Colours

I love trying out new colours

Bushy Park - Watercolour I

My watercolour attempt didn't really work out - I just applied paint without thinking it through. The waterfall itself isn't bad (done with oil pastel). and the wall too is ok. The tree I could live with. But my water is awful. Will have to try again!

Bushy Park - Pastel II

Here is my second attempt at this view of Bushy Park. I think it's better than the previous one, although the waterfall is right in the centre of the picture.

Happy Stamping

Remember the lovely round outline stamp I carved a couple of weeks ago? Well, it's definitely become my favourite stamp! I applied it all over the newsprint paper that I use to protect my desk (I've only discovered newsprint recently, so my desk is way past protecting, but it's never too late!). The paper is full of splatter and colours from my many art projects, and with the outline stamp in black, the result is very striking. I'm going to use this a lot in future journal pages.

My only concern is that newsprint is non-archival. I don't know how long it will take for the colours to fade or change, or indeed if there will be an impact on the page to which it is glued or the facing page. But I'm not expecting future generations to be interested in my art journals, so, as long as there is no immediate impact within the next few years, I'm not too bothered. Plus I'm pretty good at photographing and blogging more or less everything I do, so I'll always have a record, as long as Google don't go bust!

The Documented Life Project - Week 19

RAK - Random Act of Kindness - Week 19's challenge was to document a random act of kindness by me.

From the very start, that was a difficult challenge for me - I couldn't think of anything I've done that would qualify as such. Not that I am an unkind person. I would like to think of myself as kind-hearted. But random acts of kindness? No.

So who better than my other half, BB, to exemplify this virtue!









A couple of weeks ago, we were driving home from the park with Dog (I can't remember why we had decided to drive, maybe there was rain forecast?). BB spotted a brown dog on his own on the other side of the road. So he pulled over at the next chance, got out of the car and brought the dog to our car. I rang the number on the dog's tag and left a message. He seemed like a friendly dog. So we decided to bring him to our local vets to check if he was micro-chipped. He got into the car no problem and happily sat beside our guy in the back. The two of them were quite a picture. When we got to the vets, we attached the leash to the dog's harness, and, again, he happily followed BB into the building. The vets checked his micro-chip and confirmed that the dog was local, that his name was Coco and that he was a regular escape artist. They made contact with the owner, who was at home, and a few minutes later Coco was re-united with his owner.

So, here is to Coco! Visually, not my best page, but this is a lovely story that I will remember for many years. No doubt we will see Coco walking our roads again!

Dublin Maker Fair

BB presented his project, the Doggy Internet Treater, at the Dublin Maker Fair yesterday. It was very well received. And all agreed that our dog is the cutest!

Meet the Maker

Bushy Park

Documented Life Project journals are great to keep the artistic flame alive when you don't have much time on hand. I do miss my watercolour projects. But they do take time to think through and plan. Time that I don't have at the moment. Still, I've got a painting in mind. There will probably be a few iterations before I produce something I'm happy with. Watercolours are such an unforgiving medium, they need such a light touch, but also thorough planning, in order to look luminous and spontaneous. And they need practise too, I believe. I want to achieve an almost abstract quality, but I tend to get lost in detail.

For now, I've decided to play with pastels - another difficult medium, but much more immediate. Here is where I am:

The Documented Life Project - Week 18

Week 18 challenge: incorporate an inspiring quote!

Well, this one was staring me in the face at my desk - one of these quotes I found on Facebook and that somehow spoke to me!

But I really struggled with it. I tried watercolours. I tried handwriting. I tried stamping the words. None of those worked. 

The watercolour was discarded. The handwriting and the stamping had to be gessoed over.

I then cut a piece of card and sprayed over one of my favourite stencils from the Water Series by Artistcellar with Adirondack dye. I typed the words on my computer and printed them to my laser printer. Then I used this fantastic transfer technique, using packing tape (wide sellotape).

I picked two pages on which I had unsuccessfully doodled with my Neocolor II pencils

I cut a new stamp to outline my date circles - I'm very happy with it. But I must be more careful how I store my stamps. Yesterday, I found one of my favourite ones ripped because it had stuck to another stamp I placed on top of it. Maybe there was still some ink on it?

I sprayed more Adirondack over the gessoed page.

I attached my flap to the sketchbook page using washi tape. I only have four rolls of washi tape, but somehow they always seem to work perfectly with my projects. I wish I was as sparse with my other art supplies!!

Called it done!

The Documented Life Project - Week 17

Catching up on my normal life - bit by bit.

Here is my take on Week 17 of the Documented Life Project: add your favourite shoes (draw, paint, photograph).

This week took me a bit more time than usual, as I added a tip-in page, so I had four pages to work with, instead of my usual two. Twice as much fun! And only half as much time, as we've had a busy week.

So, here we go:

Journal page: As usual, based on leftover paint from a Gelli print. A few doodles. A couple of arrows from one of my home-made stamps. A bit of origami paper.

Second page: This is the page facing the journal. There, I decided to collage lots of bits and pieces that mean something to me. And that probably mean nothing to you. But that's what a journal is all about, isn't it?

Tip-in Recto: This is my Weekly Challenge page. My current favourite shoes. First, drawn in my sketchpad. Then painted with a watercolour set that my nieces gave me for my birthday - the heel looks a bit wobbly there- the first drawing is probably the best description of the actual shape of the shoe.

Tip-in Verso: I had to do something with this page, but I didn't want heavy collage, as I was afraid it would warp the page too much. So I mixed some bright colours in my new watercolour set and I painted circles, forcing them to touch where possible. Happy colours, don't you think?

And I called it done! Phew!

The Documented Life Project - Week 16

I'm falling behind! I haven't got anything done for this week! Panic Panic.

But here is what I did for Week 16 - Add a Creative Cardboard Food Box in a Creative Way.

I'm not sure I was very creative, but I had a nice colourful carton that matched perfectly one of my Gelli print backgrounds.

I then decided to add bright pink highlights - I love orange and pink together - some doodling, stamping, collaging and photographing. A very happy page, for a happy week.

Dublin Maker

Looking forward to Dublin Maker!

Doggy Internet Treater

On a gagné!

The Documented Life Project - Week 15

The Challenge for Week 15 was to go monochromatic.

These are busy weeks, so I decided to keep it simple. I used a leftover paint background, and a packing tape gelli print on the facing page.

Then I added a paint colour chart from my nearest DIY store, a stamped flower (you will recognise this one from Week 6), and a doodled border. That's it, let's call it done!!

A Game of Thrones

I do read more when the weather is good, and paint/draw/art less.

We're at the tail end of what probably will be our best week of the summer (am I too pessimistic?), so I've been busy reading A Game of Thrones, the first of 8 books in A Song of Ice and Fire!

I haven't seen the TV series yet - I don't even know what channel it was showing on in this part of the world. All I know is that it's not on Netflix - will it ever be? So I'll have to invest in the box sets - maybe for next year's birthday, or for Christmas perhaps?

But now of course, I don't want to watch the TV series until I've read the whole story - I've already started the second book - too much time invested to spoil it by watching it on TV!

There has been plenty of reviews of the books and the TV series, no doubt. Apparently the TV Series has been even more successful than the Sopranos for HBO!

I saw somewhere that the genre is described as historic fantasy - that's a pretty good description. Although it has to be said that, apart from a  couple of zombies and three baby dragons, there isn't too much fantasy. Actually, it reads more like The Other Boleyn Girl or The White Queen than The Lord of the Rings. Except it's not real.

Maybe it's not real, but it's very readable. And I can see the appeal. Will I last the distance, though?

The Documented Life Project - Week 14

Week 14 of the Documented Life Project Challenge was to write your name and embellish it. Well my name is a bit long to fit on a sketchbook page, but MHBD is a perfect fit. So that's what I went for.
Inspired by Roben-Marie Smith's idea,  as I often am, I chose a Gelli print I did a while back, one of those prints that have lovely colours and textures, but not enough shape to finish in a frame on a wall (I have a lot of those). I cut out my initials in paper. I applied black paint to my Gelli plate, and placed my initials on it, in reverse! I had to think about that one, but a quick review of GelliArts' blog helped to clarify this for me. I then applied my old print over the plage and pulled this lovely print.

A little bit of enhancement with white markers, and I called it done.

I cut out little squares out of what was left of the old print and I wrote my dates on those for the journal side.

Up in the mountains

Nénuphars

Not as much art this weekend - I've started reading A Game of Thrones, so my art productivity has gone down!

Here is a watercolour I've been working on for a while - the previous version was wasted as I had left the masking fluid on the paper for way too long (months!). Anyways, it didn't really work out as a watercolour, so I added pastel highlights. Still not sure, but I'll have to look at it for a while before I decide

The Documented Life Project - Week 13

This week was probably the hardest for me - Week 13 Challenge was to ask someone to draw on your page, then to finish it myself. So I asked BB to draw something, and he did a few striking geometric shapes all connected together.

They looked so simple and elegant. I should have taken a picture, shouldn't I? But in my eagerness to get started, I forgot.

So here is the resulting page - not my best. But it did force me to do something different from my usual...  A little bit Pac Man...

More Gelli prints

Actually, this is just one Gelli print, but I think it's so pretty I wanted to share close-ups with you!

This is really easy, just cut a piece of paper in the shape of waves and use it to mask part of the plate. Repeat until you like the result!