A Little Steampunk

I just have to post this steamship somewhere -

in all its glorious steampunkiness!

A couple friends and I were working hard on

a tangle book about steampunk

and somewhere along the line all our

hard work just got lost and pushed aside.

Abandoned.

 I thought I'd pull a few of my pieces of art out

and share them today!

My steamship in the first photo should be

featured in 

Just Steampunk Magazine's next issue.

 The three of us had developed a load of

steampunk tangle patterns and were making

pieces of art showcasing those patterns.

 I finally published a bunch of those tangle patterns

in my Tangle Starts Planner.

Actually, I included a total of 106 tangle patterns

in that book.

My friends Sandra Strait and Christine Reyes

both had sections of their own patterns in the

planner as well.

Actually, while I'm talking about it -

the planner is set up to start at any time during the year.

You set the monthly, weekly, daily pages up

the way you want them to be.

Then there are all these new patterns,

places to store thumbnails of your favorite patterns,

lots of extra pages for collections, notes, and

places to tangle.

If any of this sounds interesting to you,

you can read about - and see some of the inside pages -

here.

And

you can order your own copy on Amazon - 

here. 

 OK, commercial over.

I really love this piece above.

I made it with alcohol inks on Yupo Paper.

So much fun!

 I used this for an Art on a Shoe String post.

Cheap Walmart school row watercolor can

give you some beautiful color!

 I am really proud of these last two.

Bramhall is the dragon above.

Bramhall got a full page in the August, 2017,

issue of Just Steampunk Magazine.

Not long after Bramhall, I got a request from a young

cousin 

asking if I would draw a dragon for his

new bedroom.

So I flipped Bramhall, added a few flowing details,

and some color and shipped him off to Connor.

Connor appropriately named him Frost

and Frost is proudly hanging in Connor's

new bedroom.

Frost got a full page feature in the

February, 2018, issue of

Just Steampunk Magazine.

I hope you enjoyed my steampunk rambling here.

There were so many other pieces made for the

book that never happened. 

I will show you more in a post soon. 

Interested in tangling up a bunch of steampunk?

Here is a link to two of my Pinterest boards 

dedicated to steampunk art and

tangle patterns. Just click here and here. 

I would love to see what you do.

Steampunk is fun and so flexible and forgiving.

You just can't go wrong. 

To Shade a Dragon

 So I've been working on this

steampunk dragon

for quite some time.

A little here, a little there.

As the ideas hit me.

This is what he looked like this morning.

I realized I had never shaded him.

Shading is not my favorite.

I really dislike shading,

but it makes such a difference.

As you have heard me say time and again.

Shade.

Because this is what happens when you shade.

So much depth and dimension.

I tried out a steampunk name generator

on google.

It came up with the name Bramhall.

Sounds like a good dragon name to me.

Bramhall.

To shade or not to shade?

Shade. 

4 Tile Swapping

 One of the CZTs had a great idea to host a 

swap using four tiles,

drawing a mandala onto them,

then tangling each quadrant differently.

We mail our set to her and she will

match one of our pieces up with pieces from

three other people and mail us a set back.

Sounded like a really fun idea to me! So here are my 4 tiles. Here you see them unshaded. At the top of the post you see what a  difference shading makes.  It's a pain sometimes but it is always worth it!
I will be out of town for a couple days. Expect more posts when I get back. 

Skyward

 I'm having so much with this art journaling

Facebook group I'm in!

I'm trying new things,

but still the hardest part for me is the

"journaling' part of art journaling.

 And of course, I'm running behind.

The prompt was birds.

I struggled with this for a week,

wondering what to do.

Then I was cleaning out my stamping drawers,

trying to get organized once again,

and I came across this little steampunk bird stamp.

And I knew that was the bird I would use.

I mixed that with a couple other stamps, did some tangling, and came up with a suitable quote from Leonardo Da Vinci. And called it done.

I will probably add more to this spread, but for now I am happy with it. And I got to use a bunch of product that I don't use very often.
This was built in my Strathmore Mixed Media journal. Background color is a variety of Golden Fluid Acrylic paints,  Tim Holtz Distress Inks, metallic rub-on color, regular Pitt Artist Pens, and metallic Pitt Artist Pens. Stamps are from a company called Deep Red. I also used: Derwent Inktense Pencils, microns, Sharpie fine point pens, Uni-ball Signo pens, gelly roll pens, and Copic alcohol markers.

Excitement in My Mail Box!

The UPS man brought some magic in the mail today! I went outside to check on the crying kitten and found this package on the porch.

Of course, I knew what it contained and I couldn't wait to rip the package open - carefully rip - because I knew this brand newbook of zentangle was enclosed!

I have been waiting patiently for the book to arrive because on page 58, you can find my steampunk wall! This is the design I use on my business cards and on my About.Me page. It was the first drawing I used color on. (And on page 166 they included my pattern Blox.)

Design Originals did an amazing job pulling all the art together for this book. The colors are wonderful, the crispness of the black and white spot on.

And they included this pretty awesome certificate! This is just a portion of it, but check out those couple sentences - - - especially that last line! Whoot! Whoot!

This is my third time being published, but the first time in color. The entire book is amazing, full of beautiful, wonderful art!

I can not even begin to tell you how amazing it is to be a part of the overall presentation. Well, maybe you can tell - - - just a little bit!

Splashin' Some Paints

 
 I've been wanting to play with paints lately and today was the day!

These are the two final results. I know I still want to do a lot with these two-page spreads, but I'm still contemplating exactly what. Easy-peasy and literally about 10 minutes per spread. Here is what I did.

I started with Dylusions' Creative Journal by Dyan Reaveley. It's a large 11 13/16" x 9" journal, with pages measuring 11 3/8" x 8 1/4". The pages are heavy duty cardstock that hold up to lots and lots of water. I spritzed some water onto my paper, then I sprayed a bit of vibrant turquoise Dylusions Ink Spray onto the wet page.

To make this spread I literally used three colors. As they spread and mix, they make other colors. In addition to the turquoise, I sprayed on some Bubblegum Pink . . .

. . . and Lemon Zest. Then I spritzed more water onto the page . . . 

. . . and closed the book. I pressed down the pages with the book closed, then opened it back up again. At this point I had wet, gloppy color on both pages.

I used a wad of paper towels to blot up the water. I added bits of color in the blank spaces, and 

ended up with beautiful, bright colors.

These are the ink sprays I used.

Next, I took some stencils I also got from Dylusions. I held this one in place and spritzed some water onto the page - through the stencil.

I let it sit for a couple seconds, then lifted the stencil. At this point my stencil was wet on the top side, so I turned it over and placed it face-down on the adjacent page. 

I pressed it down, then lifted it and removed it. I let both pages sit with the water on them for about 30-45 seconds. The wetness of the water re-activated the ink and the color started lifting everywhere the water was. After that 30-45 seconds, I dabbed the wetness with the paper towel, and dried my page with a heat gun. This technique is called 'ghosting.'

I loved the pages just like this, but still wanted to add to them.

I inked a stamp with Stayz-On ink and

stamped it onto my pages in two different spots.

This was the end result. I will probably do more work on this, and at the absolute least I will tangle on these pages.

My second set of pages started off like this.

I applied the ghosting technique with some steampunk elements.

I really love this set also! I know that I will add more to these pages tomorrow. I will have to show you more photos when I get them complete. Now, off to tangle on the pink pages! I can't wait to see how they turn out!

Did Someone Ask For Circles?

I mentioned yesterday how far behind I am on challenges. I've had this one sitting in my smash journal waiting to lay down some color. And now I remember that someone challenged us to circles, but for the life of me I cannot remember who - and I cannot find the challenge in my daily reads. So. Here is my response to the Unknown Circle Challenge! I used a little spinner pattern, mixed in some assemblies and jalousie, threw in some of my barz and geerz, and you have a bit of steampunk. With a whole bunch of circles. I count 79, but there might be more :). On to the next drawing.