Art Journal
Art Journaling Page: Art for art’s sake

Posted on 6th July 2015 by Neil

I was watching a film last night, and notice for the first time the motto above the roaring lion on the MGM titles: ‘ars gratia artis’ – art for art’s sake. What more apt saying could there be for an art journal page? This is part two of my bleeding tissue layouts – I stuck down the dried used up tissue strips using matte multi-medium over an acrylic paint background. I added more strips of Tim Holtz tissue wrap and tissue tape as well as some washi tape from Ikea. Finally, the text was printed using colour laser printer onto imitation rice paper to keep the tissue paper theme. The laser print has the benefit of not moving when using wet mediums over the top, unlike inkjet printed equivalents.

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Art Journal
Art Journal Page: Nature’s Little Fireworks

Posted on 5th July 2015 by Neil

I’ve been a bit busy this last week getting things done in the garden (why did I have so much decking put in?), and getting samples made with the latest Craftwork Cards collections ready for the TV shows next week. Oh, and leading a workshop at The Studio yesterday at which there were some super mixed media art journal covers made.

And I got asked – what are we doing on Monday night? Referring, of course, to my monthly art journaling session. At the time, I couldn’t remember what I idea I’d had, but it came back to me today, and this is the result of my trying out the technique.

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Original Designs
I’m featured artist at SuzyMosh Creations Challenge Blog

Posted on 4th July 2015 by Neil

It’s great to be recognised as an artist, and what better way than to be chosen as a ‘featured artist’ on a challenge blog. Thank you to Suzy Mosh who has done just that on her zentangle challenge site:
http://suzymoshcreations.blogspot.co.uk/p/thats-new-to-me-weekly-challenge.html.

There’s still a day to enter your work to be in with a chance of winning my tangle pattern book, and another week after that to show off your work. The work on show in the entries is superb and well worth a look too!

3D Projects
Scented Tea Light Gift Card

Posted on 28th June 2015 by Neil

I know there are myriad ways to make similar cards, but since I’ve been reminded that I offered to do some projects using the Eazi-Score board from Diamond Card Craft I’ve designed this version from scratch specifically for those using the board. You may remember I also made a tutorial video using their Eazi-Box score board to make multi-sided shaped boxes.

Just a quick note on the Eazi-Score board before the tutorial: it’s designed for use with A4 card stock and you can simply place your card to the guide bar and score using one of the individually named channels. It’s easy to make your Half Fold – Gate Fold – Stepper – Kinetic – Shutter – A5 – DL cards and more. For most projects, there is NO need to cut your card to fit the board as it was designed for use with A4 card. Boxes are just as easily made ( box template and instructions are included with the board) and it’s designed for left or right handed crafters. There are 5 Embossing patterns too – Heart – Diamond – Flower – Butterfly and Wavy line perfect for making your own embellishments.

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Tangle Patterns
Tiling a tangled pattern

Posted on 25th June 2015 by Neil

Ever had one of those moments where you’re half way through a project and wondering why on earth you started at the scale/level of detail/size of page that you did? This one is a case in point. I have wanted to have a personalised pattern on the background of my blog page for some time now, and decided to draw one in pen and ink. I wanted it to tile perfectly so that it would scroll with the page, and I did it the old fashioned way

Take a sheet of paper, and start your pattern, drawing to the edge of the sheet, but not over it. Then slice it into quarters. Eeek.

Rotate each quarter so that the inside corner now points to the outside, and stick back together on the underside. I used 160gsm card to help with the lining up, but as you can see, my cutting wasn’t all that accurate… it still worked out though.

Fill in the rest of the page, again not allowing any new drawing to go over the edges. This piece is 21cm square in real life, and drawn with a Lamy Safari fountain pen with extra fine nib using Noodler’s Bulletproof Black Ink. It took around 6 hours to do.

I then scanned in the image at high resolution, tidied up the image in Photoshop a little (mainly removing evidence of the cut edges) and it was all done. The final ’tile’ looks like this:

And just to prove it tiles nicely, here’s a sample roughly 5 wide and 2 tall…

And for my next trick, I’ll be adding some colour digitally 🙂
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Arts in Worship
Arts in Workship: more sermon sketchnotes

Posted on 24th June 2015 by Neil

Here are some more sketchnotes that I have done during sermons at Whetstone Baptist Church. It’s a great way to take notice of what’s being said, as well as potentially emphasising different points that develop as the visual language of the sketchnote does its own thing. Working in real time is an interesting challenge, and with nothing more than the title at the start, the rest of the page is unplanned. And if you’ve noted the themes are all similar, that’s because these services were in the lead up to a fundraising weekend when we were all challenged to give sacrificially toward the construction of a new church building designed to meet the needs of a growing congregation and a changing community. We are now so close to our goal of just over £3 million – it’s so exciting. If you’d like to help out, a donation button can be found along with details of our building plans on the church website here.

[completed in Moleskine pocket sketchbook with Lamy Safari fine nib pen with Noodler’s Bulletproof black ink] Continue reading →

Art Journal
Art Journal Page: My Left Hand & Me

Posted on 23rd June 2015 by Neil

I’ve no idea why this idea popped into my head before I was fully awake this morning. Aside from, perhaps, art journaling being on my mind as I’m leading a workshop on Saturday… A quick dog walk and fitting some artificial turf helped my alertness level meet my creative muse and out came the paint and Sharpies. The background was pre-done and is a combination of distress paints. Over this I traced my hand, then painted over the rest of the page with Dylusions white paint on a make up sponge. The thin layer allows the background to show through, as well as sealing the page for the Sharpies. One of the unique selling points of the Dylusions paints is that it doesn’t clog nibs – and that is very true – the Sharpies drew perfectly with no annoying bleed or blocked nibs (a sharp contrast to, say, drawing on gesso). Further embellishment with my Signo broad white pigment gel pen and it is done.

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Art Journal
Art Journal Page: Industrial Grunge

Posted on 18th June 2015 by Neil

The background for this art journal page was a little bit of a happy accident. I’d covered the page with swipes of dark acrylic paints with a hint of picked raspberry, and feeling it was too dark, I then used what was left on a blending tool I’d been used to apply Dylusions Squeezed Orange Paint to lighten it, and a superb rusty effect came into being. I embellished it with some Vintage Photo Distress Embossing Powder for the grid work, stamped a couple of times with the blueprint in archival inks and then added the text using a combination of archival inks on stamps, freehand drawing and painting, and my trusty pigment pens. As normal, took me as long to find the sentiment, but I love this quote – really does explain the rationale behind my art journaling!

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3D Projects
A little upcycling: converting a cutlery canteen

Posted on 16th June 2015 by Neil

I’m determined to have a clear out some of the things I’ve kept as ‘they’ll come in handy’ to make room for things I actually use. To that end, I’ve upcycled a shabby (empty) old cutlery canteen that was previously being kept in my grandfather’s old shed, and then languished in my outhouse/garage and shed for even more years. I stripped out the innards, sanded everything back and revarnished with a dark oak polyurethane varnish. I relined it with ‘antique red’ felt, and it now complements the lounge decor as a handy hidey-hole for the remotes and glasses I find necessary to have the TV in focus.

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Art Journal
Art Journal Page: Tears of a Clown

Posted on 12th June 2015 by Neil

I’m leading an art journaling workshop at the end of June, and thought I’d get a few more foregrounds on my many backgrounds in my various art journals. This spread already had the colour (distress inks over gesso with stencilled water bleaching) and the droplets (a Designs by Ryn rubber stamp). I searched in vain for a quote on water drops, but there was something about this phrase that sparked off the image of Pierrot, and the rest of the page came together.

The distress inks, being water reactive and dye based, reacted with the white pigment ink, white pigment pen and white acrylic paint I used, even after I tried to stabilise it with hairspray. I got round it using layers, and drying with a heat tool immediately after applying it. I added colour with Bombay India Inks, and coloured pencils. The harlequin tape is from Tim Holtz Idea-ology tissue tape range.

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