HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, 

trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, 

changing yourself, changing your world. 

You're doing things you've never done before, 

and more importantly, 

you're Doing Something.

So that's my wish for you, and all of us, 

and my wish for myself.

 Make New Mistakes. 

Make glorious, amazing mistakes. 

Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. 

Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough,

 or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.” 
― Neil Gaiman

I love this quote by Neil Gaiman!!!  It really resonates with me because one of the things that I learned when making my art is that "You are going to make mistakes."  I have learned that when mistakes do happen and often I might add, that they take my art to another level.  A level that I would not have achieved if it had not been for the mistake in the first place.  A mistake…forces me to erase or paint over it and try again or perhaps to be creative by continuing to paint and make the mistake into something completely different…what many artists call "happy accidents."  Either way, it pushes my creative mind into gear and adds to my artistic experience. 

My wish for each and every one of you for the New Year and the rest of your life is to embrace your "glorious, amazing mistakes!'  Lose the fear (if you have it) that your art "isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect." Quit comparing your art to that of others and start experimenting, learning and practicing your amazing art.  And by all means….do not fear making mistakes!  Mistakes happen…make them part of your art!  

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS PERTAINING TO MY ART:

Have you made your New Year's Resolutions yet?  I usually make them and then about half-way through the year…they start to slide.  If you know what I mean. Maybe this year will be different because they are written here and I can keep referring back to them to see how I am doing. 

1.  Paint or draw every day even if it is only 5 minutes.

2.  No new supplies unless they are to replace the ones that I have.

3.  No new journals.  Complete the ones that I have.

4.  Limit buying art books.  I need to read the ones that I already have.

5.  Limit the on-line art classes.  I need to finish the ones I'm in.

6.  Spend less time on the computer and more time on making art!

7.  Try painting with a credit card or pallet knife.  Make it loose and edgy!

Whew!  I could go on and on but then they wouldn't be very realistic.  I think that these are pretty realistic except for #6.  I spend way too much time looking at all the pretty things on Pinterest which leads to discovering new art and other people's blogs.  So it's not all bad.  Is it?  Oh!  Oh! I think that I'm in trouble if I'm already trying to rationalize it.  lol!

FAMOUS ARTIST COLLAGE, "REMBRANDT."

Before I sign off I wish to include a collage that I put together last year to include in my "Teesha Journal" (doesn't it sound ancient when it was only completed last week?)  Anyway, I hope that you enjoy it. 

Have a Happy New Year!!!

Hugs,
Ginny

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

"May PEACE be your gift at Christmas and your BLESSING all year through."

I love this time of year but it seems to sneak up on me and I always feel rushed to get all my shopping, baking and card making done.  Why don't I start earlier?  I tried shopping earlier…like the super sales right after Christmas but I sometimes forget the gifts, lose them, or find something better later in the year.   I think that I could take a lot of stress off myself if I only made my cards for next year by…let's say JULY!  I always say that I am going to do that!  Oh well…I have good intentions.

Anyway, I hope that everyone finds a stress free holiday season.  One filled with love, joy and peace.

Merry Christmas !

Hugs,

Ginny

HOW I PAINT MY LETTERING

Ok!  I had a request for a tutorial on how I paint my lettering in my collages.  This is something that I learned by watching Teesha Moore in a Mermaid Circus video and that I adopted for my own colleges because it is very easy for me to do...and I think that it really gives my collage work a polished look.

Here goes:  I mainly use Molotow paint pens but you can use any acrylic or poster paint pen with an extra fine or fine tip.  I have a collection of the Molotow (1mm, in black and white and all other colors 2mm), Painters (Elmer's) and Sharpie (poster and acrylic paint pens.  Not oil!) that I use for this purpose.  I find that the acrylic paint pens will write over almost anything, even waxy Prismacolor pencil backgrounds.   Note: The white Signo Uni-ball pen also works great but it is not waterproof so I opted to use the acrylic paint markers instead.  Also...a nice feature of the Molotow markers is that they are refillable.

The first thing that I do is to layout the words using a General's white charcoal pencil.  I play with the size and position of the words to ensure that they all fit within the allocated space.  Just rough it out…you don't have to be too neat or precise at this stage.  The important thing is that the words are positioned where you want them.

Next, I draw the letters.  If you have taken any of Joanne Sharpe's lettering classes, you will recall where she said to use your own lettering and fatten it up…add curlicue ends, serifs, etc.   Make it your own!  This is what I do…I make a block letter in upper or lower case and then fatten up the letter on the curves and some straight lines (this is just my personal preference).  You might want to experiment to see what works for you.  I form each letter, fatten it up and add the serif before I go on to the next letter.  I watched Teesha do it this way and it made perfect sense to me.  If I made the whole word before I fattened it up and added the serif, I was then trying to condensed the letters to keep them from running into each other.

Once all the lettering is done with the base color...go back and erase the charcoal lines with a kneaded eraser.

Add the shading:  Shading can be done using a paint pen, alcohol marker, or colored pencil.  I like the clean look of a paint pen so that is what I usually use. Again, this is just my personal preference.  Use what you like.

When choosing a color to shade with, I often experiment until I find the look that ties the lettering to the rest of the collage.   Sometimes it is a paint marker that is in the same color family but darker than the background or sometimes a contrasting color works best.   Even a medium color letter, blue for example, looks great with a white shadow or outline.  There are no mistakes here…experiment and try to find what looks best.  If you don't like it,  just paint over it with another color.

Where to make the shading:  I always like to shade the left and bottom of the letters because I always make the light source in my collages come from the upper right corner.  Pay attention to where the light source is coming from and shade the opposite side of the letter.  Your collage may have a light source coming from the bottom and left side of the page and therefore, the shading will be on the right and top side of the letter.

1. Draw letter with charcoal pencil  2. Draw block letter  3. Fatten letter  4. Add serif.  5. Shade letter.

There you go…that's how I paint my lettering.

Now…go have fun!

Until next time!

Hugs,
Ginny

COFFEE, LATTE, EXPRESSO…OH MY!!!

I finished this journal page several weeks ago and didn't post it because it wasn't one of my favorites. It seemed out of character with the other pages in my journal but HEY, isn't that what journaling is all about…letting the work flow and seeing what comes out???  And sometimes the resulting work IS something different and out of character with your other works…that's how new directions or new styles happen!

I wouldn't exactly say that this is a new direction for me but it certainly shows my state of mind when I created it.  I was apparently craving coffee….or screaming COFFEE!  lol!

Hmmmm, coffee does sound good right now.  Well, I'm off to make a cuppa…...

Credits:  Collage sheets from Shelly Massey, Glitterbug, and PaperScraps.

Until next time!

Hugs,
Ginny

"I'M HENERY THE EIGHT I AM!"

As I was working on this collage the song "I'm Henery The Eight I am" kept entering my head.  Remember the song of the 60's by Peter Noone of the The Hermits ?  Some of you may be too young.  Anyway, I really enjoyed working on this piece as I love the old painting's of the "Master's" (although, the artist of this portrait is unknown) and even more…I love to alter them!!!!

While working on this collage, I thought that it was appropriate to cover King Henry's face with a mask to represent the fraudulent depiction of the King in his portrait's.  If you don't know the history behind the King's portraits, it goes like this...the King's portrait artist, Hans Holbein In The Younger, painted the King as a young, tall, strong and imposing figure when in truth… he was aging and in his 40's, had short legs, his shoulders in the painting were heavily padded, and he was in poor health.  Not the powerful and mighty warrior that is shown in many of his portrait's.  It is said that the King liked this image so much that he encouraged other artist's to copy Hans Holbein's portrait of him.

I hope that you enjoy the altered Master's painting and give this a try!

Credits:  Blue damask is a die cut from a Cricut cartridge, the "Make Art" is from a collage sheet by Shelly Massey, and everything else is cut from various magazines.

Until next time!

Hugs.
Ginny

MARILYN MONROE COLLAGE

This time I thought that I would experiment by using copies of my own art work and free collage sheets downloaded off the Internet.   I am happy with the overall results but I am not happy with the quality of the print from the downloaded collage sheets.

Here's the problem…the prints from the downloaded collage sheets are not knife sharp and the blacks are not true black…they seemed a little blurry and washed out.  I have a high resolution (as far as home inkjet printers go) HP photo printer that is supposed to give sharp quality prints so I thought that I would do a little research to see if it was something that I was doing wrong, could do better by making a few adjustments to my equipment or if I need to go shopping for another type of printer.

I first tried changing the paper.  Everything that I read about HP printers said that you need to use HP paper for the best quality prints.  I always believed that this was just a sales pitch to sell more HP paper but I have to say…it did make a difference!!!  One down!  Next, I set the print adjustments for my printer to "Best" and changed the paper type to "specialty type."  That helped even more!  Wow…Now I was getting somewhere!  Then I tried different types of HP paper ( just so happens that I had a sample pack that came with the printer) and got the best print with the card stock which I later found out that they no longer sell….ugggh! I don't want to use card stock…it is too thick for layering.  Back to square one!!!!!

I know that someone has to have a printer that is not a large format like the Epson, uses pigment inks so that I can use Mod Podge without the ink smearing and one that make knife sharp prints with the blacks printing a true black…not grey!  If anyone has any suggestions, please leave a comment below.

The majority of the border and the top of Marilyn's dress is from the free collage sheets by Shelly Massey and Angellea (Glitterbug via Flickr).  Some of the border and Marilyn's face are copies of my own art work. The arms, legs, hoop and gecko are from magazine clippings.

CAUTION!  A word of caution about getting free collage sheets from the internet, especially from Pinterest…the artist may not have given permission for its use even if the Pinterest sub-title says that it is free.  I always double check by going to the blog or Flickr account of the individual offering the free work to confirm that they allow their work being downloaded and used in other peoples art.  Also, to see if there are any stipulations to its use such as mentioning credit.  I always try to do this…it's just NICE!

Until next time.

Hugs, 

Ginny

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Have a very safe and fun Halloween everyone! 

I am going to stay home and pass out candy to the neighborhood kids and 

hope that all the candy is gone by the end of the evening so 

that I am not tempted to eat any! 

DARN DIET!!!!

I found this interesting guy in a magazine.  I can't remember the name of the candy bar he's advertising.  Anyway, for those of you who have Cricut machines...do you recognize the spider web, cat, fence and tree?  I think that it came from the Paper Doll Dress Up cartridge.  I cut it out years ago and just now find a use for it.  Since this journal page, I have incorporated several Cricut embellishments into my pages.  Finally....I have found a use for the Cricut machine (I am not a scrapbooker).

Hugs,
Ginny