanted to put these pieces together with my "girl power" block lettering page that I made for Daily Paper  Prompt 37, but I had three pages for a two-page spread, one of which was already committed to the page.  What to do?

Of course I needed to make a fold-out spread!

I planned how the three pages would work together but then I realized I had to do something with the back of the abstract girl page because it would be folded over when the book was closed.  I chose to emulate a neon sign advertising "girls, girls, girls" leaving the reader wondering about what provocative material might be inside (or if you're a reader of this blog, whether I'd taken leave of my senses).

However, I assure you I have not.  This symbol of exploitation opens up to my finished girl power spread.  I hope the contrast and message are self-explanatory.

Art Journal Tangents and Tactics # 5

This week, the Art Journal Tangents and Tatics challenge was called "Beach Umbrella".  The idea was to mask off strips of watercolour paper and then fill in the spaces with NeoColour II water soluable crayons.  this would work well with any other water-based media.  I am not going to get into the process into any more detail because there is a tutorial including printed instructions for you to watch right here!

This was a bunch-o-fun and was reasonably quick to do.  You should try one - I know you want to!

Art Journal Tangents and Tactics - # 3 and # 4

I have combined the past two Art Journal Tangents and Tactics (AJTT) from Tammy at Daisy Yellow.  These have been in various stages of completion for the past few weeks but I wanted to wait to do one post when everything was as done as it was going to get. 

AJTT was about making an accordoin book from a manilla file folder.  I had a lot of fun with this usine magazine images.  I left a space on the back because I pallned to add it into one of my journals, but otherwise I decorated the front and back sides.

I used NeoColour II crayons around the outside of each image and then painted an outline in acrylic and sponged some more acrylics through sequin waste.  I then added lots of gel pen doodles until I felt like there was enough going on.  You can see I added a little velcro square to the flap.

Here is the back.

I used the same technique here but stuck to a simpler pallette.  And you can see my little velcro  square that will attach to the flap to close it.  More about that later...

I had this done and then turned my attention to AJTT #4, which was using a basic grid (not measured) as the backdrop for a journal spread.  This was my first one:

I used a real mixture of stuff in this and had a lot of fun.  Magazine images, junk mail (crown), postage, transparencies, tape, music etc. and lots of doodling.  I tried to have some things overlap between grids but it was stilll quite orderly.  I was pleased.

Well, then I saw that Tammy had posted a new blog post - she called it the Grid Collage Expansion Pack and it blew my mind!  It was a grid but not nearly as controlled.  I loved it because I am used to both using and ignoring the grid background I so often use with my bingo card backgrounds.  I also knew what I was going to do with that accordion book...

The accordion book closure first gave me a little challenge.  When I attached the covers together with the velcro closure the other side popped open, leaving me with this. 

So not what I was going for!  I put out a call for help on the Daisy Yellow FB group and got several ideas - I settled on a closure with flat yarn that would fit nicely under the book without being too bulky.  So here is the finished page - it is the final page in my Sketchbook Project journal (and no that does not mean the book is done - I am not working in order, but I think last time I checked I was about half done). 

I had so much fun making this page and I think it shows.

 

Art Journal Tangents and Tactics - #2

This week's challenge from Tammy at Daisy Yellow for her Art Journal Tangents and Tactics series was to make a spread (or page divided in half) showing your "glass half empty" and "glass half full" sides.  I think we all have both depending on the day! 

I wrote my "negatives" upside down because they are really the flip side of the positive side.  Base colours were made by mixing acrylic paint with gesso and trying not to blend too thoroughly.  All paints, found stamps (Motrin cap, pen end, paint brush) and my own messy writing! 

This was a fun exercise and I highly recommed Tammy's tutorial. You can also find links to other participating artists pages there.

Yet another challenge - Art Journal Tangents and Tactics

So remember when I said I really didn't have time for any more challenges, well as if the Daily Paper Prompts wasnt' enough - there's a weekly challenge (also on Daisy Yellow) called Art Journal Tangents and Tactics.  Tammy has gone to a lot of trouble writing down step by step instructions and even providing a video of each weekly technique.  I could not resist the first one, which was to make a "starburst" with gouache or watercolour.  I don't have either (or if I do I don't know where they are...) so I used the trusty Derwent Inktense blocks again.  Balck feld tip pen and white gel pen doodles and accents added after the card was dry(ish).  They work better if the card is completely dry, but patience is not my strong suit when it comes to watchinb paint dry!  This is not currently in an art joural but it might be one day!  It's an altered bingo card, prepped with gesson (no surprises here folks).  I may actually do another one for my Sketchbook Project - you never know!  [Update - I did do another one - it's in my next post!]

 To see more Starburst art from other artists participating in this fun challenge go here!