Working on Snow

 No, it isn't snowing here in Florida.

At least, not that I know of. Hahaha!

That could be a little but of wishful thinking

on my part!

So, I've been playing with snowflake making

for an art journal prompt,

part of a group project I'm involved in for 2015.

I really love how this one turned out,

but then you know I'm all about that color, that color!

Such a fun process and I tried some new technique -  for me, anyway. The beautiful background color was done with Prima's Color Bloom Spray Mists. Yummy color with plenty of oomph and sparkle. The sparkle was a surprise,  I had no idea the sprays were going to do that. I love it! Then I tangled my snowflake over the top of  that yumminess with a Sharpie fine point. I've seen some discussion on Facebook today about using microns over inks and paints. (I used to use a micron all the time - with no problem. I just found I was too heavy handed and wore the nibs out before I ran out of ink. Sandy Bartholomew mentioned the Sharpie fine point somewhere and I've been using them ever since.)  Then I took two Derwent Inktense Watercolor pencils  to add all the shading, with the assistance of an aquash waterbrush.  Love how it turned out! The overall snowflake is about 4" x 5". Time to go order a few more of those wonderful Color Bloom Spray Mists. I see a new favorite product on my countertop!

This post brought to you courtesy of Studio Assistant Aurora.
Have a great weekend!

Must Be Snowing Somewhere

I had this nice little blog post almost finished,

I had even saved it a couple times,

then my computer went Boop! 

and the whole post went swoop! 

and try as I might I cannot find it anywhere.

Ugh.

The third week of our art journal journey is coming

to a close. Actually it should have closed late last night,

but don't tell anyone. I am almost on time :).

Cherryl's prompt this week was to fold a snowflake.

Much like I used to do as a child,

and then with my children,

and to trace your initials on it

being mindful of the fold.

(My initials are A, D, and H.)

Being mindful of the fold so that when you cut

your snowflake out, it doesn't fold up

and fall apart on you. 

That fold is mega important.

I call the above photo my

spaceship taking a bath photo.

Hehehehe.

Here is my snowflake cut out.

Nothing fancy. My initials are mostly straight-leggers.

Doesn't lend to very much roundness,

but that's ok. Just gotta work with it.

(Save.)

Then I started prepping my pages.

Since I am working in a journal and I didn't want my blues to spread onto other pages,

I placed a scrapsheet of computer paper under each side.

(Actually, I consider myself a bit of a rebel. 

So, I used new, unused sheets of computer paper.

Hehehehe.)

Background color comes from Prima's 

Color Bloom Spray Mists - I used two colors.

I also spritzed them with water when they didn't move like I wanted them to.

I am so impatient when it comes to artting.

I sprayed a darker blue onto some bubble wrap

and placed it face down into the lighter shades of blue.

(Save.)

Totally must have deleted the photo I took of the salt,

so you are going to have to imagine it.

I sprinkled bits of sea salt across both pages of the spread

while it was wet and left the whole thing to dry.

Once the pages were completely dry, I used an old Disney Room hotel key -

resembles a credit card -

and scraped it gently across the top of the pages

to remove the salt residue.

You can rub your fingers across the surface 

to feel where you need to work a bit more.

Ta-dah!!!

(Save.)

I am sorry I didn't take more photos.

I have a date stamp that has letters on it, 

in addition to numbers, leftover from the old scrapbook days.

Everything old becomes new. Yep!

I used that to stamp the wording.

Noticed I misjudged my distance and got one too many B's on that first page.

Joy.

Then I took the snowflake and traced parts of it onto

the adjoining pages. 

Color added to the flakes are from Derwent Inktense Watercolor Pencils.

I love them! They were the first big expense I made

in my art journey and I've never regretted the cost.

(Your art is precious. Get the best product you can afford. You are worth it.)

Then I added a few tangles,

and a sweet little crocheted snowflake that my mom

made for me back around 1980. 

Thirty-five years ago.

I had just build an old farmhouse style dollhouse

and mom made me some rugs for the floors.

I had this one in the living room.

She will be so surprised to see I still have it.

Stuck this beautiful little treasure down with

some glue dots.

My pages still needed something more to tie them together.

I took the two Derwent pencils I used inside the snowflakes,

and used a waterbrush to flick/spatter

specks of juicy color across both surfaces.

Still it needed some little pop.

And I still have that extra letter B to contend with.

Wal-Mart to the rescue.

Actually I got the jewels from Wal-Mart awhile back on sale -

even better.

See how I totally covered up that bad B

with a stone? And to balance I added

one to the right-hand side by the don't,

even though I didn't mess that part up.

I feel like the jewels were the right touch.

All done.

Two page spread of snowflakes.

Did I mention I live in Florida where it's been in the 70's here in early January?

Hahaha!

Thanks to Cherryl for another great journal prompt!

(Save.)

Floral Color

Recently, I posted the black and white version of this tile as part of a weekly challenge. You can see the post here.

This is what I started with. Some fescu, some mooka,  some sunz, some printemps, some tipple, and some flora. All tangle patterns with a bunch of aura-ing. Then today I added color with Grumbacher transparent watercolor pans and some Derwent Inktense watercolor pencils. Highlights came from a white gelly roll pen. 

Lots of fun and super easy to draw! Soon I will provide a step-out for flora. Hopefully :). Have a great week!

Bault - New Tangle from Erin Olson

One of our CZTs - Erin Olson - sponsors the weekly Zendala Dare. She is so creative and for the past couple days Erin has been busy posting new tangles she has created. Here is her pattern bault:

I like organic tangles and thought this one would work great with the garden drawings I like to make. So, I pulled out my zentangle sketchbook that I got at CZT training and started playing with bault. 

This tangle came a little quicker to me than the last one Erin posted. 

For me, the pattern works best when I made the first two petals touch each other at the base point before I moved on.

This was the first thing I drew with bault. I centered it and added diva dance waltz under it. Since I'm using it as one of the ATCs for the fall swap, I added some leaves into the waltz lines.

This looks much better in person, but I'm posting it anyway. I added some fall colors and reworked some pen lines that got covered over in watercolors.

When I was getting the pictures ready for this post, I noticed this laughing face in the drawing. I guess he was enjoying the diva dance just a little too much! Hahaha!

Then I moved on to this and did something I've never done before. I added color in my original CZT sketchbook that I got at training. I defaced my book with color :) and I'm smiling about it. I love color! I wouldn't necessarily recommend it very often, though, the paper didn't accept the watercolor pencils all that well. But, I do like how it turned out :) Thank you, Erin, for another cool pattern. My daughter thought it was mine, but I gave you full credit Erin. Got to say Kali was a little disappointed, haha! OK, I've caught up on sleep and I have coffee now. Fire away, Erin, I'm ready for another one!

Midoosa, Erin Koetz Olson

Erin Koetz Olson hosts the weekly Zendala Dare on her blog The Bright Owl and yesterday she posted a new tangle she created called Midoosa. I liked it so much that I turned off my computer *gasp* and started working in my sketchbook. What you see above is my first mostly successful shot at midoosa, but before this I did a good bit of practicing. Let's look at Erin's step-out for midoosa.

Pretty straight-forward, beautiful, graceful, and (for me) unpredictable. Erin even showed some variations.

As you can see on my sketchbook page, I started with some of the pointers Erin wanted us to remember. The most important points for me were: use an even number of points (not 'equal' as I wrote in my book), and complete one section before you move on to the next. As you can also see, I had trouble getting my barbell sections to be equal in size. No way in the world can I draw a six-pointed star and have it look like a six-pointed star, although I did get closer. Sort of. The flower idea just looks awful.

As much as I tried, I could not get the points to be even in size. And, yes, I do know that true zentanglers don't use rulers, or erasers, but, hey! What are you going to do? It is less stressful for me to pull out my tools, than to sit here and draw lines over and over and over and over that don't look right. So, I used my small ruler and pencil and drew the four overlapping shapes you see above.

Next, I went over the outline with a micron, then erased all the interior lines.

I picked two sections, drew the connecting lines, and auraed the inside of each end of what looks like boat oars to me. Then I moved on to the second oar.

And to the third, auraing as I went. (Is that a word?)

Finish up all the sections, aura around the outside of the whole thing, then add any black fill that you want. I filled the small interior spots - similar to fingerprints - as well as the underlying color behind the paddles.

Finish it off with some shading. I was happy with how this one turned out, so I moved on to the star. There had to be a way to make a star - not boat paddles - and I was determined to figure it out.

I started off with a circle drawn in pencil. . .

. . . which I split into six sections.

Then I put some pencil dots in the centers of each section to act as a base point for my star . . . . . . points,

which I drew with a micron.

I erased most of the inside lines,  but you don't really have to. Then just like in the first example, I started connecting the sections and auraed them.

Add the next section, notice that it falls underneath the first section ala-hollibaugh.

Then the last section.

All that's left is to blacken in the fills. I elected not to aura the entire piece, but to fill in that background with tipple. Shade. I was happy with the way this star turned out - very happy, actually. So I decided to move on to a project.

I know I have step by step photos somewhere, but it's late and I'm super tired. I layered three circles, which included the star, the snowflake, and a flower. That flower? I used my ruler idea, but turned the flatheads of the oars into rounds and called it a flower :). Notice in the snowflake that you do not have to connect points directly across from each other. I added some Derwent Inktense Pencils for color and splattered  various colors for some extra texture. For this one, I used Strathmore's new artist tiles - the vellum one. 

Erin's tangle midoosa has a lot of options and I know I have only scratched the surface. I think I'll be using this one a lot in the next couple weeks, trying to perfect it. Thanks, Erin, for such a fun pattern!

Whimsey Grids

Joanne Sharpe is the master of colorful, thought provoking statements and art, AND she teaches several online classes. One of which is called Letter Love 101. I started the class a little over a week ago and this was last night's project. The lesson was called Whimsey Grids and this my interpretation. There is a saying, "Being creative is not a hobby, it is a way of life." There's also another saying, "Inside all of us is a wild thing." It has absolutely nothing to do with this post, I just like the saying :). Bunny trails aside, the thought is to create - every day. Creation comes in many forms, we made a list of a few ways to create art each day. Then I colored it up brightly - like always :). Product included various Derwent pencils, sharpies, and Copic products. Check out Joanne's classes at the above link, then create! Trust me, if I can do it - so can you!

Love This Phicops!

This has been a great week for challenges! And I am miserably behind in  most of them, so I was really glad to see I could combine several with this one tile!

Linda Farmer at Tangle Patterns posts a new string each week for us to work with. This string was provided by Jadie Wright. I thought it looked like a water lily. You can read about Linda's string challenge here. 

Yesterday, Laura - at I Am the Diva - posted a new tangle that her husband B-rad designed. It's called Phicops and it was this week's Diva Challenge. So I combined the string challenge with the Diva Challenge and came up with my phicopped water lily.

I combined phicops with betweed, and threw in a little Derwent and there you go! You can check out all the phicops tiles here.

Jenn at Just Add Water, Silly gave us the APR challenge #39 for the word 'resolution.' She left the interpretation of the word up to us. As I considered my tile, and thought about the word 'resolution,' it reminded me of being open to ideas, open to new thoughts, open to new challenges, new ways of doing things, being open to other opinions, open to others' desires, wants, and wishes. Resolution is a means of being open - open like the petals on my water lily. An open heart, a heart reaching upwards. There are so many ways to interpret resolution. This one is mine. You can look at other interpretations of 'resolution' at Jenn's page - here.

And just like that - 3 challenges met for the week :).

Watercolor Journal

 I've been sitting here trying to figure out how to turn this into a Christmas post. Ha! It might have some Christmas colors in it. 

For whatever reason, the word "change" comes to mind. I've been working on Dion Dior's Watercolor Pencil class and one of the things she had us do was to set up a chart of our colors. At the time I didn't understand the importance of a chart and I ended up with colors spread out through two different journals.

I decided to change my procedure and I got one of the new Stillman & Birn Alpha Series journals and started over. I began with my inktense pencils and set up a block for each color.

I scribbled a swatch of color across the top of the box and watercolor washed it down the length of the box. I wrote the color number from the side of the pencil inside the box, then wrote the actual color name just below the box.

We are on vacation in the mountains for Christmas. I brought my inktense pencils and my Derwent Metallic pencils with me. I set up color swatch charts for both those sets.

When I get home I plan to set up charts for all the colors I have. Pencils, oil pastels, markers, anything and everything. And I'm going to keep them all in this one journal. It will make things easier. This "change" in recording colors will make my work flow easier and quicker, it will give me consistency in my art, it will help me assess colors better and more effectively, and most of all - it's really pretty!

What change do you need to make in your life? Of course, this was not a life altering change in my life, but couldn't I apply this same principal to the things I need to change in my life? Who couldn't benefit from more organization and structure in their life? What better time to make some changes than at Christmas? As this Christmas Day is upon us, may God bless you and be with you as you enjoy time with your family. May we all honor Him in this coming year. Merry Christmas!