I chose to keep this little piece of altered art under wraps until I’d featured it on my DecoArt TV shows on Hochanda early last month. I’d also left the originals with John the floor manager/set designer to use, and had to make a second set with what was left of my prepped demos. Building on the 6½” high paper-mâché letter forms, I’ve used a lot of mixed media tricks to make this home decor piece. Continue reading
Tonight’s art journal session theme is ‘one word prompt’. I’ve done two more reflective, emotional one word prompts – ‘tired’ and ‘recurrent’, but wanted to show that the theme could be more frivolous as well.
This started as an acrylic background using various yellow paints and sprays, before whiting out with rough brushed gesso and then detail work with Pitt artist pens and Ergosoft colour pencils and a smidge of Posca pen work.
Something about this page reminds me of naff pub decor. For the anaglypta effect, I used the embossing paste through the stencil, let it dry, scumble glazed with the tan colour and then sponged the darker colours through the stencil to catch the raised areas. Napkin decoupage and an image transfer of my own typography completes the layout.
Used on this page:
I’ve snuck this creation in between finishing a commissioned art journal, and making the samples for tomorrow’s fabric printing/painting workshop. The Pick A Stick Challenge for the uninitiated is ten techniques or journal prompts pulled at random by one of the four coordinators of the challenge, and you must then create your page using those steps in the order in which they were pulled. This is what I came up with for June’s ten sticks 🙂
I guess you may be noticing by now there’s a common thread for my recent art journal pages… I’m using supplies provided by Judith at Woodware for my art journaling shows on Hochanda. She asked to borrow the journal for a Retailers’ Training Event at the beginning of July, and I’m determined to finish off all 21 double spreads to demonstrate the versatility of the media, particularly the Royal Talens Amsterdam paints. This layout exemplifies the vividness of the colours available in the 24 pack.
Used in this layout:
I started this page with no real idea of where it was going to end up – scraping the paint on with an old gift card was the start of the background, before I added the retro oblongs using one of the same colours. The rest built up from there using the stamp set as inspiration.
Used on this page:
I love the translucency of a thin coat of gesso – pop that over a pointillistic background and I can almost imagine it’s a frosted glass panel. Reversing the stencil direction and moving it into the spaces of the previous colour developed the pattern over a sprayed page. I sealed the Distress Sprays with the solvent based spray varnish – it doesn’t move the water-reactive inks and stabilises them enough to work over them with waterbased media.
For this layout:
I’m still trying to master the one-stroke folk art style roses. This was another practice page… and I did some brush-stroked text too.
For this layout:
It’s been a busy week in The Studio supervising Harry whilst he was here on work experience – a really worthwhile experience for both of us. I started this page last weekend, and finally finished it this morning. Interesting timing given the ructions going on in this minuscule corner of the world since Thursday’s vote…
Hi, my name is Harry and I am finishing a week’s work experience at Neil’s Studio. My commission was to design, make and blog 100 wedding favours. The wedding theme was liquorice allsorts. These favours are going to be collected by my client this afternoon and then used at her wedding in the summer. I was told to narrow down 10-15 initial ideas to three and then prototype and present them to my client on Tuesday evening. She chose her preferred favour and then was to return to the Studio in three days time to collect them. During that time, I had to make all hundred and blog about them.