Get Messy Art 101 - Week 3

This season Get Messy is breaking up the weeks into themes and this week we focused on acrylics. Now I'll admit there was a time I couldn't stand acrylic paint. It dried to quickly and I could never get a nice blend between the colors with out brushstrokes showing. So it's a bit funny that now those are the quality of acrylic I like best. 

For this week's study (that's what I'm going to call these large 22"x30" pieces) I went full on abstract. This type of all over pattern I've been seeing a lot recently and wanted to try. I took advantage of the various properties of acrylic paint to achieve it. Overall I'm happy with it but my favorite is how I let go of trying to write perfectly and embraced my often sloppy handwriting for some "hidden" journaling. This way the writing also creates an organic pattern that helps to break up more traditional shapes and blocks of color. 

And for my own record, these are my art journal spreads for the week of acrylic, inspired by a prompt and tutorial. 

Get Messy Art 101 - Week 2

This week was about texture. And I'm proud of myself for actually taking the time to notice new textures around me. My favorite thing I found was actually a piece of packaging in some junk mail. It was this really plasticy styrofoam that I used to stamp the silver paint with.

The yellow paint definitely dictated the colors of this, since it was sprayed first over texture paste. I used textured paper, thread, foil, and stamping to create different textures. I also like the slight dimension achieved from using the bubble mailer. 

For this season's art journal, I've settled on a color scheme. I'm just loving how they all go together at the moment and how minimal it's looking right now. 

Get Messy Art 101 - Week 1

This new Get Messy season is all about changes for me. I'll be posting my Get Messy Habit on Sundays, so I have time to work through all the extra prompts that we are getting now. Also I'm mainly working on a large 22"x30" piece of watercolor paper and I want to give myself time to complete whatever that turns out to be.

Towards the end of this week, I did miss working in a journal, so I grabbed one I had made a few months ago and I'll be using that as well.

The first week's theme was all about watercolor. So I used watercolor, gouache and paint pens on this piece. I had no plan or idea of where this would go when I started working on it. This definitely evolved over the week and I just kept adding to it everyday until I thought it was done.

 

As for my journal I just made one quick spread that I really love. It may be my favorite one yet. I made a watercolor color chart last weekend and ever since, I've been obsessed with color swatches. I need to remember that and make them a go to element in my work. 

I've had a set of gouache for a while, but never gotten around to using it. I was actually thinking of adding it to my purge pile when we got a prompt to use gouache to paint faces. It was fun to make these but I need to work more with gouache to figure out the proper consistency. I tend to add to much water at this point. 

I'm really looking forward to getting started on my next 22"x30". Can't wait to see what prompts and tutorials next week brings!

Colour Blast - Grey Matter

We're sharing the next round of Colour Blast today and I'm excited to see all the journals! I've linked the other artist's blogs and Instagrams (Julia, Lauren Blood, Moriah, Lauren Brown, Riet and Vanessa) so you can keep up to date with how all the journals are progressing.

I was sent Vanessa's Grey Matter journal for the second round and let me say it took my love of gray/grey to a whole new level. The most basic of grays is made by mixing white and black but there is so much more variations beyond that.

It was also great making these pages specifically with Vanessa in mind. Having taken her Totems class and forever stalking her Instagram, there are definite symbols and themes that come to mind when I think about her.

I picked this pearlescent gray as my favorite shade, though it was a tough contest. I almost had to make brackets!

And now on to the next color!