Quickies

I did these three greenie quickies last weekend. I had started the ladybug awhile ago-just using markers. I decided to play with my metallic paint pens too, and added the silvery background to the bug.  So naturally, when it came to the mermaid, allot of metallic paint pen was called for. The girl was inspired from a magzine clipping. All three will be incorporated into a new mixed media piece...still in the brain stages.

Do you have an idea about how to use metallic paint or metallic paint pens? They leave shadows if you don't follow the stroke exactly the same in the portion of design you are working on...kinda frustrating as they dry pretty quickly too. I love metallics and the paint pens seemed like a great way to apply. Any suggestions?

Combining Words and Art

The following 'quickie' drawings I completed in July. They are exercises that  I've been doing for awhile now that combine my art and journaling; craftily  called "Raw Art Journaling" by Quinn at Quinn Creative. Please check out her sight for daily inspiration and beautiful artwork. Reading about what she does helped me to get my own feelings expressed in a way that was concise and quick - no Picasso or Neruda stuff going on here; just a simple way of expression that always pleases...me.

The one above was created from some thoughts I had from a post earlier on this blog....in January, I think, about inspiration.

This was created as a result of thoughts from some of my older journal writings, and extrapolating from thoughtful emails that I had both sent and received. The color version really popped for me, but.... I needed to see it in black & white too. I like both equally.

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I think this one is my favorite. It is simple, with few colors and the stipple technique in the petals is just the ticket. The message is to myself , and I am still learning...learning to begin.

The seahorse is in!

The seahorse is decidely in. This guy was drawn directly onto scrapbooking paper that I thought had a cool ocean feel to it. I used colored pencils to accentuate. Gotta love my exacto for all this stuff.

I made another art noveau motif, but this time in cooler shades and using silver in the background. I am now out of silver paint pens. This paper is killer! It is so luxuriously thick, that it is screaming for water colors...and wouldn't ya know...there are none in my house at the moment. What happened to the gajillion kid watercolor sets I used to find all over the basement floor? "I don't know" is the answer I got today, so they are on my AC Moore list...for me.

You can see where the paint pen started skipping and running out of paint. Also, another difficulty of using paint pens with marker (or I imagine any other medium) is that it is difficult to cover the painted areas. These are small enough that it is no big deal, and will probably be covered in part by other pieces in the 'big picture'. I'm looking forward to getting some watercolors and seeing the end results using this paper. Definitely not something I'll use often, but I think the textures it creates have a nice accenting effect.