Family of Textures

Inspiration comes in all forms.
This particular mixed media project came from a couple sources.

First it was this photo I took of a shower curtain; yes that is what it was.

When we visited my step-daughter at her new home I admired her shower curtain in the downstairs bath. I thought at that time it would make a great subject for a mixed media art project. This weekend we are traveling back up to New England and staying with her. So I thought it was high time I acted on my inspiration.

About the same time, Shawn Petite (one of my favorite mixed media artists) posted a project using a lot of texture and grunge in very subtle earth tones. How much inspiration does one really need?

I knew I had to record it because if I don't keep practicing my video editing skills I will never get the hang of it. Recording is the easy part. Putting it all together is the challenge. The project gave me a lot of grief, it started out good, got very muddy and undefined. But then finally took shape. Looking back at the piece I can see layer upon layer of texture and "yumminess".

As I began editing each of the frames, I caught sight of an AARP card on my table. What? in EVERY frame! I wish I knew how to blur out a portion of my screen, but I don't, I tried a few options, then settled on a rectangle on the right side to block it. I use old credit cards to smooth out surfaces and move paint. But I did not want it in my video.

Alas, I will find a way to blur out portions over time. I did find editing tools for my tips, giving it background colors and different fonts. As I get more comfortable with the application, I will branch out further, but at this juncture, it takes me a long time to get what I get. Letting go of perfection..? maybe a little. The music is not perfect and I missed one tip about the modeling paste. But I did not want to go through the compile process again for something so miniscule.

Here it is on YouTube: https://youtu.be/wocGIsN_bRc (Mixed Media - Family)
Enjoy!
Product List:

Fine line marker - White
Liquitex professional Matte Medium, Gloss Gel, Glass Beads, Light Modeling Paste, Gesso and Glazing medium
Ranger Archival Ink - jet black
Deco Art acrylic paints
Dreamweaver embossing paste black
Blick & Artist's Loft Soft Pastels
Charcoal Pencil - General
McCalls Dress Pattern
Drywall tape and heavy crepe paper courtesy of my Art Journal Club

Tranquility

"the quality or state of being calm and peaceful"

I have it in my life. Do you?

I decided several years ago that I did not want to be indebted to anyone for my time, my energy or my talents. I spent so much of my life "having" to do stuff, that I don't want to "have" to do anything anymore. I no longer wear a wrist watch or set an alarm (unless I need to catch a plane)

This is a large canvas I developed yesterday: 18X24. These mixed media paintings of mine often take shape over the course of several hours. Rarely is the result exactly what I imagined before beginning. In the video there is a quick view of a very large butterfly; that was supposed to be the star of the show, but it never made it. During my video-taping I stopped several times to look closely at the painting and decide where to go next before resuming. The entire process was 10 takes. Luckily for the viewer, I sped the process up by 500%. No one wants to watch paint dry.

The final video is about 20 minutes. I am happy with it. Hope you like it, you can always fast forward.


View On YouTube:
https://youtu.be/0nAS5i1TKbE
Product List:
stencils by Shawn Petite
Fine line marker - White
Liquitex professional Matte Medium, Matte Super Heavy Gel, Gesso and Glazing medium
Ranger Archival Ink - jet black
Marabu Art Spray - black
Deco Art acrylic paints
Dreamweaver embossing paste black
Blick Soft Pastels
Charcoal Pencil - General

Thanks for stopping by. Leave me a comment so I know you visited.

Unbreakable

Let's face it, now and again we all hit a few bumps in the road on this life's journey. We experience loss, hardships and many disappointments. But we pick ourselves up and get back in the game. Not broken, just bent.

This mixed media project came to me the other morning. I thought about doing an art journal page, but decided a 12x12 canvas would have so much more impact. I had intended for the heart to be a colorful mosaic, but the colors ended up being so wrong with the background. So I changed them. During the video taping, my battery died, so I did not get the final changes. But alas, the final project is there.

View On YouTube:
https://youtu.be/VoXY4MQsAws
Product List:
stencil by dylusions and Tim Holtz
Fine line marker - White
Liquitex professional Matte Medium, Gesso and Glazing medium
Ranger Archival Ink - jet black
Daler Rowney Acrylic Ink - sepia
Deco Art acrylic paints
Dreamweaver embossing paste translucent
Blick Soft Pastels

Thanks for stopping by. Leave me a comment so I know you visited.

Sunday Stamp Challenge

Happy to get back to this challenge I found a few weeks ago. There are times when I just want to make a card and it is always nice to have some inspiration. This week it was a color challenge. I went through all my inks to find the colors that resembled the tranquil cottage colors.

The mauve-ish color was similar to a versamagic chalk ink I had in stash called spring pansy.
The subtle pink resembled the Ali Edward's Astoria, a pigment.
The dark sea blue I had to create using a combo of Hero Arts Pool and Studio Calico Mojito.
The last color, I think was black, so that was my versafine
For my neutral, I used a white card base.

here is my card. I love those crazy birds.

Thanks for stopping by.

Stamp Obsession

I have had an obsession with stamps for five years. Prior to that, I did not even know what they were for short of address labels, dates and other work-related purposes. I started my collection with a couple of wooden stamps and over the years my collection has grown to hundreds. That is not bad enough, I still keep buying.

Yesterday I went to Tuesday Morning. It is a great place to pick up craft items really cheap. It is hit or miss, sometimes they have stuff, other times they don't. Yesterday I found a fabulous "self healing" craft mat for 50% less than I would have paid retail. I also found large wrapped canvas boards way cheaper than Michaels (even on BOGO days). But it was stamps that got me, again.

Often I buy stamps and put them away and forget I have them. It has gotten that bad. This week before I put my purchases out of sight, I decided to use them in my art journal.

My first page

I bought this stamp at Scrapbooks by the Sea on the clearance table. I thought mixed media when I saw it. I used a water soluble dye ink because my Archival is lost and my new one doesn't come until tomorrow. then I spread an aged mahogany distress oxide on my work table and mooshed it all over my page. I also used some gelatos, textured crackle and clear gesso then splattered with sepia ink.

The next page is just a lot of backgrounds, again, I thought mixed media

The 6x6 background stamp looks like tree bark and those numbers and letters! OMG. I also picked up Ranger words--I thought they were stickers -- rub ons. I am not fond of rub ons, they never want to rub off. On top of my page I used some shimmerz dimensional paste. It gave me a shimmer and made it sticky.

Lastly I used two other stamp sets, one was Ranger vintage things. The stamps are card size, but I thought they were so cool, also there was another set that came with dies, that one I could not pass up. I used Oil Pastels for color on this page, then used a baby wipe to spread them out.

So there you have it. I used my new stamp sets rather than just filing them away. Maybe some night I will dream about how I want to use them. That happens to me often, but it is a story for another day. Thanks for stopping by.

Process Video #2 - mixed medium freedom

I created another canvas yesterday. This time I recorded it. I knew that if I did not continue to practice my editing skills I would forget them and have to re-learn the editor all over again.

this is my mixed media artwork:

Yes, there is a story behind this. Truth is, I have a similar painting in my bedroom, although it is merely a framed print, much larger, but the basic idea. When I moved into my home 15 years ago I bought several large pieces of framed "artwork." Some of which I have dismantled and others I still have on my walls. This is one I still have.

my inspiration piece

To create this mixed media painting I printed the cage and bird then cut them out. I cut a wide opening in the cage, which is more than adequate for the bird to fly free. Yet, he sits there. Why? He's no dummy, he is safe, warm, out of the elements and well fed. He has the freedom to leave the cage, but he chooses not to.

Freedom gives us the right to choose. Choose wisely.

Enjoy the video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN516VXkgyc&t=4s



Product List:
stencils by Shawn Petite Shawn Petite Store
Uni-Ball UM 153 Signo Broad Point Gel Pen - White
Liquitex professional Matte Medium. Glazing medium
Ranger Archival Ink - fern green
Stazon ink - black
Deco Art paints
Dreamweaver embossing paste white, black

Four is better than one, so lets make 12

I attended a card class at my Local Scrapbook Store on Saturday. The class was geared toward metallic Christmas cards. The first used a Nuvo Mousse background and the second and third were supposed to be guilding flakes. For some reason the nuvo glue was not working, even though we tried so many times. Eventually we went to embossing. At the end of the class I used the stamps with Archival Ink on water color paper to bring home and use another time. I left my Archival Ink on the table, by the way. I may or may not get it back. So I had to order a new one.

I like making extra cards and I thought about this idea while I was sleeping. Why not scan the image, print on my laser and use my Minc to foil it. The result would be as good as guilding and/or embossing. So I did.

But then I took it one step farther. Why waste the foil after it was embossed? the reverse image could be just as lovely, if not more so. And that is what I did.

With each of the stamps I created: 1 from class, 1 watercolor, 1 Minc and 1 Minc reverse.

I am 12 more cards into my 65 I need to make. It was a good day.

A Process Video - By Me

It has taken me 2 full days to rig up my camera to do a process video, create the clips of an art journal page and edit. It took me a few hours to gather all my materials, produce this page and shoot the scenes over and over.

The edit part took all day today. The Windows application for creating video was OK for little story clips, like Andy.

But it does not have all the bells and whistles I needed to make a decent process video. I started watching some videos and found VidProMom. She recommended VSDC, it was free to download, and the learning curve was not very scary. So I went for it.

It did take some practice to line up all my clips so there was no black space or downtime, like when I had the camera running but did not know it. Unlike Photo, this application did not come with music, so I had to find my own. Another snag, finding appropriate music without paying for a license? Again I checked with VidProMom and she recommended some sites to go to and how to legally use them. Finally I got all my clips aligned, my texts in, my tips noted, my music applied in the right places. Yay. Conversion takes at least 30 minutes every time, so the smallest error set me back.

Finally, just about cocktail time, I was ready to upload to YouTube. but it took forever, so I had to cancel and sleep on it. The video was 4GB, yikes. I had to compress it. I changed it from 1920/1080 to 1080/720 and 30FPS to 20FPS. That was more acceptable. The conversion process was cut by 60%. This reminds me so much of my career days when I would tweak one little piece of code in a program, only to find out when I recompiled it affected something else. Just can't leave well enough alone.

Art Journal Wishing Well 7-13-18

Granted, I have work to do like sound checks (ha ha). We'll get to that. After a dozen recompiles, I learned so much.

I do want to give a shout out to Vidpromom.com and Shawn Petite who really inspired me to do videos in my back 30.

Product List:
stencils by Shawn Petite Shawn Petite Store
Available at Amazon: Grumbacher Mixed Media Paper Pad
Zig Clean Color Real Brush
Hero Arts Wishing Well Clear Stamps
Uni-Ball UM 153 Signo Broad Point Gel Pen - White
Liquitex professional Matte Medium. Glazing medium & heavy body acrylic
Ranger Archival Ink - Jet Black
Deco Art paints
Available at Dick Blick:
Soft Pastels

Just Start... again

It has been so long since I posted anything on my blog. Let's see if I still remember how to do this.

I have been thinking about trying my hand at making videos. Other people do it, so why not me? Last year I bought a really good camera that takes great videos. I did not buy it for the video-making capabilities, I bought it to take photos. Last year I also bought a new laptop and it has a built-in video editor. What is stopping me? Me.

Just like anything, the voice in my head says "Just Start".

I signed up for a videography class for $11. It was pretty basic. I practiced with a few workshop video clips then tested them in the video editor. Voila I had a video. Nothing anyone would care to see, but it was a start. Later I began taking video clips of my dog, Andy. Now other than his morning trip to the beach, his day is pretty lazy. But I took several clips during the day and put them to music with some text editing. Again, far from professional, but this time I produced the video and uploaded it to YouTube. Pretty brave, right?

If I want to do any overhead taping, like process videos where I show my work on a project, I need some sort of a tripod. I watched a YouTube video from a young man, really young, but oh, so very articulate. He suggested using a microphone stand which can be picked up really inexpensively (cheap) on Amazon. I found one for about $12 that clips to the desk. My camera has a bendy tripod, that I think I may be able to mount somehow. It is worth a try. I definitely am not looking to invest too heavily into some equipment until I know I have the interest, talent and hutzpah to actually make videos.

What is my goal here? I am not exactly looking for a million followers or subscribers. My world is pretty small and I like it that way. It is a challenge, and I enjoy a challenge. Just remembering how to post on my blog is a challenge. Yet here I am.

That is it. Maybe I can be a little better about visiting this site. I'm 4 years into my back 30 and still kicking.

here is my video about my handsome, handsome little boy if you care to watch. Maybe, just maybe, there will be more coming. Whoa. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOJbakg0ZZA