Atomic Project: My creative journey "Do the work"

Seriously, get something done. Make something awesome, or not awesome, so you know what not to do next time you try. Put the time in even if you don’t feel like it if you want a creative life. Let me share my first piece of advice on my creative realization, "Do the work" All of the pictures in this post are a result of at least one of the techniques listed in this post.

Creative process- Hope Grows

 Here is my dirty little secret. There is a point in almost every creative project that I undertake where I hate my work, passionately. This is where I reached that point with this art journal page. I hate how the daffodils dulled, and the background muddied, and the elements feel disconnected. At this point, I want to rip the page out and throw it away.

 I decide to see it through, because I was loving the idea of the daffodils, and didn't think I could remove them without destroying them. I decide to try and clean up the piece with some stronger color, so I add spray ink. At this point I like it better, and love the look the pink gives it.





Then the ink dries. and it gets really pale, runs off the desso, and looks pale. I darken the lines on the daffodills, and on the bird, which is getting washed out.









I add some dark blue to try and add depth to the backround. The paper element soaks it up and looks almost black, while the top of the piece is still grey and muddy. Gross.

 At this point I am really upset. I decide that I can't un muddy the piece, so I have to add unpainted/uninked paper to try and build up the color. Right here, this is where I decide I have lost my mind. Yes, it looks like I shoved a piece of paper on a mess, but notice how the backround "pops" a little more once there is this pale paper?

At this point, I work the background a little harder, and repaint the daffodils to brighen the color. I use a blue to dover the lighter paper and add the striped paper to add interest. I add the hearts to balance the page, and incorporate the saying. I added the black scrap to give a fluid feeing, and start adding white doodling to lighten the feel of the page. This is the point where it really starts looking trainwrecky. 

I added the light ink on the black, and build up the white sections more. At this point, the piece is at a point where I feel it is "complete". 

Hope you liked this peek into my process. The hardest part is not giving up on the work at the point it is feeling frustrating.

~Venetia

Art Journaling- Free your Heart

Mixed Media, Free Your Heart, Venetia Holbrook 2013.

I've been meaning to play with art journaling for a while, and I finally made myself sit down and finish a page. What is an art journal?  Read this great post about how to make one at Daisy Yellow.  One of my 2013 goals is to finish an art journal.

If you are interested in Art Journaling, and you are a mixed media artist, or a scrapbooker, you will find you don't need much to start. Yes, I know that it is more fun to enable purchasing, and believe me, I plan to review more artsy supplies to enable your purchasing.

What do you need to start?
~A journal (you could use a box, or a sketchbook, or a used book.)
~Paper of some sort
~Acrylic Paints, stamps/stamp pads, ink, alcohol ink, watercolor, crayons, markers, colored pencils (ANY of these)
~Adhesive
~Junk from around the house
 
I am going to share the creative process I used for this project. Since I play with hearts often, I decided to start with a heart theme. I have a crate of Authentique paper from Scrapbooksteals.com.  I dug out papers I liked, then I freehand cut the heart. I've sewn around hearts before and liked the look, so I hand stitched the edge and recut the heart to reshape it a little. Holding it against the background I decided it looked dull so I colored the heart with colored pencil. I wanted the grey background more colorful, but was feeling too lazy to pull out my acrylics, so I misted it pink. It looked like I over-misted, and I didn't like the result. So I added blue mist which blended into purple (a counter intuitive fix to over misting, but it works). I drew the corner motif on the bottom, used bubble wrap painted with acrylic to make the dots. To fill the extra space of the background, I tore paper to fill in the edges, glued it down, then tacked down the large piece of background paper. Once the background was ready, I placed the heart and decided it needed wings. I sketched the wings, and fussy cut them. Then, I decided on the title. Once that was all down the doodling  looked lonely, so I added more black, and finished with the white because it needed something else.

The result was this journal page.  Have you tried Art journaling?
~Venetia