I have not used my Copic Multiliners and Sketch markers nearly as much as I planned to on the Art Journal Caravan at Scrapbook Graphics. It is just that illustration is not an easy thing for me. It is something I want to be better at. But, it takes time and time is our most precious resource. Anyway, I was inspired by “Nevermore”’s Zentangle/Zendoodles. I’d never heard of it. Evidently, the company decided to make a buck by publishing “styles” of doodles and sort of a dice game to get you moving when you get stumped. I looked for a free source of inspiration and found a great blog.

I’m tickled pink that it was just what I needed to keep me moving quickly through the creation of this illustration! I used a “how to” book on drawing Manga as reference for the Mermaid’s upper body. I winged it on the tail. For the seaweed I used some Dover swirls as reference. And the rest of the doodles are either mine or borrowed from a page on the blog.

I think that most people use the Zendoodle process for more abstract art? I don’t know, but I hope I get inspired again because that was a lot of fun!

I started by drawing the fish outlines and the wavy lines behind them. Then I did the seaweed at the bottom. It was an afterthought to add the Manga Mermaid. I’d been wanting to do some illustrations of little girls. Once I had the Mermaid positioned I drew and colored the reef life around her. Then I colored the Mermaid and the fish.

You can’t really see all the Stickles glitter on the mermaid and the little fishies in this scan. Nor can you probably tell I used Liquid Pearls for her necklace and in the dots on the crests of the waves. The net or hammock was kind of an accident because I started doing hashed shadows around her and decided to make it a net. I figured she is startled because a diver just woke her up from a nap!

I left room at the top in case I ever want to add a sentiment and make this into a card for someone.

Wow, I’ve been a little busy. I’ve been building a blog and two websites with Joomla! I won’t be done with both of them until the end of April. But hopefully I’ll still have time to exercise a little creativity.

Kiki Halbert came out with a pack of papers in lovely spring colors. Creating this layout from last Easter made me even more excited that it is spring! Catch Kiki’s “Olivia” on sale through today at Scrapbook-Elements.

This week’s journal prompt at the Art Journal Caravan is “Collection.” I was working on this layout anyway and it struck me that bubbles are a collection. They give kids a lot of joy just like our collections. But they are too fragile to touch just like all of my late grandmother’s carnival glass. And, I thought of other things we can “collect” to make us feel good or bad. Like compliments. You can go chasing after compliments because your self esteem needs them but then that good feeling doesn’t last…just like a bubble. My best source of confidence comes from God, and I give him credit for every ounce of creativity!

Credits:
Frame is Paislee Press all else is Kiki Halbert. Papers from new kit Olivia. Tab and filmstrip are LeGrunge. Butterfly is from Neopolitan Sundae. All other elements are from Cool Nights Blue Skies. The alpha was created with Atomic Cupcake’s Pristine Chipboard.

I am not the slightest bit musically inclined. I wish I was. Music can get my creative juices flowing, not really that it gives me ideas, more that it just puts me in the right frame of mind to be creative. I was wondering, does art do the same thing for musicians? I have a friend who is a musician, I might see if I can get her over here to comment.

This week the part of the journal prompt at the Art Caravan that inspired me was, “What music really inspires you? What gets your toes tapping involuntarily? How can listening to music while you art journal influence your work? How can music change your mood?” To tell you the truth music has not been a huge part of my “down-time” since I’ve been married. So, thinking about what music inspired me took me backwards in time.

The first person that came to mind was Lyle Lovett. He and Sheryl Crow are probably two of my all time favorite musicians. I guess I love folksy, bluesy, alternative country music with a bit of gospel thrown in. Lyle Lovett is really a category of his own in my opinion! I saw him on the “Big Band” tour at the Majestic Theater in San Antonio, I think the year before he married Julia Roberts. I was on the 2nd row center aisle and it blew me away.

His “Church” song brings a smile to my face, it hits the climax around 3 minutes and 15 seconds. It reminds me of growing up in the Baptist church. I remember many a sermon where I was hungry. But, momma was not home cooking dinner, she was at church. And, cooking didn’t start till we got home, which meant even longer before the stomach would stop growling. So, pot roasts on Sunday were common at our house, they could be cooking while we were at church.

Anyway, the reason I like Lyle is that the humor and sarcasm in his songs make me smile inside. And, it seems that he stays grounded in his Faith despite the twisted turns life brings his way. That is what made me relate to him way back then. So, when he married Julia Roberts and the world was stunned I wasn’t, I got it. He sang to her soul and made her laugh. It made me sad that they didn’t make it. I hope all of the “Beauty and the Beast” tabloid stuff was not responsible. According to the oh so reliable press, they are “still friends.” That picture was their wedding day, don’t they look happy?!

Credits: Church photo is mine. Photos of Lyle and Julia are borrowed from the Internet. Lyrics from “Church”, “She’s Already Made Up Her Mind” and “She Makes Me Feel Good.” Several element’s from Bisontine’s Song of Love kit. An altered abused film border from CRenee. Music alpha from As You Wish Designs. Swirl from Rhonna Farrar. Papers from Blyth Evans.

The art journal word prompt this week is bliss. The first thing that came to mind was ignorance is bliss, but I think “Innocence is Bliss” would be kinder and more accurate for children. So, that is the underlying theme, but the photo painting is hopefully making you think of a cool breeze warmed with sunshine on a fresh spring day.

I’ve done a scrapbook layout with other photos taken on this day. It was taken on the first day of spring in 2009 at a graveyard. The building is sort of an old gatehouse made with rough stonework and it has an amazing red wood door. You can see the door from the road on the way to my husband’s work. It was calling my name every time I drove by…so one day I took the girls on a photo shoot. I told them it was castle ruins. It just added to the magic of spring.

I decided to take my husband’s recent advice to a friend and “not pull a Gilligan.” I asked him what in the world he meant and his answer made me laugh out loud. He said Gilligan and team never tried the same thing twice. If a boat didn’t work then the next time they’d try a plane. That they had a bunch of great ideas, but they never stuck with any idea long enough to perfect it.

So, I decided to keep working on my digital painting technique, using my own photography as the canvas.

This time I started with a wonderful freebie glass plate negative. I used a few variations actually, stamping them in different shades of cream/tan/brown.

I drew an outline around the girls, tree, door and some bricks in a brown color. Then I clipped the picture to a glass plate negative, merged the two layers and used it as my “paint”. I made a new layer under that layer and “painted” the majority of my “painting” using a bunch of free brushes from the BitBox site (thanks to someone in the Caravan forum for posting about them.) And, added the distressed scrolls from BitBox on a layer above the “painting.”

Then I used Kim DeSmet’s bright grunge papers as paint over the photo layer. I painted highlights with a yellow paper and used a pink paper for a nice color cast and slight texture. This helped it look more like a painting and less like a photo.

I used the cloning tool with the original photo as reference to paint in shadows on the dresses. And Kim’s pink paper helped make their faces more painterly.

Finally I started adding some bling and dimension with elements from New Life Dreams and Jofia Devoe. In the end I decided to stylize it just a tad more by making my “drawing” and text have a bit of bling, using Microferk’s glitter styles.

Here is the original photo for reference.

The Art Journal Caravan verb this week was “simplify” and you were supposed to journal about yourself. While this doesn’t look like it is about me, in a round about way it is. My mom and stepdad square dance. I’m thrilled that they have such an active social life. A few years ago they tried to recruit us to join and learn. It was sweet…but so not anything remotely of interest to us.

Anyway, one evening Neal was otherwise occupied and, I decided on the spur of the moment to take the girls by a dance. I just love that recreational center, it is a huge room with gorgeous old wood floors and “church-style” benches all the way around the room. So quaint. In fact, we had our rehearsal dinner there. It was simple and laid back. We had red checkered table cloths and catered barbecue. My MIL picked sunflowers that morning and put them in old tin pails. It was completely understated and we loved it.

This was the first time I’d been there for a dance. It was really sweet watching all the couples have a ball dancing. And even sweeter letting Granny show off her grand-babies.

In this photo Danielle is joining her Granny for a line dance. She had recently seen the Hannah Montana movie, so she totally thought it was COOL! She wants her granny to make her a big fat skirt so she can go dancing again. I love it that *she* thinks it is cool!

And, I want to make it a point to take her back…it is just always after bedtime…such an effort to get there…but such simple pleasure once you are there.

Here is the photo I used to “paint” with:

Here is a photo of the girls dancing on a break:

For the journal page I scanned in a page from a very old songbook. Next I used my Wacom pen to trace an outline of the ladies in the photograph. I tried to be slightly more precise on my main subjects and purposely jagged on the background dancers. I then brushed with a slightly translucent wet black brush roughly behind the people in the collage. That layer was clipped to an off-white painterly brush stroke by Dianne Rigdon. It helped tone down the music in that part of the collage, I was going for a “wash” effect. Then I “painted” with slightly translucent wet black again on another layer, this time staying inside the lines of the people. I wanted the colors from the photograph to show through so I clipped that layer to the photograph. I love how the reflections of the dancers show on the wood floor.

The alphabet is a music sheet alpha by Blythe Evans. “Simple” is blended as a linear burn and on “Pleasures” I deleted the base layer of music to let a pink paper show through with the blending options.

I hope this is a reminder to me to force myself to do stuff even when I really don’t *feel* like it!

A friend of mine commissioned me to create a wall hanging for her husband’s office. I know he will not be on my blog, or Facebook, so I am giving you a sneak preview. The adorable photos of their family have been removed.

Shutterfly is having a great special on wrapped canvas prints. This will be a 16 x 20. My client didn’t even have to pay shipping because of their Valentines day special!

It is probably a little late for me to get another one done. But, be thinking of Fathers Day, it is just around the corner!

Thanks “Just Shoot Me Girl”….that is my husband’s nickname for you. He came up with it when he met you years ago and I’m sure you know why! LOL! This really doesn’t do it justice because your adorable family makes the layout!

Credits: Tracy Ann, Nicole Seitler, Blythe Evans, Mira Designs, Paislee Press, Vicki Stegall, Microferk Designs, Obsidian Dawn

As I sit here watching the second huge snowstorm of the season quickly melt away I remembered a layout I have not posted. While my blog was out of commission I responded to a One-Kit-Call by designer Heather Manning. For those of you that are foreign to the digiscrap world, that means I got her kit for free in return for posting my layouts around the digiscrap communities.

It is such a cute little kit that almost makes you go, “brrrr”. OK, maybe I’m just cold.

I shot these photos of my SIL’s family when we were in New Mexico during Christmas Break in ‘08. The snow made the photo extraction of the lift shot a breeze!

Credits: Heather Manning (papers, elements), Katie Pertiet (frames), Diane Rigdon (alphabet)

One of the prompts this week was to use the word “mend”. Rather than use the quote provided this week, I went with a bible verse.

I was thinking about the hard work you do in relationships. Tearing down barriers to communication, and mending hurt feelings, etc.

This is the design I did in Photoshop using mostly graphics from Tracy Ann. The notebook paper leaf is from Tangie Baxter’s Art Journal Caravan steamer trunk. I figured if I ever wanted to journal on this I’d write on that cute notebook leaf. I believe the bird house is from NLD and I filled the heart with some ephemera from Tangie’s trunk. If anyone needs to know about the other items I’ll have to go hunting because my computer crashed before I got to the step of recording the kit names.

And here is the art journal page after the hybrid touches. I used the Copic colored Multiliners, Liquid Pearls for dimension, Spica glitter pens, Copic markers/Prismacolor pencils for shading, and Tim Holtz red distress ink for the edges.

OK, I thought I was over it but I realize now I’m still fuming. This may be the first negative experience I’ll share on my blog. But, it is related to photography. One of the things my husband and I discussed when we started doing Christmas cards is that we wanted to do a family portrait every year. Back when I was employed I splurged a little and took the kids to the “same day” portrait studios (I know a “real” splurge is a professional photographer). But, this year I decided to be economical and go back to basics. WalMart, JCPenny, Sears. So, WalMart it was.

I tried most of a morning to call to make an appointment, no answer. So, per voice mail instructions I finally gave up and went to “Picture Me” to book the appointment. There were not any prices online. Not to worry, this newly budget oriented mom knew she was going to WalMart. And all I wanted was one photo for the Christmas Card.

We get there, super nice gal. I told her what I wanted. She did what her job performance/evaluation required. They “have” to shoot photos of each member of the family with a variety of cheesy backgrounds. I told her, just make sure you take the one I want first or else my little one will not be in the mood. We humored her for the rest of the poses.

Then the wait. She is putting the photos in awful backgrounds and templates. I say, you don’t need to do that, I will do that myself. My 4 year old can see and smell McDonalds and is completely past her limit. She keeps editing. She tells me if she does not create all the layouts/cards she’ll get written up. Meanwhile I try to figure out what package to get. Hmmm, they are all over $140. What happened to the bargains I remember getting at these economical “studios”? To tell you the truth, I don’t remember all the prices because I have tried really hard to put them out of my memory. I think they wanted $150 for the photo CD by itself. It was going to be over $200 to get the CD with the cheapest package.

I wanted to remind them they are WalMart. Well, I just tried to look at the prices online again and now it all seems so much clearer. It is NOT WalMart, they have brought “Picture Me” into their store. I have a friend who went to Sears. It seems they charge the same thing. So, now I know, you might as well go to the “mid-tier” same day studio because there is no such thing as an economic way to go anymore. I truly expected to get out of there spending $75 to $100 at the most for a single pose.

So here are, “the rest of the photos”. I didn’t need them, but they did make a cute layout. And, the upside….you get a signed release to do anything you want with the photos!

These layouts were created with a collaboration kit by Catherine Designs and Bisontine.

Tangie Baxter at ScrapbookGraphics.com is hosting an art journal online “class.” So far there are close to 300 people taking the class. Some people are doing a traditional art journal w/ paints, pens, collage, etc. Others are doing it all digitally. And still others are doing a hybrid approach. My first project was hybrid. I will probably do some of both, especially since I can do digital so much more quickly.

Here is the digital “canvas” I created:

And here is the completed journal page. I colored it with Copic markers and Multiliners. (Having the “lights” set helped tremendously for blending the shading on out.) Then I used Copic Spica glitter pens for highlights. Tim Holtz Walnut distress ink is used around the edges as are his yellow Liquid Pearls on the quote block. And the feet were heat embossed with a shiny metallic blue. A photo would have done it better justice than this scan because there are lots of glittery and shiny accents.

I also chose this 8.5 x 5.5 size because if I do illustrations it will use much less marker ink and take a lot less time. I have an old day planner notebook that I plan to keep them in. I’ll just do hole punches across the top. It was printed on a nice heavy Bristol smooth vellum card stock which holds up really well but actually soaks up too much Copic ink (not ideal for blending.) I’ll need to experiment to find something just as heavy but will work better with the Copic markers.