Art Journal Video: the key to today

I managed to figure out my camera a little bit - enough to get you a video! Yippie!! It's just sped up, with music in the background; as step one is just getting a video going. :) Enjoy:

After I did the video, I added some journalling and some of my spray inks:

I love how the gold peeks through everything, and gives a beautiful vintage effect.

I am loving  all these cute stamps, and have more on their way to me - so that I have enough variety to make a range of cards (and to have lots of play with), and the April SMAK kit should be released soon too :D 

Materials: Homemade art journal, various acrylic paints, gelliplate, brayer, unity stamps (March SMAK kit and Itty bitty: key to today), white pen, staples brand black rollarball pen - works wonderfully! Homemade spray inks.... and I think that's it :)

In The Studio: Gelli Printing

This past weekend, I was looking for some inspiration to start my day off. Being a little sick and stuffy, my brain was a little foggy and sleepy still. So - I pulled out my Gelli Printing Plate and went to town with it!

I created four monoprints, which I will be cutting up and using in my art journals.

It is hard to see the details in all these prints - there are so many fine layers of paint, each layer bringing in more texture. It's a shame that the scan 'flattened' all the depth. Oh well. These are being chopped up anyways, so it's not a huge deal :)

Sketchbook Project 2013 Submission

I mailed out my Sketchbook Project last week, it was sad to say goodbye. Creating this project has taught me to many techniques, and was a creative challenge as a whole. 

As you can see the pages are a little thick - that is because they are made out of plaster! I completely rebound my book with an accordion fold, and recreated the pages using paster. The only 'original' sketchbook components are the front and back covers.

My sketchbook is titled, "Chronicle of a Smile", and so I appropriately placed it in the "Chronicles" category. It is an odd book, modern I suppose. And I'm hoping that the viewer will leave with curious thoughts. 

I used monprinting techniques to create the backgrounds, and then used image-transfer techniques to apply various imagery. Some pages have items embedded, while others have amazing textures from the gel-medium. Lastly, various words were applied to each page. And here they are, in the order that they appear:

As you can see, the monoprinting for the backgrounds give beautiful layers of colours. Here are some detail images of the gorgeous texture that the pictures just cannot capture from far:

There are obviously fewer pages in this 'sketchbook' of mine, than the original book. But being plaster pages I needed to keep it under their 1" thickness requirement. Despite that, it still took ages to complete. 

Monoprinting Goodness

No. II Monoprint detail

Those who know me, know well that I have a sort of artist attention disorder...I always want to try everything, and wanting and acting on these impulses are two completely different monsters. I stumble across Gelli Arts Printing plates while browsing through my favourite online art store, Currys.

Image from http://www.gelliarts.com

Here is my quick workspace set up...I literally ripped it out of the box and ran for my paints to get going...

A monoprint is essentially an original print that cannot be reproduced. I could arrange and align everything the same, and with the spontaneous nature of the paint, I would still have a different print. I still have lots to learn about the process and I can't wait to see what I can create as I get better! It's amazing how you can achieve so much detail, and so much ambiguity all at once. ... and the results:

No. I Original Acrylic Monoprint Painting

No. II Original Acrylic Monoprint Painting

Each has 4-6 layers of acrylic paint, creating a lot of depth and lightness within the piece. I cannnot wait to make more, it was just so much fun! Both of these are available in the online shop! Happy creating!