In My Home

It's been over a year since I've worked on canvas. It's not that I don't like working on canvas or the normal canvas medium, the acrylics. I've been enjoying the art journal format and working on looser drawing in my Fauxbonichi (my daily journal). And this piece is actually a reproduction from one of my daily pages .

I have been wanting to reproduce a few pieces from my daily journal. Why? Partly because I enjoy mixed media art and the daily format usually does not allow for mixed media (and waiting for things to dry). 

I used acrylics, inktense blocks and pencils, tissue paper (for texture), and music sheet. I don't usually use bright colors and I'm not quite sure what made me use them, but I like it. 

And today is my kids' birthday, at least the first two! Yes, my son and my daughter have the same birthday and they aren't twins! 

I can't believe they are 16 and 14! I hope you have a great weekend!

Last Week's Journal Art

It's amazing to me that since my children have been out of school for the summer, I've been able to create in my journal every day. School starts in three weeks and I'm not sure how much time I'll have to create. 

For the page you see above, I was supposed to draw knick knacks. Since I collect elephant figurines, I thought I'd draw one of the sets I have. This one is from the Netherlands that Ken bought for me. They are porcelain and quite frankly I'm surprised they aren't shattered yet only because my youngest used to love to play with them. I'm told that you should only buy elephant figurine with the trunk pointed up because that brings good fortune. Well, I'm not big on superstition so I have quite a few whose trunks are down.

On Tuesday, the drawing prompt was to draw my favorite pen. And if you recall from last Tuesday's post, the patterns I used here should be familiar to you. My favorite pen to draw with is Platinum Carbon fountain pen. It is ultra fine and very smooth. It is an inexpensive fountain pen (under $15) and the ink is waterproof!! I drew my hand holding the pen drawing the zentangle pattern. 

On Wednesday, the prompt was to draw magic. I have done something similar in the past using PearlEX over black gesso. I love how shimmery the PearEX powders are. It's hard to see the shimmer on this photo but they are pretty!

I tried something a little different on this day. I was drawing a summer day and I just decided to paint the entire 2-page spread. It turned out really pretty. I used watercolor for this. I suppose I can share the actual spread. Nothing too private in my writing portion. 😊

On this day, I was also to list some of my favorite words...chaos, create, mellifluous, mensch, and crescendo.

On this day, I was to draw a storm. Many of you have probably seen a picture of something similar with the elephant holding the umbrella. In the ones I've seen, there is always some other animal sitting under the umbrella. But for mine, I drew a little girl (me). Is there an elephant spirit? Because I swear sometimes I feel it's presence. This was done using Inktense blocks and watercolor.

This is a quote I've used in my art before. It's what I thought of for drawing tools. Done with Inktense and colored pencils.

And finally for Sunday, I was to draw a notebook. You can tell that I've been thinking about planning. I've watched YouTube videos and read articles all weekend about different planning methods. As I mentioned earlier, school is coming up soon and I need an analog method of keeping track of schedules and to do's. If you recall, I was using my journal (Fauxbonichi) as a planner too.  But I'm liking my journal format now where I find an inspirational quote and illustrate it on one page and journal on the other. I don't know if I want to add my todo's and schedule on this too. So I've been looking for a planner or a planning system. I think I found it. It's called bullet journal. I'm naturally a very unorganized person. I have to write things down or I'll forget. And during school, I have to use my phone alarm to pick up the kids because well, Im usually distracted. I need a way to keep me focused on things I need to do versus things I want to do. It's a balance. So more about planning later. How do you keep yourself organized? Have a great Monday!

 

June Art Video

Nothing like an email from Apple that reminded me my iCloud storage is almost full to get me to clean up my files on my phone and iPad. It's been since February since I made a flip video of my art. So here is a video of all the art created in June. I hope you enjoy it. Have a safe and wonderful 4th of July! We are headed to Flagstaff to watch the fireworks tomorrow evening!

So Many Quotes!

As you know, quotes are an important part of my artwork. Words inspire my art, the quote above by Emerson was shown to me by friend Lili who posted that she could see me use it for my art. Indeed, I saw an image flash when I saw the quote. I knew I wanted to do flowers. I was thinking a field of flowers, all the same color except for one. But once I got started, I decided to go for fewer flowers. My first attempt looked like this.

Something wasn't right about this piece. I wasn't going for realistic. And then it hit me. What I wanted to represent was a rainbow flower in the middle of pink and blue flowers in support of all gender fluid youth and adults who struggle to fit in a world made for a binary system, like Chance from Mia Kerick's Love Spell.  I have been doing promotional artwork for Mia so it made sense.

In my daily journal that I have been keeping since last September, I usually include a quote...some are illustrated, some aren't. The ones that are illustrated aren't carefully thought out, often drawn carelessly. But sometimes, they turn out better than I had hoped. I didn't want to lose those images so I decided that I would redo them in my art journal. Here are ones I've done so far.

One of the things I wanted to improve was my hand lettering. My natural handwriting isn't bad when I'm deliberate. But what I wanted to do is to incorporate different styles, use different tools and techniques. I've been practicing brush lettering using my markers.

Lately, my daily quotes have been more artistic. 

What helps me to create my daily quote art is that I have a daily prompt for drawing. For example, today's prompt was comfort. What do I find comfort in? That's easy, it's my coffee every morning. It was then a matter of finding a quote and then putting together my art.  One day the prompt was for me to draw eyes. I actually had an image in mind so I had one of my daughters pose for me to use as a reference.

This one took awhile for me draw because I'm not very good at shading fabric folds.

Now it was a matter of finding a quote. I ended up using a poem by Christopher Pointdexter.

I'm not sure if we'll have a daily drawing prompt for July. I hope so. It's almost the end of the month. I may have enough art pieces to do another video.. Stay tuned! Have a great Monday!

My ABC Journal Flip

In the Fauxbonichi Group on Facebook, we were challenged to draw or write about a word in alphabetic order.  Here is my entire alphabet memes in under 5 minutes.  Hope you enjoy it.