Draw Your Own Sun: Art Journal Page

I was out at the coast over the weekend for two gloriously relaxing days. I love being there any time of year in any kind of weather. It's always breathtaking, even (and maybe especially) on the blustery days. One cloudy morning, I got out my sketchbook and did some doodling.

I only had a few basic supplies with me but I had already collaged and painted a background on the pages to use up extra scraps and paint from another project. After doodling and dabbling with my pencils and paints for awhile, the words came to me.

On a cloudy day, draw your own sun.

And while you're at it, relax!

It was fun just giving myself time to play around. In this second page, I really like the way the caran d'ache works together with the collage elements and acrylic background. I just used what I could find -- items cut from the newspaper and a tea bag (do you see it?). If you've never tried tea bags in your collages, I highly recommend it. They're stained in delicate earth tones and are beautifully transparent. They also add a subtle texture that absorbs paint very nicely. 

Thank you for visiting my blog! I always appreciate your comments so much.

Art Journal Page: Thankful

It's Thanksgiving today, a time for gratitude and reflection, not to mention delicious food and family fun. There is so much I am thankful for. As I turned to this journal page I'd started earlier and began to write about my gratitude, I realized that I am more thankful for family and friends than anything else.

Here is the page before I started working on it today. The tape is homemade washi tape I made after watching one of Jennibellie's fabulous tutorials. I certainly am thankful for the generosity  and support of artists I've met online.

My Thanksgiving today ended up being very quiet and peaceful with just my immediate family. I wasn't feeling well, so we had to cancel our plans to join a larger family gathering. We all enjoyed our quiet day at home after a hectic few weeks. Fortunately, I wasn't too sick to sketch and paint a little.

Thank you, for visiting my blog! Your comments are always very much appreciated. I will be gone for part of the weekend, but I will be sure to visit your blogs over the next week.

Recent Mixed Media Paintings

A few weeks ago, my son and I were talking about how to make aged papers by soaking paper in tea. That lead to a fun morning of experimentation with different kinds of tea and coffee. He showed me how to crinkle the paper to enhance the overall distressed effect. One thing led to another, and before I knew it, I had collected a bunch of leaves and was pressing them between layers of assorted papers from the recycle bin after putting ink on the paper, and on the leaves. We soon had a big stack of papers, which we pressed under our trusty Webster's unabridged dictionary for over a week. It took that paper forever to dry! But the end result is some beautifully textured and colored papers that I can incorporate into my collages.

"Things are not what they seem"
Mixed media on 4" x 4" canvas

The face was an afterthought here. It started as an abstract, but as I looked at it from across the room, I saw a face, so I sketched and painted to define it more clearly.

"Helpful"
Mixed Media on 5" x 8" canvas

"Mourning"
Mixed Media on 6" x 6" canvas

Thanks for visiting. Your comments are much appreciated! Be sure to check out the other fantastic artwork at Paint Party Friday.