Late night skart revisited

I was pretty disappointed in how this face came out, and relatively certain I couldn't make her any better. The eyes are a little wonky, and the lips are even wonkier. Still, she deserved a little color.

But then I added a little bit of pen to her - just along the upper eyelids - and a little bit of outlining with a black colored pencil, and I think she looks a million times better! I swear, it took about two minutes to make this previously ugly face into something...not so ugly.

Wishing on a star

I was drawing her and skarting with Kelly one night. I really wanted her to be looking up at the stars and it put this song in my head that the little boy on the back of the train sings on The Polar Express. Billy. He's one of the only characters who has a name on that movie!

Kelly said that thinking of wishing on a star makes her think of the Disney song. I pointed out how that particular song has stupid lyrics about how wishing on a star makes dreams come true. I said that the lyrics should be more like "If you want your dreams to come true you have to work your ass off to make that happen." I'm cynical - surprise!

These words seem so much more appropriate to me:

Honestly, I wish I was more of the wishing upon a star to make my dreams some true kind of a chick, but I'm just not. Maybe I'll get there?

Art Date

Just me, my frappuccino, and my journal. Oh, and Ivan (my iPad), of course!

I love her so much I'm keeping her exactly as she is! No more color, no more paint. Just black ink and white pages.

Late night skart

Nature vs. Goog

Just kidding, peeps! Nature and I are fine. Although, if you know me you know I'm not really a nature loving chick. Sorry, I'm just not. I like looking at the pretty leaves in the fall, and the occasional sunset/rise. But for the most part I stay inside and away from the weather and the bugs and whatever.

BUT Julie Balzer said to do this and so I did. Be Proud. I gathered leaves and a stick.

I only liked this one leaf, so I only used it!! I made a gelli print with it first, then I used it as a stamp! I totally fell in love with this color combo, too!

First Profile

I'm totally in the "front face" rut and I've been there for a while, so I signed up for Tam's summer faces class so I could learn how to make better 3/4 and profile portraits. OK, not BETTER profiles, since I've never done one, but you know what I mean.

I tried to be better about process pictures, so here she is just getting started. 

And face finished:

The eye is hard for me. I don't know if I like it or not. It's not horrible at the moment, but I'm sure I could get it to horrible if I really tried. Actually, probably with very little effort at all. 

Here's the full spread before color:

Color is usually the hard part for me, especially when we're talking about faces. But I freaking LOVE how this chickie came out! She makes me so happy I'm going to make her into a canvas!!

Penzu asks: “lf you were to think of your journal as a friend, whatunique qualities will this friend have?”

Suzi Blu taught me years ago that my journal is my friend. That it will always hold my secrets. That it doesn't care how often I tell it my fears. That it never gets mad at me if I kick it under the couch and forget about it for awhile. It has no expectations. It is always there when I need it. It doesn't even care if I spend some time with another journal.

These are the journals I'm using right now:

There are seven of them. Three I made myself. Two are identical but serve difference purposes. Some of them are task specific - cartoons only, cheap thoughts only, palettes - while others are just a catchall. There is no rhyme or reason to them and I don't try to force on. Some of them are almost full while others are barely touched. When I feel the need to journal, I usually have a specific one in mind and I don't question that, I just find it and use it.

PS I have another journal, a moleskine sketchbook, that didn't make the picture. So that's eight. Right here, right now, journals that I'm currently working in. My friends. 

Pumpkin!

He's carving! He didn't like the pumpkin "guts", they make him a little uncomfortable, but he was SO excited to actually get to carve!

All finished!

Digital Art

From photo:

To art:

Words?

In my journal, this little figures have a quote from Bones: "We build our lives out of chaos and hope...and love." Angela said it when she was exasperated with Brennan about something. I forget what. I'm not sure if I'm going to put the words on the canvas or not. I kind of like it just the way it is. I'm actually thinking of scanning it. Or at least taking a high-rez photo of it and maybe making a journal cover out of it. It makes me really happy!

Shy girl again :)

Something I have trouble with is expressions. My people are just usually staring into space or looking bored. I REALLY liked this journal page and wanted to make it on canvas but I had a lot of trouble with the shy girl's face! She came out so good in the journal. I had to redraw her about seventeen times for the canvas, but I think this came out pretty cute!

What do you do when your friend gets hit by a car?

Poke fun, of course! Just kidding, this scared the shit out of me, but when you're friends with artists, this is what happens. I should have waited until I added color to show you, but I'm so amused by it! Yes, my friend really got hit by a car. He's all right. Banged up, had some internal injuries and some surgery, a little hip dislocation, but he's OK. I swear.

Pretty Page Syndrome!

I LOVED this spread. A lot. I got all attached to it. But I knew it wasn't finished, I don't like to just do backgrounds. So I made a note that I wanted a face on it - because I was drunk at the time and I didn't want to forget!

Surprise - I drew a face and journaled her hair! Lots of stuff I needed to say and I did. 

Then I added a little paint. Not very much, and I have no idea if she's finished. But I love her!

Handle With Care

From sketch:

To page!

Look at this girl - doesn't she look cute & shy?? I love her!

Somebody Stop Me!

Gelli prints! I can't even help it!

I know what you're thinking - six? That's not so many! I made seventeen...

Mini Me

This is what a six-year-old boy art journaling looks like:

And this is what he journals about:

He's obsessed with Star Wars. I have to admit it, I LOVE that about him. I love Star Wars. Basically I'm a geek raising a geek and it's pretty fun. 

Change is Good

The way I journal has changed. The way I USE my journals, I should say, has changed. I was going to say this journal in particular has been different for me:

but it's just a regular Moleskine sketchbook (with horrible gray paper in it), and it's not the only journal I'm working in - and they're all serving the exact purpose that I need. They're holding my life. The feelings that I need to feel - I feel them in my journals. Sometimes with words, sometimes with drawings, sometimes just with colors. Often, I paint over and over and over and over a page because it's not conveying what I need it to anymore. It did yesterday, now it doesn't. Time to give it another layer. Nothing is permanent in these journals. Nothing. I can have this entire spread neon pink in less than a minute. But the words I needed it to hold are still there. Being held. The stuff I needed to get out of my head, I got it out. It's all valid. It's all me. It's all working. 

Sloppy? Messy?

I hate when people use those words and are talking about my art. And then I look at this girl's legs and I'm like "OK, they're messy." The things is, sometimes a journal page takes weeks or months to "finish" because I keep painting over it and over it and over it, or I do something and then ignore it for a long time before I know what the page needs. The words on this page have been there for a long time. I don't even know how long, but at least six months. And I was scared and angry when I wrote them. The sprayed background has also been part of the page for months. But the girl - I painted her yesterday. She needed to come out. She is nowhere near the best girl I've ever painted. But I needed to get her out of my head and onto this page. Fast. So I did. And I don't care that she's not perfect. She's scared and lost and sad and lonely, so why shouldn't she look it?

Honest yet not really truthful

This is a new journal (surprise!) and a new(ish) way of journaling for me. Kelly wants to journal her life, the everyday moments, and whatever Kelly does Goog has to do. I was going to just start with the cartoon journals like I was doing them before, but this is maybe better. This journal is Fabriano, I got it at Michaels. The pages are pretty smooth, but not Hot Press smooth, and nice and thick. If you need the details, I'm sure you can Google it!

The plan was originally watercolor, but since the drawings were so small, I thought markers would be better. They worked really well, except for at the very bottom, in the candy wrapper, where the ink smudged. Next time I'll let it dry overnight and see if that helps!

I hate the bleed-through, so I'm thinking for the next one (not anytime soon, when this one is full), I'll try Rendr. I bought some paper a couple of months ago and haven't done anything with it! I'm feeling the need to make a new journal...

As for the honest but not truthful part, I just don't feel like this journal is...hm...helpful? I'm not sure if that's the word I'm looking for. Mostly, I journal because I have to get something out of my head. Words, thoughts, pictures. I thought a famous artist said something about art keeping you from crying, but maybe that was just Suzi? Anyway, I paint/drawing/sketch/etc my feelings. Not the actuality of my life. So when I look at this page, I remember the day and how it went, but I don't feel it. I don't feel anything. But, drawing and playing with markers and/or watercolors, that's always fun!

Dreams...

I don't often have good ones. One of the reasons I don't put my phone on Do Not Disturb during the night is that often the "new mail" chime pulls me out of a nightmare. The words around her are "If a dream is a wish my heart makes, how come I wake up so often in the middle of a panic attack?" I ask my journal a lot of questions. It rarely answers.

Is it or isn't it?

Art, I mean. This is a spiral bound book of scrapbook papers. I sprayed some clouds on it and wrote a quote. Technically, is it art? I guess not. I don't even really like it right now and it's the cover - whoops!

So if it's not art, what is it? It's just being an artist. I doodled this quote while eating breakfast and working on an album cover in Photoshop. A little of this, a little of that, a little scoop of Cheerios. Perhaps, by itself, this piece of paper I scribbled in is not art. But it's part of an artistic life.

 I'm sure things will spill on it and I'll jot notes down on it and maybe add more color and/or doodles. I'm just trying to say - if you think you don't have time for art in your every day life, or you think you're not an artist, maybe you're wrong. You don't have to draw to be an artist - but you can learn to if you want. You don't have to paint to be an artist, but you could pick up some cheap acrylics and give it a try. Or maybe just pick up a pen and draw some bubble letters on a piece of scrapbook paper and color them.

Happy?

This is a page that I just basically doodle vomited on. There's an owl sitting on a tree branch, but he was ugly and hard to see and I don't really have a "thing" for owls like most people seem to. I painted over part of the page black and I REALLY liked it, but it didn't feel "finished". Then came the clouds - which I totally DO have a thing for! And voila. Page finished. Oh - purple spray over the clouds. I wish I had more "in progress" pictures!

October Calendar!

Late posting, of course, but I wasn't late getting the calendar finished. I don't fill up all my days like Kate does, so I never post the "finished" one, but here it is to start!

Wordless

Not me, of course. This page. The randomness of it makes me really happy!

WTF, Moleskine?!?

OK, maybe I'm just a complainer. How come NO ONE ELSE has noticed this? It's been MONTHS of this crappy paper in my beloved Moleskine sketchbooks and I'm tired of it. Tell me that you see the difference. See the two with gray paper? Those are the sketchbooks. It's not as smooth, it's not as thick, and it's a horrible color. What's up with that?

Here is a nice close up so you can see - ALL of the other books have the right color paper.

How did this happen?!?

I LOVED this page. Loved everything about it - the words, the colors, the clouds, the doodles, even that floating face. But I told myself it couldn't float there forever, and it needed some depth or something, so I gave it some.

And it turned into this horrible transvestite!! I'm not sure if I'm going to keep it or paint over it.