The last Art Journal Session of the year is on Monday, 4th December at The Studio in Leicester. Inspired by all things sparkly and shiny around this time of the year, I’ve come up with this shiny Christmas double-spread:
If you’d like to come to the session, please let me know. I remembered to take step-by-step photos this time, so instructions follow…
Continue readingOne of the joys (and tribulations) of being a mixed media artist is that you have a great deal of choice when coming to the question of a favourite technique. The fact that the latest challenge at Less is More is conventionally a card craft project helpful narrows down the choice. I found it hard to pick a favourite, so here are two cards based on the effects I most like the results of.
We’re about to redecorate our lounge in shades of grey-blue, so I was commissioned to create another altered art canvas similar to this one, but with a matching blue as the main colour. It’s taken a day to do and has laser-cut, 3D printed, buttons, wood and polyurethane-cast elements as well as a few embellishments from my collection.
In my efforts to move things out of The Studio, I have started making things for sale. That, in turn, has created stock – for the first time ever – which then needs its own storage, but that’s another issue. I bought these papier-mache frames a long while back, originally to use for Powertex painting. Instead, I have created a weathered faux-zinc frame complete with moulded flower motif. I popped in an acrylic mirror for good measure. What do you think?
Another in my series of mini-characters is this unsure cuboidroid with a faux brushed steel finish. By combining various paints and varnishes, the dulled patina plays against the satin clean metal. I am amazed at how small an expression is required to anthropomorphise an otherwise inanimate/non-human object.
This little chap/ess is available to purchase – do contact me if you’re interested. Previous characters are here.
I’ve had a little bit more ‘me time’ in the studio and decided out of the blue to create something from scratch using my 3D printer. The second time I created this little chap was a lot quicker than the first. I had learnt how to do it in the preceding four hours and then neglected to save the file before it crashed… I’m in the process of kitting out another two of these mini sculptures and will be making a series, I think. I’m dubbing them ‘cuboidroids’ – cuboid droids. Two reasons: I had to call them something and ‘blockheads’ was already taken; a quick Google search showed no one had concatenated the two words together, ever. If only I had the cash to trademark the name.
This down-in-the-dumps rust bucket stands 9cm/3½” high and is for sale if anyone wants to make me an offer. Or commission a custom cuboidroid…
I recently took delivery of a new Dylusions art journal – the 8×5″ landscape format – and last night I took the opportunity to experiment with a 3×5″ Gelli plate and some DecoArt fluid acrylics. Bubble wrap of two sizes and a mosaic stencil added a bit of pattern, and then rubber stamping with acrylic paint added the highlights. Finally, some cut letters as masks and a sponged layer of acrylic paint finished off the page nicely.
Continue reading I’ve previously made a ‘book’, to hold various ephemera, as a leaving present for the minister of my previous church. So when it came to putting together another bespoke binder for prayer flags, a photo book and collected digital photos, I built on my previous project and created a faux leather effect ‘book’.
The ‘book’ is just about the size of a sheet of A4 and about 1½” deep. Constructed from 2mm greyboard and 5mm foamcore board, the canvas cover is painted with a mix of rose madder and burnt sienna acrylic paints to resemble worn leather. The spine text is pressed in with an embossing tool to give an impression of embossed foiling, whilst the frontplate uses careful shading to achieve the same effect.
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I’ve taken the opportunity today to complete this month’s Pick A Stick Challenge. Ten steps, in order, mixing up the media and adding collage elements. There are more and more taking part in the challenge, and it’s the perfect way to journal when the artistic muse has wandered off.
Today’s page marks a landmark in my art journaling – it’s the final spread in my very first complete journal. I have at least four journals on the go at any time, but this is the first to be filled since I started journaling back in 2011. I wanted to play with different layers, working on making the text stand out and the background to support, but not over power it. Choosing media by its opacity helped me achieve this outcome: transparent Cobalt Blue Hue allowed some of the paper white to show through the underpainting, whilst the semi-transparent Phthalo Blue provided the background to the text, printed in opaque white gesso. Spritzing with the mister and adding visual texture with stamps brought everything together.
