Finished Watercolor Butterflies

So here are the finished butterflies.  On the right side are two of the original watercolors prior to adding water pencil.  The images on the left are the finished butterflies with the pencilwork complete.  I used water soluable pencils and then lightly went over the lines with a wet brush.

While I can certainly use more practice, I am happy with how these images turned out.  Now I need to figure out how I will use them in my collage work.

Saving My Progress

This is just a quick post so I can share my current work in progress.  My first art love was pen and ink; my second, watercolor, mostly because I wanted to color in my pen and ink.  I have enough love to go around for anything creative, but, when I painted these, I realized just how relaxing it was to come back to watercolors.  I am doing something different.  Instead of inking it, I plan on using a combination of watercolor pencil and regular colored pencil to finish these butterflies off.

Because there's always the chance I might ruin my art at a stage where I like it, especially when changing mediums, I try to take a scan of my project before I proceed.  I may mess up the original, but scanning at least gives me a chance to have a partial do over since I can print just about anything out on my large format printer.  This mentally frees me to experiment and reduces the number of half finished projects I have laying around.  Plus, its a good way to document my progress.

I'll post the finished art if it turns out successfully. 

Collage With Cereal Boxes

So I thought you might like to see an example of something I created using a cereal box as the substrate.  Here are some collages I made to use either as journal pages or digital scrapbooking pages.  As a bonus, I'm providing a link so that you can download one of the images to use in your own journaling and/or scrapbooking.  All I ask is that you not use it for commercial purposes or in artwork you plan on submitting to a magazine.  Of course, I would love to see the final project showing how you used it.

To download a 300dpi version of the first background (the one with the flower), click here.  When the image opens, right-click on it and save as onto your computer.  Enjoy!

Doing More with Less

Art supplies are expensive. I shudder to think how much I have spent over the years, especially since I have so many artistic interests and they all require their own set of tools and media. To make matters worse, new tools and gadgets keep coming out that are oh-so-tempting. You can never have enough art paper. Really. Ok, maybe you can, especially if you are like me and fall in love with those beautiful, fluttering treasures and can’t stand to “ruin” them by, gasp, actually using them. (I know, I’m working on that.)

This causes two issues: 1. Supplies are expensive and my budget doesn’t leave much wiggle room for extras and 2. Some of those supplies become too precious to use, especially if they are both gorgeous and expensive.

Both those issues interfere with my goal to make more art. My solution is this: to repurpose items that would otherwise be recycled or thrown away. I know, this is nothing new, and plenty of other people have come to this realization as well. But for me, it’s progress.

My favorite repurposed item is the cereal box. It makes an excellent substrate for a variety of projects, from bookmaking to mixed media collages. It is also a great art supply for kids. Mine run through paper so quickly (often making just a few marks before deciding they need another piece of paper), that an alternate source for things to draw, paint and collage on is a relief. Plus, I’m not ruining a precious material, as my household goes through an inordinate number of cereal boxes that would otherwise be recycled. The downside is it’s not archival, but since much of what I’m doing right now is practice and experimentation, this isn’t such a huge issue to me.

So do you have a favorite repurposed material you use in your art?

Weekend Family Art Time

One successful way I’ve found to slip in time for art is to make a weekend morning of family art time. My husband and I take turns getting up with the kids on the weekend since they both seem to have this unnatural urge to get up early (don’t worry, I’m storing this away for when they are teenagers and want to sleep until noon). Having them work on art projects serves two purposes—it usually gives me time to do some simple art along with them, and it keeps them quiet. I find that simple drawing projects or clay/play dough projects work best since cleanup is easiest and supervision isn’t as intensive. My oldest child especially loves that I make art along with him, providing some always welcome Mommy-time.

Finding the Motivation

So after reading Shona Cole’s book The Artistic Mother, I totally felt energized to do daily art. In theory it seems so simple, to break projects down into smaller pieces, prioritize your life, etc. Reality never seems to want to follow the rules. As I was trying to work on a couple of pieces this morning while my children played, I kept on having to interrupt what I was doing, and I became really frustrated. And so I realized this about myself; I often procrastinate from doing art, even in small chunks, because once I focus on something it really bothers me if I have to stop before the process is done. As a result, I find it hard to even start because I want to avoid that kind of negativity. Anyone else in the same boat?

Rather than give up, though, I’ve decided that now that I realize this about myself, I can work on changing that feeling—learning to be more patient with myself and others. It’s hard work.

Here is what I was working on: faces for some whimsical people collages. I painted the flesh color yesterday in acrylics. Today I was using a combination of water soluble oil pastels and watered down acrylic gesso to add some interest. It’s been an unnaturally wet and cold winter here in the NW (even by our standards) and it still doesn’t quite feel like spring. To combat that, I’ve been focusing on using a lot of bright colors and cheery themes.

New Elf Doll

So I used a basic Waldorf doll pattern and adapted it to make this elf for my son for Christmas. The fabric is an upcycled t-shirt belonging to my husband. It is stuffed with wool except for the ears which are made with cotton quilt batting. The clothing is made from felt and the scarf is knit from a soft wool blend. The hair is mostly wool yarn with some wool roving thrown in for texture.