World Watercolor Month - Week 3

I can't believe we are half way through the month already! This past week for me was getting back to my "roots" and doing more journal art rather than art pieces. And as much as I love seeing others' works, I found myself trying to create pieces that others would appreciate or acceptable rather than what I find inspirational. So I'm trying to learn from others but apply the learning to my style, if that makes sense. So here are the pieces from this past week!

Day 11

I had jury duty on Monday so I took my art supplies with me to pass the time. Good thing too, as I waited 6 hours and being excused. Luckily, I won't have to appear for at least 18 months. I found I don't like people staring at me while I painted. It's natural for people to be curious, but I kinda had performance anxiety.. Lol. 

Day 12

So if you have been following my art process, you know I usually start with a quote. I thought about things that scare me artistically.. There lots of things of course but I chose painting glass. It's difficult because of caustics (how glass reflects and refracts light) and dealing with different shadows and highlights. So I tried painting my olive oil carafe. I think for the most part I was successful. Green is so hard to render. Most greens that come in a kit or you buy are bright Christmas green and that's not what most greens in nature are. So you have to mix. What I found helpful is a YouTube video by Teoh Yi Chie about color mixing. So I used his method of using the color temperature to mix my greens.

Day 13

Today's focus was people. In my journal, I painted Dustin Pedroia, the second baseman of the Boston Redsox who happens to be my son's favorite player. The night before was the All-Star game and though Dustin was not chosen, I wanted to try to paint him. The second piece was done in my journal last year but I wanted to do it on a larger sheet so I can have it printed. I've been playing with creating skin tones so this was a great exercise. I'm liking Perylene Maroon as my red for skin tones.

Day 14

I practiced brush lettering with watercolors. Brush lettering with brush markers is hard enough but trying to use watercolors and blending the colors is really hard. So I practiced and created this.

Day 15

I had drawn a pair of eggplants in my journal the day before because I made baba ganoush which is a creamy dip made from roasted eggplants. And for day 15, I thought I'd created an illustrated recipe spread. Though both sets of eggplants look good, Ibreally liked the first better - I thought the color and the reflection were better in the first. 

Day 16

I have these inkpads that are dew drop shape. They are India ink pads which means once dry, they are permanent. So I used the inkpads to stamp a few dew drops on watercolor strips and immediately sprayed with water. Some of the ink ran but the shape remained. And while the paper was wet, I added watercolors. Once the whole thing dried, I used metallic gelly roll pens to draw embellishments. These will be bookmarks, though my kids said who uses bookmarks anymore.. Lol

Day 16.2

Here is a spread with lots of zentangle patterns and shaded with Neutral Tint (watercolor paint that is grayish). It's so much easier to shade with paint than with a pencil and a blending stump!

And finally Day 17

I used two colors, Quinacridone Gold and Ultramarine Violet and a straw to create this piece. I used water to create the flower shape and dropped quin gold and used the straw to blow. While wet, I dropped ultramarine violet. Together, they make mud, or a cool brown. Once dry, I dropped more violet so you can see a bit of the violet. I've been holding on to this quote for awhile and thought perfect with this painting. But I almost ran out of space!

This month so far has been so fun. I actually have to start planning for the upcoming school year next week and I actually have to go back to work the last week in July! I'm so happy that I got to spend time creating again. Hope you all have a great week!

My combination bullet journal/fauxbonichi

If you've followed my blog, you know that I have a bullet journal to keep track of appointments, tasks, notes, and whatever else I need to write. I also have a fauxbonichi that illustrates my day or I illustrate a quote that's meaning for me on a particular day. When I started teaching in January, I stopped drawing but kept my bullet journal for all the new to-do's. 

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have a new dotted Tomoe River journal which I wanted to use for a bullet journal. And because I love TR paper so much, I started to draw again.. So I thought, "why couldn't I combine my bujo and fauxbo?" And if I do a one-page daily, I can manage a quick doodle even when I'm busy.. 

So here are sample pages from my bujo/fauxbo combo..

This is my filled weekly/daily spread.

And for the weekend, I'm going to do half a page per day, just so I can start my weekly spread on the next page without wasting paper.

I even had time on Saturday to create a two-page illustrated quote to honor Mohammed Ali, which you see at the beginning.

My weekly spread for next week looks like this.. I decided to stencil the background a bit.

And I'm going to post on the weekend to show you my daily pages and other pieces I may create.. I hope you have a great week! I start teaching summer Algebra 2 tomorrow! Should be fun!

Hello, it's me.

It's been months, I know. I've really missed creating artwork. And now that the school year is over, I feel like I can breathe. It has been a challenging four months. Wait, it was only four months since I started teaching again? Wow, it seems longer. What started as a temporary job as a substitute for a teacher having surgery, it turned into a permanent teaching job! It was challenging because I had to juggle three classes that I was subbing and the three classes that I was actually teaching. Enough. Let's get back to art, sort of..

I created the piece you see above this morning. It felt good to draw and paint, though I'm clearly rusty. It's going to take more practice before I my confidence back to create. I feel like I've lost my mojo. And that's why I started with a quote and a Jane Davenport-style girl. I drew her with my favorite Platinum Carbon Pen and used Shinhan watercolors to paint. The writing was done with Posca white paint pen and a bit of shadowing done with Prismacolor colored pencil. Her face is a bit wonky but it's a start. And I love the quote.  So much of what limits us is in our minds. We create so many imaginary obstacles that prevents us from trying - I can't draw, I'm not creative, I can't do math. And I'm usually good about not letting those obstacles get in my way. I just need to start creating daily again, even if it's just random doodling.

Here are a few pages I've done since the last post. My birthday was May 1 and one of my students made a cake! It was a beautiful strawberry layer cake and it was delicious! She was thrilled that I drew her.

And for Mother's Day, I got a french press! Good bye, Keurig.. I love how the richness of the coffee flavor comes through with the press. And it is a bit more work cleaning it, it's definitely worth it!

My youngest got to attend a mock 1942 White House State Dinner as part of the 7th grade social studies program. Remember, she's the one who also participated in the re-enactment of the Battle of Gettysburg. Her social studies teacher is just wonderful. And on the right, you see a picture of the Bitmoji portrait of my IB SL students. If you don't know about Bitmoji, it is an app that creates an avatar of yourself and I had each student create his/her avatar and send it to me and I created the class picture. I even had a poster made for my classroom and I got each one to sign it! 

I drew this one during work. LOL. My second year students were taking the IB exams so on this day, I didn't have to teach at all but had to cover classes for other teachers and ended up not having time for lunch. But of course, I made time for art. Priorities...

And now, an update on planner. As you recall, I started to use the Bullet Journal system to plan because it wasn't enough to put things on my phone. I am not naturally organized so I have to force myself to be so I can get things done and oh yes, not forget to pick up your child from cheer practice. I was using a dotted (has dots in grids)  Moleskine journal for my BuJo and when I starated teaching, I used a gridded composition book. But then I found a journal with dotted Tomoe River papaer (I use journals with tomoe river paper for my art) from Nanami Paper. Unfortunately, it was sold out and not available until end of June. And so I searched for others like it and found an Etsy shop that sells them and I bought the last one. So this will be my new BuJo.. Yay! By the way, I used Microsoft Sway to create the slideshow. As a side note, I've been using Microsoft products, especiall OneNote to teach and I've come to really appreciate the suite of software that comes with Office.

Starting Over

Yep, I'm starting over. I have missed the process of daily journaling. And as I wrote in my journal, the break might have been a blessing. As I look through my recent Fauxbonichi entries, my pages were more creating art than daily reflections. And I think at the time, that's what I needed. I was growing as an artist and I had to explore that.

And yes, I've missed creating art, but I've really missed the daily reflection, the ability to brain dump at the end of the day, or write about my crazy day. You see, I get obsessive about things and that's all I can do. And I've discovered that I really suck at multi-tasking. I've been obsessive about my new teaching job, creating lessons, re-learning math I had forgotten, helping my seniors with their independent math research and getting them ready for their IB exams.. 

I think that's what happened to me with art. I got obsessive and couldn't stop. I think I've always been like this. But the problem is that I don't ever "finish" a project. I really need to find a balance between all the "have-to's" and all the "want-to's". Interesting, that was one of my goals for last year. Clearing, I still haven't learned to balance yet. 

So I'm starting again in my Fauxbonichi process. And for now, I'm just going to fill one page a day rather than two. My art probably won't be worth sharing, but I'm going to try to limit what I create to fit my day, rather than fitting my day around my art. I'm not sure how much I'll be blogging or sharing my art on Instagram, but I need to do this for me. 

The last few days..

Here is today's prompt... My pet. We found Vince at the Humane Society in Houston. We had looked at other dogs in various shelters and in fact, we had picked another dog. But after thinking it over, we decided that the other dog was too small for our family. After looking at Petfinder.com, my oldest daughter wanted to look at this funny looking dog at the Humane society. So the three kids and I went to see him.

This was 8 years ago. There was something about him that connected to us. So we adopted him. He was and still is, a very timid dog. He doesn't play with toys and though he wants his family near, he doesn't like to cuddle. He gets very upset when there's dancing and he especially gets upset when I hug my kids too long.. Lol. 

He is like my fourth child and he truly is my dog. When I'm sick, he stays with me, not even eating if I'm not downstairs. He looks for me when I'm away. And he gets very upset if I spend anymore than a minute in the bathroom! 

Well, I'm must have been in a nostalgic mood because yesterday's prompt was rubber ducky and I immediate thought of my daughter's 2nd birthday party.

I was 8 months pregnant with my third and I was baking and decorating a ducky cake! It took hours!!! And I probably will never do that again.. Jess and her friends played outside where we set up several play pools with duckies while rubber duckie themed children's songs played. 

I used to love planning themed birthday parties that were a bit over-the-top.. Not in expense but in labor.. Mine! They were all time-consuming projects for me, but I don't regret one second of it.. Fun memories for sure!

Something New

Happy New Year! I hope you all had a wonderful celebration! We spent the evening at home. T had a friend over and we spent the evening making sukiyaki (a Japanese hot pot meal with thinly sliced beef, vegetables, tofu, and rice noodles). We also continued the hot pot theme for dessert and had chocolate fondu. Yum!

Today's Januart Art Challenge prompt is "something new." So I drew my new journal which is a Paper For Fountain Pen journal that uses Tomoe River paper. It is a smaller journal than my previous journal and has a hard cover. And I think I like it so far. 

It's always difficult to represent something in a drawing or painting when the subject is white. I'm always tempted to use gray (water downed black). But in fact, white can take on a lot of shadow colors depending on what other color is around the white.

My usual choice for shadow is bluish violet created with ultramarine blue and a bit of Quinacridone rose or bluish red. And this is what I used for the shadows in the notebook.

So don't be afraid of painting white things! And here is the completed page.

Fauxbonichi 2015 - A Look Back

It was a process I started over a year ago, to document my daily life. At first, it was a excuse to practice drawing and to use it as a planner because I was losing track of things. And never did I anticipate how much this process would impact me in a positive way.

What you see above is photo of my daily life, documented almost daily. And though my life is anything but exciting, I enjoyed looking back reading snippets of what was happening, how I was feeling, and what I was thinking.

I started the year using a Strathmore Mixed Media journal (the one I use for art journaling). The paper takes both dry and wet media well, but these are not cheap. As you can see, 2015 began with a couple of heartbreaking news, but I'm glad I got to document them.

I was learning how to Sketchnote at the time and I got to practice drawing icons and little doodles. And I finally had a place to write down my schedule, my to-do's and document the day. Though I loved using this journal, I realized how expensive it would be to use it everyday, but I found a notebook at Target that looked intriguing using stone paper. The claim was that nothing will bleed through and it was completely waterproof! And with the price being under $10, it was economical too.

It was also around this time when I joined a group on Facebook doing this type of journaling. They called it Fauxbonichi, which is a play on Hobonichi, which is a Japanese daily journal. 

The stone paper was amazing. I could even use alcohol markers like Copics and no bleed through! The only negative was that it was difficult to find a black pen that would not smear.

And even though each sheet was pretty thin, you can glue things and add tip-in's and the paper held up.

And in March, the Fauxbo group had an ABC challenge, to draw something everyday starting with the letter A and going all the way to Z.

And though I loved this notebook, I felt that I wasn't focusing on my goals (did you see yesterday's post?). And plus, I wanted to try the more traditional Fauxbo style, which just means using the Hobinich structure. So I got a gridded composition book, decorated the cover, and pre-planned each day's page.

I used a color coded star stickers to reward myself when Indid something towards my goals. And it seems childish, but they work!

And this is also when I started my blog. I cannot thank my friend, Felicia, for nudging me to do it. I also had a couple of "online friends" who encouraged me too.

But using only one page per day wasn't working for me. And I bought another journal that so popular among the members of the Fauxbonichi group.

This is a thick journal and the paper is gridded and fairly nice. But you still had to double the pages of you wanted to use markers or watercolors. And I decided to glue the pages. 

I loved having 2 pages per day!

I bought Inktense pencils and loved using them.

I started to use more colors.

And then, this happened..

The pages started to come apart. The binding on this journal is crappy, it's glued so sometimes the pages fall out from stress. Because I glued two pages and used water media, the glue couldn't hold the pages together. Luckily, I had purchased another journal from a fellow member of the group so I decided to give it a try.

It's a Seven Seas Standard notebook with Tomoe River paper. It's the same paper used in Hobonichi.

There are over 400 pages, and the paper is super thin! I was able to use this from June until now, doing 2 pages per day. I never had any bleed through issues with watercolor or inks. But certain markers did not do well. 

I started out using it as my planner and journal. The Inktense pencils and blocks looks beautiful on this paper!

And though the paper is thin, it can support tip-in's and other glued things.

And I started using watercolors.

And even gesso and black gesso!

And in July, I totally reworked my blog. I bought my own domain name!

Since July, I decided to have a separate planner. During the summer, we didn't have a whole lot of scheduled events or important todo's.

I fell in love with watercolors.

In December, I created my own art challenge. 

I know that you've seen most of the art pieces from my journal but not the completed pages. These pages will give a glimpse of how I use this process to document my days. As I was selecting pages to share on this post, I enjoyed remembering the events, the emotions and thoughts I included. I have enjoyed this process immensely. I have difficulty sharing my emotions to people and this was such a therapeutic way to brain dump. I hope you give it a try. Don't worry about the art, you can use stickers and magazine cut-outs. Use whatever coloring supplies you have. The goal is simply to document your day. I hope you'll join me.

And by the way, here is the January art challenge.

Happy New Year!!