Tangle Patterns
Tangle Pattern: 25 Castle Street

Posted on 22nd January 2016 by Neil

This week, I had a day off and using a special offer voucher I took myself off to Liverpool for a day trip – just because I could. Over the day, I walked 15 miles around the city, took in both cathedrals, a couple of art galleries, had a pint in The Cavern Club and spent a lot of time looking up, and down alleys, enjoying the varied architecture and juxtaposition of money versus old dock buildings, and old versus new.

Ever on the lookout for new patterns, I came across this stone carving above an access archway aside 25 Castle Street – which appeared to be a mercantile area back in the day with fabulous mosaic building titles and fancy copper roofs.

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Art Journal
Art Journal Page: Impossible

Posted on 21st January 2016 by Neil

For February’s Art Journal Session, we’ll be playing with emboss resist. It’s one of those techniques that is counter-intuitive, but is just planning layers to build up the effect using the embossing powder as the mask. I have to admit the way the text developed and fitted on the page was complete chance – but I like the way it isn’t obvious what the text is at first glance, reinforcing the sense of the quote.

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Art Journal
Art Journal Page: To See The Light [Wanderlust]

Posted on 17th January 2016 by Neil

Every other Saturday on the Wanderlust 2016 art journaling journey, we are given a prompt for a page in our ‘Wanderlust Book’. This week the prompt was ‘What I really want is…’, and this is my response to it. I thought it would be fun to do a time lapse video of me creating the page, showing the layers and techniques I have used. It’s been a while since I have painted the lettering on a page, and the DecoArt Fluid Acrylic Primary Yellow was a doddle to use, flowing well off the brush and absolutely opaque on application. I think I may have mentioned before how I won’t be working in a wire-o journal again… I need to replan pages to avoid my focal point being in the centre.

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Art Journal
Art Journal: Travel Journal [Wanderlust]

Posted on 12th January 2016 by Neil

This week’s class on Wanderlust (a year long course encouraging art journalers), we’ve been shown how one artist, Kate Crane, creates her own journal to fill in as she travels. Here’s my take on the project. Using two sheets of 12×16″ watercolour paper, I created the concertina pages, incorporating pockets into the overlaps. I’ve chosen to create faux leather straps to hold it together, rather than ribbon, and have made these from Grungeboard. Lots of layered DecoArt Media paints and interference paints over some embossing paste create the cover decoration, and the pages are covered in Distress Paints, DecoArt Media Titan Buff and Quinacridone Gold fluid acrylics and gesso applied through a couple of stencils. Now it’s ready for filling with travel goodness 🙂

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Art Journal
Art Journal Page: One Word [Wanderlust]

Posted on 4th January 2016 by Neil

In the first Wanderlust class of the year, we were prompted to use just one word on our pages – and yesterday, I was so tired. Poor sleep, recovering from a cold and a wet grey day all got poured into this art journal spread. Building on the learning gleaned from the first pick a stick challenge, I layered and layered, and am actually rather pleased with the result, as grey and drab as it is!

It’s the first time I’m working in a spiral bound art journal – this one is a Daler-Rowney Cachet Artist’s Mixed Media, A5 sized, 30 page, 250g/m². The paper is wonderful to work on, didn’t buckle under the wet media or bend with dry acrylic and basically took everything I threw at it. There’s just one issue – the spiral bound spine: those pesky wires. I’m sticking with the book for the Wanderlust classes, but will be looking for stitch bound journals in the future.

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Art Journal
Art Journal Page: Pick A Stick Challenge [January]

Posted on 3rd January 2016 by Neil

Gah! It’s so frustrating when you write a blog post and then there’s a glitch and it’s gone and even the saved drafts don’t seem to exist any more… so for the second time of writing:

During the week I was invited by an online friend I got to know through the Creative Chemistry 101 classes a few years ago to join a new art journaling challenge group she was organising. The Pick A Stick Challenge Group on Facebook is open to anyone who would like to join in and is an active art journaler. The premise is simple: each month, ten sticks are drawn at random from a pot of prompts covering media, styles and techniques. The only other stipulation is that you layer your page in the order the sticks are drawn. That is where the process becomes a little more tricky!

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Altered Art
New Year’s Day Project: Card Collage

Posted on 1st January 2016 by Neil

It’s the annual Christmas Party for my studio regulars tomorrow, and traditionally we do a project that upcycles the now defunct Christmas cards and wrapping paper. This time I thought we’d do a little home decor piece ready to pack away with the decorations to bring out again next Christmas. Here’s my example, created in a Tando Creative Mini Printer Tray (laser cut greybeard).

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Tangle Patterns
Tangle Pattern: Nouveau Border

Posted on 30th December 2015 by Neil

It’s been a little while since I’ve done a step-by-step for a border pattern, so I thought I’d add to my art nouveau inspired tangle patterns. Use as a corner piece or expand the leaves and tendrils to increase the border length, throwing in the odd flower for interest and break up the lines.

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Tangle Patterns
Tangle Pattern: Gothic Buds

Posted on 23rd December 2015 by Neil

Another tangle pattern, this time drawing on Gothic architecture for the inspiration. The stippling can be either very annoying or very therapeutic depending on what sort of pen you’re using! I recommend a soft tip on a stack of paper if you value peace and quiet, or a hard ballpoint nib straight to the paper on a hard surface if you’re dead set on annoying someone in the vicinity…

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Art Journal
Art Journal Page: Hope

Posted on 20th December 2015 by Neil

I wasn’t at all happy with my finished page yesterday… so I tried again today using what I had learnt from my experimentation. Keeping with the ‘3+1’ theme, I switched the same complementary colours. I am so much happier with the outcome – a cleaner, fresher, more impactful page.

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