Art Journaling

Do I art journal?  Yes and no.  I have several sketchbooks that contain artistic endeavors, but they also contain scraplets of things that I come across or want to remember, like quotes, new words and their definitions, recipes, plans for parties, labels from purchases, etc.  I sometimes try to illustrate the quote or word.  But a lot of it recently has been trying out and cataloging new art supplies.  I have a separate book for my zentangles, but sometimes they find their way onto the pages of my sketchbook. So I guess you would not consider it true art journaling. 

Playing with new markers from my son and daughter-in-law.

Just a quote I found that I wanted to illustrate with those new markers.

This started as a doodle drawing on a post-it at work (the square at the top) which I thought turned out too pretty to throw away.  So I added some more longer streamers and a quote.  (I do tend towards the snarky quotes, but not all the time.)

I recently splurged on some new calligraphy pens.  Not markers, but pens with ink cartridges. Though not exactly like dipping a pen with a nib in ink, they come very close.  I did take a course in calligraphy years ago at a night school before I got married and became quite good at it.  I have done many placecards or escort cards over the years and I designed our wedding invitations also.  I'm very rusty and need a lot of practice right now. 

Here I was trying out some new colored pencils from my daughter this Christmas.  

Okay, another snarky quote and illustration combining a sticker from some washi tape I received as a gift and the new markers.  I think I should have changed the quote to say "Have you ever had one of those days when everyone looks like a pinata and you wish you had a stick" because I don't think that many people walk around just holding sticks.  

This is a mixed media page.  It started with that octopus in marker.  Actually no, it started with some lettering practice at the top of the page and then I decided to draw the octopus and found myself making it more involved with the addition of the gel pens. So then I wanted to cover up the lettering at the top and opened some tube watercolors, which obviously you can tell I have little experience with because the background is much darker than I would have liked, however, it did cover up the lettering.  Then I googled octopus quotes and found this one which fit the day as it was National Hugging Day.

Words and quotes.

This was done for National Handwriting Matters Day. Sakura had an Instagram contest and asked for handwritten wishes for 2017.  They picked 10 random entries for a pretty nice selection of their product, but I wasn't one of them.  

And then, I got some gel pens to play with.

So you'll see there is some art.  I have begun to think that I should have a sketchbook with just the art products cataloged as a reference book which would make it a lot easier to carry along with me when we go back and forth to the condo.  I try to limit the supplies I bring along and have self-restricted myself to anything that fits in one particular tote bag.  Over the last year I was mostly catching up on my zentangle calendar, but that kind of fell apart this fall and I'm not doing it again this year.  I didn't get a new calendar set up the way I was doing it, and actually my mother bought me a lovely Mary Englebreit calendar planner (which I'm not really into anymore, but I will use it as it was very thoughtful of her).  

I am anxious to try out a new journal that I got.  It's a 3 x 5 landscaped oriented one with 140 lb. paper making it ideal for small watercolors.  I hope the muse will find me and get me moving on that.

A Colorful End of the Month

I didn't keep up with my photo challenge this month, but I did get some good, colorful shots this week to share.  The first are the violets that appear each spring ...... wherever they want.  Really.  They are volunteers at this point.  I added them to certain areas of the yard many years ago and each year it seems I find them in different places and not where they were last spring.  

A friend had given me yellow violets from her yard which she had gotten from her sister's garden.  This was the first one to bloom this year.

And the blue and white violets, or confederates as they're sometimes called, came from my childhood home having been planted there by my grandfather who found them along the river banks he fished. (There's a little tiny spring beauty in there too!)

These scilla's have spread like wildflower wildfire.  I told HWNSNBP today that it's amazing that all of them we have all over the yard came from a bag of about 20 bulbs, the size of an acorn.  They must like it here.

As do these chionodoxa's, or glory of the snow.  I must admit that I have a weakness for blue flowers, especially this shade of blue!

These pink primroses haven't bloomed like this in years.  

And I'm not even sure the name of this flower, but don't those blossoms look like some sort of animal with their mouth open?

We have a few hyacinth's blooming.

And HWNSNBP potted up some Johnny-jump-ups that we got over the weekend.

There are daffodils blooming in the yard also, and the forsythia is perking up nicely.  And just as these flowers are beginning to open we're once again expecting a possible freeze.  Oh well, glad I got out to enjoy them this week.

And I also enjoyed having tea with two good friends this week at Teaberry's.  Their entryway hanging tree was decorated for Easter.  So pretty and colorful.  

And speaking of colorful, have I shared this little gadget.  I think I wrote about our office being without heat for a week recently, and then it happened again last Monday.  This time, it turned out to be a simple fuse - yes some of our school still runs on these kinds of fuses.  The maintenance worker showed it to me and I asked for it and put a piece of washi tape around it.  Now it sits on my desk.

And one last burst of color is the latest wind map that I worked on last night.  Admittedly, this is not for our region, or recent for that matter.  I googled wind maps and images and found the one that this is based on which I think was over one of the poles.  This one was a little more complex that the others.  Please excuse my current obsession with doing these.  I'm just having a lot of fun doing them.  Now I just need to find a good light pink marker - I thought I had one, well actually two, but they're kind of dried up.  Maybe I'll have to do some marker shopping this weekend.

I'm sharing this with Our Beautiful World - this week's prompt is "part".  You can see the parts of the flowers and the fuse, which is part of our heating system.  If you have a few moments, check out the other entries from around the world here.

Just a "Little" More Journaling

Looking back I know I've posted this first one before, but I just wanted to show the difference in the medium that I used.  This one is with pencils - Caran D'Ache Pablos. IRL you might think that it is stitched with colored thread. (Hmmmm, could that be the next way I try to do these?)

A different set of markers for this one.  I don't know the manufacturer.  The markers are double-tipped and the barrel is unmarked and silver. What I do know is they are an inexpensive set.  I tried these because there were a couple of shades of the blues and the greens.

Today was the last day of school before our spring break.  Ten days!  Sometimes, at the end of the week, I key up a song to play over the intercom as the last bus group leaves school.  Most often it's been Pharrell Williams' "Happy".  Last week it was "I Wear My Sunglasses at Night".  Today one of the teachers in the office this morning started singing "All You Need is Love" by the Beatles.  This was in response to it having been a very, how should I say.....difficult week as far as personalities getting along go.  I told her that I was going to play that song at the end of the day - it was agreed.  And I did.  

Our wiseacre gym teacher, who is young enough to be my son was in the office and wanted to know "what era" that song came from because "he had never heard it before" as the rest of us were singing the refrain.  I told him jokingly he needed to get out!  Then the phone call came and I thought it was just going to be a teacher telling me that I left the mike on and they could hear the music, but no, the day and week had to end with letting me know that two students who were supposed to stay for tutoring were unaccounted for.  Sheesh!  I am soooooooooo ready for 10 days break!!!!!!

Just a "Little" More Journaling

I seem to be a bit enamored with these wind maps.  I tried another one with my Stabilo markers because I had more colors to choose from than the Microns I used before.  

And this one I did with pencils - Caran D'Ache Pablos.  This map was from a day that they were saying tornados were a possibility.

Reproducing those maps is almost as relaxing as tangling.

Just a "Little" Journaling

A few days ago, in my news feed on Facebook, one of the weather sites that I follow posted this image of an impending storm.  This is a windflow map (not sure if that's an official name, but it indicates the flow of the winds).  I really thought it was so pretty and it inspired me to do the drawing below in my little art journal.  

Image from weathernj.com

I used some of my new colored Micron pens.  (There are certain perks from working in a school office and getting e-mails from vendors, especially art supply vendors that I can order from outside of school and still get the coupons and sales.)

One of the tangles that I recently added to my tangle calendar was Tamisolo by Hanny Nura.  I liked it a lot and thought that it would look pretty cool with color in those tips.  I had recently gotten some new pencils (Caran D'Ache Pablo permanent color pencils) and wanted to give them a try. The top one with all the colors looks a little milky because I did go over the colored areas with the white pencil in the set in an attempt to use it as a blender.  It did blend, but the downside was the milkiness of the colors afterwards. 

On the second one I stuck with a certain pallet, one combination for all the tangles that went left and another for the tangles that went right.  

This is a 3.5 x 5 inch journal with 100 lb. weight paper which makes it good for wet media and a little toothy for dry.  The pencils do well on the pages with blending but I think it's a bit to toothy for the Micron pens, but that probably won't stop me for doing more work with the pens in it.