Apologies for dropping the C-bomb in May! When creating things for sale at craft fairs, it is best to start early. You never know what might crop up between now and the end of the year, and to avoid a last-minute rush, I start early. The door hanger blanks arrived last week, and rather than keep moving them around the studio, I got on with my plan for them.
In my description of The Studio, I refer to it being (as you’d hope) a working studio. Now, not many people get to see what’s happening at any time as I tidy up (or hide) current projects. As you can see from the BTS (behind the scenes) photo below, it’s not always possible to see the work tables. This is what’s on my desk, today, 24th May 2025:
With the start of a more frequent posting schedule on this ‘ere blog, I’m kicking off with a workshop project that I led just before Easter. The brief was to have a craft project a group of retired men (70s-90s)would be able to complete in just over an hour. They are used to me bringing projects they are eventually proud to display, but are always nervous they aren’t artists and worried that they won’t get results I reassure them they will. In view of it being Easter, a cross was a suitable starting point and I decided on a bit of string art:
For this month’s Bible journaling illustrations, I have pulled together five verses on the loose theme of ‘divine protection’. This is the penultimate set of verses chosen with the help of ChatGPT, and potentially the penultimate set of verses I shall be illustrating in my current journaling Bible. The good news is, though, that I have two new Bibles in which to work – more on that in future posts.
Once again, I have used my Color Cubes for palette inspiration (even using a random number generator to pick them) and Faber-Castell Polychromos colouring pencils.
In this month’s art journaling session, it’s all about perspective. During my college course, I completed a sketch with two-point perspective, and it was tough going to get the geometry correct. For the layout in my journal, I stuck with a single vanishing point for my focal point image (see what I did there?). A step-by-step tutorial follows the break – apologies for the lack of video this time, there were technical issues…
As promised, despite no longer holding Bible journaling sessions at The Studio, I have continued to journal in my own Bible. Here are five more verses, this time on the loose theme of ‘God’s Guidance’. Given there are so few pages left in my journaling Bible, I enlisted the help of ChatGPT to choose verses specifically from these gaps. I cut and pasted the results into my notes and somewhat lazily didn’t check that the translation was the same. Happily, the meanings are identical to my NIV even if the exact wording isn’t the same.
Regular readers of this ‘ere blog know that I am a quilter. This month at the art journal session, we combined mixed media with a quilting technique (which I have yet to try in fabric). We made a watercolour masterboard and then with a lot of slicing and pasting created a bargello-style background in our journals. With some basic stitched panels as a focal point we ended up with this:
Rooted in the historical tradition of the Bargello Palace in Florence, Italy, the Bargello quilt pattern is characterized by its use of long, narrow strips of fabric meticulously sewn together. This technique creates an illusion of dynamic movement and depth within the quilt.
I’ve found five verses that referred to us being God’s children and created templates using my normal combination of inspiration and AI image generation. I’ve not used watercolour pencils for a while, so I decided to get them out for these illustrations. Here are my samples, and below the break you can find the download link for my free PDF template for the ‘family’ themed pieces.
When I’m looking for potential techniques and ideas for my art journaling sessions, I often reach for analogue sources: books. For this evening’s session, I took inspiration from ‘101 More Mixed Media Techniques’. In the fabrics & fibers [sic] section, there is information on sticking and covering elements and pages. And so my cloth collage theme was born and this is what I came up with:
For this month’s Bible journaling theme, I’ve chosen the loose title of ‘watchful hearts’. I’ve tried to collect verses which encourage anticipation of Christ’s return and getting your heart right with God.
