COLLAGE - FEAR & LOVE

FEAR AND LOVE:  "there are two basic motivating forces: fear and love.  

When we are afraid, we pull back from life.  When we are in love, 

we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance.  

We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections.  

If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to 

love others or our potential to create.  Evolution and all hopes 

for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision 

of people who embrace life."   

John Lennon

It's been several months since I worked in my "Teesha Moore" style journal and I hadn't realized how much I missed it until I picked it up again.  I have been working on other art pieces; pen and ink sketches, watercolor, fabric journal covers but nothing gives me the joy and satisfaction that creating funky…even strange like collage pages in my "Teesha" style journal.

Here is my latest creation using a few sketches (the flagmen) from my grandfather's journal when he was a Merchant Marine.  Way back when!  (Im not exactly sure of the date but at least 70 years ago.)  I never knew my grandfather, as he died before I was born... but it makes my heart swell to see our art share the same page.  

Until next time…..

Hugs

Ginny

MARINE LIFE TOTEM

When I was in High School my favorite medium was pen and ink.  Back then, (those two words make me sound ancient don't they?) we used dip pens to draw…now, I use a felt tip or gel pen. I still occasionally use a dip pen when doing calligraphy or creating a grunge look but the new pens really save a lot of time by not having to constantly dip the pen in and out of the ink bottle.  Plus, you don't have to worry about ink mishaps when the tip runs out of ink or decides to drop a big glob of ink where you least want it.  

This particular drawing was done using a sepia tone 0.3 size Copic Multiliner SP pen. One of my favorites!  The pen, in my opinion, has many super qualities; it has a metal casing that feels wonderful in the hand, it is refillable with an inexpensive ink cartridge, and it comes in different point sizes.  This pen should last FOREVER!!!

Enough about the pen…how about the art work?  This is my continuing series of Totems.  This time, I decided to do pen and ink drawings on paper that I first distressed with Walnut Inks.  Did you know that Walnut Inks come in different colors?  They sure do!!!  For these, I used the usual brown tone Walnut Ink, Terra Cotta which is a reddish brown, Java...a blackish brown, Eucalyptus...a green tone and Cherry Blossom….you guessed it…a pinkish color.  I prepared both sides of the paper and plan to use them loosely and folded in a fabric journal with pockets.

Here is the completed Totem:

Now...time to get started on the back side of the paper.  Hmmmm…what will it be?  Maybe birds…or cats…how about African animals or frogs and lizards.  Soooo many ideas……

Until next time!

Hugs,
Ginny

MORE TOTEMS

This is another Totem created with collage and a rubber stamp that I made by carving a rubber eraser.  Simple, simple, simple!!!  After the collage was glued into place, there was very little embellishing that needed to be done.  Just a little shading here and there to create depth and the addition of a few doodles to create interest.  Ta-dah!!!  A totem is born!!!

The following picture is the collage sans shading and doodles.  Like I said…simple, simple, simple!

Collage prior to shading and doodles

Carved rubber stamp

Until next time….

Huggs,
Ginny

TOTEMS

totem |ˈtōtəm|
nouna natural object or animal believed by a particular society to have spiritual significance and adopted by it as an emblem._____________________________________________________________________

Funny, how someone can plant a seed in your head and it grows into something that you had never imagined.  In this case it grew from something scary into something beautiful and not scary at all. You see….I always though that totems were kind of scary…something that I would imagine to be present in nightmares. (They never appeared in any of my nightmares but anyway…)  Animals and faces with snarly teeth and squinty eyes…ready to dance around you and pounce on you once you run out of ground in which to escape but after I saw the beautiful artistic quality of the totems created by Teesha and Tracy Moore...I became excited about drawing totems. I saw them in an entirely different light. They're not scary at all!!! They are "totems" of beauty!

Footnote:  Teesha and Tracy Moore, in the Artstronaut's Club, are currently exploring drawing totems using different media.  

Until next time,

Hugs,
Ginny



                                                                         

CLASS WITH DINA WAKLEY

I finally got to take two classes with the awesome and very talented Dina Wakley at the Whim-So-Doodle in St. Petersburg, Florida.  If I had a "bucket List," this would definitely be on it!  Anyway, the classes "Random by Design," a class on how to achieve a random look using layers of paint, stamps, masks and stencils, and "Composition Basics," a class about achieving good composition by using the rule of thirds, proximity and continuance were a lot of fun and very enlightening.  I love how she breaks everything down into simple to understand steps using the "Principles of Design" that most of us learned in a high school art class or college. Many artistic journalers today follow the "there are no rules" principal.  Which is OK but it doesn't work for everyone.  Some of us need a good foundation of rules in order to make artistically pleasing art whether we follow those rules intentionally or by intuition.

ABOUT THE CLASS...At one point, Dina had us ink up our fingers with watered down acrylic paint, grab the paper with our wet fingers where the horizontal and vertical lines met in the design and set aside.  Done!  Leaving a beautiful contrast of paint in a pleasing position on the paper…adding interest and color to the piece.  (see the pink marks on the left side of my journal pages?) I loved everything about the classes but next time, I will take gloves.  I am a neat-nic….was one as a child and I still am as an adult.  Will my nails ever recover?  They look awful!

NEW ACRYLIC PAINTS...The Whim-So-Doodle is an awesome shop…they have everything.  I ended up buying many stencils and of course all of Dina's acrylic paints and writer tips that are new to the market.  Dina had them express shipped to the shop just for use in the class and we were glad that she did…they were big hit with everyone.  The shop had a big glass jar filled with them and by the evenings end…the jar was two thirds empty. I bought one to go with each tube of paint…and I wasn't going to buy another art supply. Who could resist?  Not ME!!!!

ABOUT THE TIPS...These little gems screw onto the end of the tube and have a fine line tip with a screw on cap. What makes these special is the cap…it has a needle in it that inserts into the fine line tip when the cap is screwed into place…this ensures that the paint tip does not clog.  The fine tips allows you to doodle, draw, and write with acrylic paint…almost giving a dimensional paint look. The yellow lines in the pictures below were drawn with a paint tip.  Don't you just love it!

Writer tip on tube acrylic

detail of writer tip

Until next time….

Hugs,
Ginny

HAPPINESS DOES NOT DEPEND ON…..

"Happiness does not depend on what you have or who you are, 

it solely relies on what you think"

Buddha

I couldn't wait to use these retro black and white bonnet heads.  They sat in my basket just begging to be used in a collage.  They spoke to me!!!  And….I love black and white against a bright yellow.  What could be more retro than that I ask?

Finished Collage

I tried something new in this collage…pencil!  I don't know why I hadn't done this before but while watching Teesha Moore in one of her videos for the Artstronauts Club she said that she uses pencil to add lines for interest…so I thought that I would give this a try.  I added lines around the rocks and a few lines for cracks. Then I shaded with pencil which is more subtle than the black gel stick that I usually use.  I really like it!   

(Oops!  I got carried away and started to alter the collage before I photographed it.  You can see the pencil lines around the rocks.  Guess I was really anxious to try the pencil.)

Collage prior to pen work

Until next time….

Hugs,

Ginny

THANK YOU FOR BRIGHTENING MY DAY

This one was a sleeper!  

I put off doing the pen work because, well…I just wasn't inspired 

by the color or subject matter but as I said before…

put pen to paper and go with the flow!!!

Just let it happen!

Completed collage

Collage prior to pen work.

I don't think that this needs further explanation…it is what it is!

The bug on the girl's dress and the lettering is from a collage sheet by Teesha Moore, the rest is from magazines and children's books.

Until next time….

Hugs,
Ginny