ALBOTAT: Do It Now

A spread in my small Dylusions journal to 'document' what I've learned from the events of the past 18 months and that is to..

'do it now' 

ie don't put it off 'til tomorrow because you never really know whats going to happen tomorrow do you - whether its good or bad... so {try to} do it now, today... free up tomorrow by doing it today.

 This spread started off like this...

... a sketched page that had been in there a while and I wasn't sure how to progress it - but the empty space in the bottom left hand corner was perfect for adding words to!

This was a relaxing spread to create - lots of sketching and pencil colouring (Faber Castell Polychromos), the black pen I used is a Posca.

Holiday makes..... Part 2

OK, I packed bits and pieces to use when making things on holiday but I can't resist using pieces I find in the room or collect from the restaurants... look at the pretty stationery! be a shame to leave that sitting in a drawer...

I really enjoyed creating with limited supplies - make you think a bit more, be resourceful with what you have and what you can find around you .... such as all these bits and pieces: I can't resist using pieces I find in the hotel room or collect from the restaurants... look at the pretty stationery! it'd be a shame to leave that sitting in a drawer...

 LtoR - the daily newsletter telling guests what's going on each day at the resort and what the weather is expected to be (in my experience of Mexico - that would be 'hot, hot & ... erm.. hotter!') - its useful for sketching onto or as underpaper or background paper; the lovely orange patterned pieces are all stationery (invites to evening events, envelopes, writing paper etc); the bottle tops are from water bottles that are readily available all the time; restaurant consumables: 'spice' packet held chopsticks & doily was under a cup; couple of bits from the complimentary toiletries pack - toothbrush (I've been known to come home with quite a few of those - great for cleaning jewellery, flicking paint etc..), ear bud (great for paint spots and rubbing paint along pages edges... and last but not least - the hero ball point pen!... I also had a very useful drink stirrer but that didn't make the trip home. :o)

Here's a page I made using a panel cut from a mini cereal box (more about those tomorrow) covered in papers I took with me.  I drew on a few simple flower heads and painted and doodled detail on them....
I glued a panel of the stationery - I think this was the flap of an envelope - into my 6x6 sketchbook after realising it coordinated almost perfectly with the my doodled flowers I glued the panel onto the page.  To finish I drew lines around the panel and the page.

Next up is a page that I started at 2am in the morning when I couldn't sleep!  I love hexagons (you may have noticed! lol) and had packed a hexagon drawing stencil - the type we had a school (there's a circle one shown in the 'perfect kit' blog post)... so I drew this at night...

... and painted it the following lunchtime (using the Winsor and Newton watercolour paints...)

One more 'holiday makes' blog post to come..  when maybe I'll also show you the photo of me with the monkey!! (I kid you not! lol)

xx

Holiday makes..... Part 1

... this is what I do when I go inside away from the sun at lunchtime to cool down and prevent myself looking like an overcooked lobster  :o)  and the reason I pack my 'perfect art kit' as blogged here...

These pages were created in a 6x6in Daler Rowney sketchbook which I had been working in at home - using some pages for clean up/ghost gelli prints, and other pages were finished journal pages... its an 'in progress' book...

NB some of these images have been posted on Instagram or Twitter so if you follow me on those, apologies if you've seen them already, I wanted to share them here too as my poor neglected blog needs some attention and prettiness on its pages... :o)


This page started out with a gelli ghost print across the top, I doodled a flower on top and blocked out the print with Snowflake Fresco Finish. The pencil sketched lines were overdrawn with an ink drawing pen and left to dry before adding colour....

Colour was added with Winsor & Newton water colour paints.. I haven't been using these paints for very long so each piece is a learning curve...  I like how 'juicy' it looks!

This double spread was another gelli clean up/ghost print that ended up being a weird mix of colours (not quite lilac, not quite aqua - it just wasn't nice! it had to go).. so I added Snowflake/Chalk gelli prints on top hoping to knock back some of the colour - Snowflake/Chalk came to the rescue!
(I liked the fold-out long page but reeeeeeaaalllly didn't like the colour)

I really liked how the sketch looked on the back ground and it stayed like this for days.... but then I decided I had to 'man-up' and paint it!
It looks great 'rough' painted with watercolour paint direct onto the background - on this page I didn't block out the background colour and I like that some of background pattern can be see - it give the flower head & leaves some texture.

I think I took this photo outside (the one above is inside under 'yellow' lights) the colours are much more 'true'... the black lines work so well to define everything without being too heavy, focuses everything - and these lines were drawn with both a biro and ink pen - hard to tell the difference isn't it!
After 'killing' two ink pens with wet paint the biro became my hero pen! draws on pretty much anything! :o)

A lesson learnt - keep working on a page until happy! (though I still have a slight urge to break out the white pen!)

x

Sometimes its good... part 2

.... so remember the other week when I showed you my little sketchbook and it looked like this:

well I spilled paint on the cover by accident & so had to pretty it up- & now it looks like this (nothing that a touch of opaque Fresco Finish paint can't fix!):

I took the book on holiday with me - a nice portable size - I also took with me a 'travel kit of arty bits' - we went to Mexico for 2 weeks and I'm not good at laying in the sun (I don't go brown fast enough!)(and I get restless - unlike MrJoFY who happily lays in the sun ALL day!)- so I like to pack a 'things to do when the sun gets too hot!' emergency kit... (which probably helps to explain the weight of my suitcase lol)

Its not just the cover that has changed - the pages are looking different too.. as I started working in the book I realised that little flip up/flip out pages weren't the direction I was going in and so they were taken out and re-stuck in the back.. just in case I needed them (too interesting to throw away!)

(I like how these mini pages now flip up, down, sideways & over... interesting ... and great for 'hidden' journaling)

here's part of the 'entrance ticket' page:

On other pages I painted Snowflake Fresco Finish through stencils and then washed over them with Koh-i-noor watercolour (dye) paints and created a resist... then I doodled over the top - love how these turned out..

The page below was a little different - stenciled and painted over the top in 2 colours and then watersplashed the page - flowers on right are created by doodling over the white circles created by the water - trying to disguise or make use of them..

 This page was filled by one big word, and then later added borders - once you start doodling its hard to stop!

Page filled with circles an flowers - doodling circles is very relaxing...

painting, stenciling, bit more painting... bit more stenciling...

The sketchbook is now very inky/painty and is only just closing shut(with the help of a VERY big bulldog clip!) - and this is  how the page edges look - great colour combo...

So thats the quick tour through some of the pages of my mini sketchbook.. I'd really encourage you to try pages/books that are out of your comfort zone or not what you would normally reach for when creating - you might find something that you really like..

xx

Sometimes its good...

... to climb out of your comfort zone and try something new.. something a bit different...

.. which is why I bought this little 15x15cm sketchbook:

This sketch book is almost half the size of my preferred choice- 25x25cm... but the biggest (and slightly intimidating) difference is that it is not spiral bound!  Lovely sewn signatures... it is clean, pristine and chunkier than I imagined it to be when I ordered it online... - about an inch thick...
I looked at it for about 2 weeks before I picked it up and said sternly to myself - 'its just a book... something to play in... man up and do something to it'

so I did....

firstly I cut these up - postcard size pages that have been on my desk waiting for 'the perfect project'... (putting them to good use and tidying my desk -bazinga!)

Little lift up pages/spaces for hidden journaling/notes etc.... I stuck them in with Washi Tape so that they could be moved if need be....

 

and then I started painting pages, just randomly painting them - not thinking too much - just putting colour onto the pages - blank enough so that I could work on top of it at a later date...

.. on this background I´ve used an idea that Junelle Jacobsen showed for creating a background - entrance tickets (though she left hers sticking up a little at the edges - I preferred mine fully stuck down.. smoother) - and I have whole roll of  engrance tickets that need using up so I covered the entire double spread with them... (i could´ve covered every page in this book and I would still have tickets left! lol)..
The letters are stamped with a set of letters that I keep in their box and just ink them up - I like the way they stamp up as a block (and the whole set was only £1!!)

.. and once I started altering and working in the book I couldn't stop.... and I'm still playing in it - I'll show you some more pages in a few days...

I'm so happy I moved away from my normal sketchbook size and into something new - I use this book in a completely different way - its almost like a journal... a play book - my 25x25cm sketchbook will always be my 'working' book...

and thats a good thing...

Fun in the sun...

.... the sun this weekend was too nice to miss but I had some colour ideas I wanted to explore so I took everything I needed outside... I sat in the sun and while the freckles where topping up I painted flowers in my sketchbook - trying out different colour combinations...
Its all fairly simple stuff but I got a lot out of it....

My 'go to' colours for this stamp design are Blood Orange, Haystack & Pumpkin Soup...

.... but I wanted to see what other colour combo's worked...and I cross out the ones that 'don't'..

I LOVE Squid Ink - its like a dark aged lavender - Love it!

... and love these two colours also - purple with orange (Eggplant, Blood Orange, Haystack)!! what's not to love! lol

so there it is - a not-seen-in-public-very-often page out of my sketchbook!  I hope its inspired you to try different colour combinations with the JOFY flower stamps..

a learning curve...

 ... sometimes you have to revisit things.. I was trying to draw a circle split into 12 segments - its been a 'while' since I've done that, or needed to do that, but thanks to youtube I found out how...

.. which sparked pretty patterns - flowers, with the construction lines around the outside... 

.... I used to love drawing things with a compass when I was a child - patterns, rows of circles, flowers and faces - I tried to resist drawing a face, really I did - but in the end it was too hard to resist...

.... even the little character that evolved looks slightly disappointed with my lack of willpower... lol

Those of you who follow me on twitter might have seen these pictures over the weekend but I'm trying to post less to Twitter and more on the blog - poor neglected little blog!  I'll try not repeat myself too much!

What I did on holiday.... Part 1

.... normally when we go on holiday I take some art 'stuff' with me (because I start to get twitchy in a 'I-can't-lay-on-this-sunlounger-for-much-longer,-I-need-to-be-doing-something' type way) and sometimes the kit doesn't get used, so this holiday I pared down what I took: 1 ink pad, set of alphabet stamps, some blank tags, neocolor watersoluble pastels, black pen, white pen, waterbrush, scissors, rubber, & a pencil.  ooh and a small light sketchbook... now that might sound like a lot but it isn't really - quite a basic kit... and more importantly - NO RULER.. nope, nothing to draw a straightline with - and I like a straight line - I like neat... but I have been embracing my messy, just-go-with-the-flow side recently- and its been very liberating.

It took 'til about day 10 of this holiday before said twitch started (thats good for me) and so I created this, inspired by Kate Crane's grid calendars. 

She uses a block of colour for each day but I wanted the grid to be coloured and the boxes to be white/pale....  for me the most important piece of this was to create a freehand grid - no ruler and not being too concerned if the boxes weren't square, level or central.... focussing on the grid rather than the blocks.

Love NeoColor water soluble pastels - vibrant colours and really easy to work with...  and oh, not only was I drawing grids without a ruler but I was sketching too!  actual sketching! 

and all this with a pencil in one hand and a cocktail* in the other! .. multi-tasking!!

* speaking of cocktails I can't recommend a 'godmother' cocktail enough - vodka & amaretto!!!!!!!!!!! How have I got to the age of 40 without having tried one of those!  A very tasty tipple.. possible too tasty.. lol

xx

Big sketchbook...

My big sketchbook is where I think about bigger projects - sketches, colours, to-do lists - this way of thinking comes from studying for City & Guilds where the courses require you to keep a sketchbook that shows process and progression... it definitely helps me focus... (and I'm less likely to loose a sketchbook than bits of paper here and there!)

aaanyhoo this page is samples of things that didn't turn out quite as planned as I was working on them, but even though the end result wasn't successful I really liked the colours.. 

And more importantly I learned something along the way:  its seems that embossing powders do have a shelf life (I've often wondered if they do) because the older (gifted to me) pot of embossing powders weren't sticking - they sort of melted into the page rather than sit on the surface as you'd expect... still resisted ink but not with a nice sharp image)

But as I said I really liked the colour combination so I thought I'd show the photo. Distress inks used are frayed burlap and broken china, the stamp is Purple Onion, and the lovely patterned paper on the right-hand side is Rum&Raisin from PaperArtsy.

Little sketchbook....

My big & little sketchbooks are where I unload my brain...
(by the way - I may have shown these on twitter so if you saw them via that - oops -sorry! but not everyone tweets.. and sometimes I wonder if I should - because if I didn't I'd get a lot more other stuff done! lol)
here's a page from my little sketchbook (14x14cm):

This page makes me smile for several (well 7 actually!) reasons:
1. the pink Cosmic Shimmer spray
2. the Banana Frog border stamp
3. I like dahlias - very much
4. I grew that lovely flower in my window box
5. mmmmn book text
6. tab punch!
7. photo printed with my Pogo printer (slightly dodgy print quality sometimes but I like it anyway!)