Mandala 18 of 100 and Some Gratitude

Tags

100 Mandalas, acrylic paint, altered art, art journal, collage, gratitude, gratitude journal, Inktense

This mandala was used to teach a friend how to draw mandalas and how to use Derwent Inktense watercolor pencils. I have been kind of obsessed with little circles in my mandalas as you will see when I finish 19 of 100. I hope you have a beautiful day.

Fanciful Bird

Tags

art, bird, Draw a Bird Day, Inktense, zentangle, Zentangle Inspired Art, Zentangles, ZIA

Today is Draw a Bird Day! The 8th of every month is Draw a Bird Day and it is hosted by Laura at Create Art Everyday. I generally prefer a fanciful, rather than a realistic bird. This is getting close to what I have in mind. I will keep practicing! This was created using Pigma Micron pens and Derwent Inktense watercolor pencils. I used 4 Zentangle patterns to decorate my bird, Finery, Footlights, C-six, and Candleglow. For more tangle patterns go to TanglePatterns. For more information about Zentangle see Rick and Maria at Zentangle.com.

Gratitude: Color Mixing and Mandalas

Tags

100 Mandalas, acrylic paint, art, art journal, collage, color mixing, gratitude, gratitude journal, Inktense, painting

I’m very grateful for the time, energy and acrylic paint needed to match the colors I want in my mandala I’m designing for my shower curtain. I haven’t done a lot of mixing to get specific colors with acrylic paints and it was a challenge! Brown was surprisingly difficult. I’m very happy with how things are progressing and here is a sample of the colors I’m using. I tested them out together and in layers in this page spread.

While we were away on our trip to Cape Cod & Dia: Beacon I drew a simple mandala and colored it while watching the Olympics. Such amazing talent and variety in the human race. The athletes are so beautiful they make me want to paint pictures of people again. My first acrylic painting ever was of a diver in a long ago Olympics.

I used my Inktense watercolor pencils to color it in and I fell in love with them all over again. I hope you find some beauty in your day today!

Community Art Project Mandala in Progress

Tags

100 Mandalas, art, art journal, Blue, collage, gratitude, Green, Inktense, watercolor, Watercolor pencils

I’m working on a 6×6 canvas for a fundraiser for my Art Association back in Beaver Dam. Here are my gratitude journal pages that have been helpful in the process of trying some things out. I will show you the finished project by the end of the week.

It has been interesting to only use the art journaling supplies that I brought with me to the hotel to create this canvas. I did a lot of experimenting with textures because I only had markers and watercolors to add color and I also wanted texture and a mandala. So…

It began simply enough with some stamped and stenciled words and smiley faces scattered around the canvas. I covered them with some watercolor washes to get a layer of color on the canvas. Blue and green just make me think of summer so that was where I started. I drew a purple flower with my Derwent Inktense pencil into the wet watercolor wash to see how it turned out. It seemed like too stark a contrast and I wanted to stencil some gesso over the top to add some texture to the piece.

I cut a heart shape out of some netting that a bunch of lemons came in. I tried to use this as a stencil with the gesso but that was quite a fail. So I attached the goopy heart into my journal. I have had a lot of success with this technique with acrylic paint, and it was interesting to try. Without a brayer I couldn’t figure out how to use this to make a print. It left some strange gesso globs on the canvas that left me challenged. It is very difficult to draw a mandala on top of a highly textured collage, but I really like how it looks. So I had to get creative. I added a layer of facial tissue that had soaked up a bunch of my watercolor paint and used matte medium to attach it. In the past this has provided a nice surface to write and draw on. It was too fragile to draw the mandala on the dry tissue and was still a little too textured for the kind of detailed mandala I had in mind.

I then started drawing mandalas on a variety of papers to see how I liked them. Fortunately we needed to buy a gift for a young friend and I was so happy to buy some tissue paper. I had never drawn a mandala on this flimsy stuff but it went a lot better than I expected! I’m really excited about exploring this technique some more. You can see here I attached a piece of the mandala over all of my experiments in my journal. I really like the way the watercolor pencils add depth and highlights to the mandala. I hope you have a beautiful day!

 

Color Play

Tags

art journal, Art Journal Every Day, collage, Distress Markers, flowers, gratitude, gratitude journal, Inktense

I’ve been playing around with the Tim Holtz Distress Markers I have been using on hot press watercolor paper and I’m planning on integrating my Inktense Watercolor Pencils with them and I was curious to see how they worked together and I used this journal page as practice. I was intrigued by the demo of them I watched on YouTube and wanted to try out layering colors and coloring on a stamp. I started out the page with a coat of gesso to get a nice white surface and then I did a little sgraffito of what I was grateful for from that day. It isn’t really visible in this photo but I kind of like that. Anyway… then I colored over the dry gesso with the Distress Markers in a bunch of colors to see how they mixed and looked on gesso. You can see in the bare paper areas around the gesso that the colors really faded on the gesso surface, but they did mix together nicely. I was also happy that I could use them on top of the dry surface both to stamp the flowers and with the markers and a watercolor brush to color in some fo the flowers and leaves. After that had all dried I used my watercolor pencils. The intersting thing was that when I went back with the watercolor brush the dry layers of marker did mix with the colored pencil pigment. Interesting that the damp brush did not pick up the first layer of marker when I was brushing around the new layer of marker. I don’t understand how that can work, but it makes me even more curious about using these 2 media together. On to my bigger piece to carry on the experiment. My migraines have been bad again so I’m back to pacing myself. I was feeling good and overdid it, but when I rest I feel better again. That maybe should not have all been one paragraph. I feel like I need to take a deep breath. Ah, that’s better. I hope you have a beautiful day.

Wordless Wednesday: Autumn Mandala

Tags

100 Mandalas, acorn, autumn, Inktense, leaves, Mandala, watercolor

To Attain Something Beautiful

Tags

100 Mandalas, beauty, Color, coloring, flowers, Helen Keller, Inktense, painting, watercolor

Another Helen Keller quote today:

Remember no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost. Helen Keller.

So I tried something quite different for me. Bigger shapes and just playing with color. I’m still figuring out techniques to best use the Inktense watercolor pencils and I learned a few more things today. I found it quite enjoyable, but I did overdo it and ended up with a little bit of eye strain. So I learned something else important for tomorrow. And I think I may hang this up in our newly remodeled bathroom! Have a beautiful day.

Wordless Wednesday: Painted Paisley Pig

Tags

folk art, illustration, Inktense, paisley, pig, red, Sharpies, watercolor, zentangle, ZIA

Weekly Challenge #200: “Bi-Zen-Tennial Celebration!”

Tags

Bi-Zen-Tennial, Diva Challenge, gratitude, Inktense, Mandala, Zendala, zentangle

Congratulations to Laura Harms the Zentangle Challenge Diva on 200 Challenges!

What an accomplishment. I am so grateful for the fun and opportunities for growth and community that she has provided. She challenged us to use one Zentangle pattern and go off the page “Let’s extend from end to end, and fill our tiles BURSTING with Tangly JOY!” That really capture the enthusiasm of the Diva. I tried to do my best Onamato Zendala I could come up with. Then I got out my Inktense pencils and played! Laura this one is for you! Thank you!

See the other challenge participants’ art and learn a little more about Laura at

What the heart imagines

Tags

Altered book, art journal, gratitude, indigo bunting, Inktense, yoga

I fell a little behind in posting and there is a lot of variety to the pages in this post. I hope you find something that speaks to you. This first two page layout was from a few days that were difficult, but I love how the journal pages turned out. The indigo bunting that was in our tree was here so briefly. That glimpse and so many other joys of spring and the support of friends and family lifted me up during my difficult times. Can you see that in these images? I also LOVE how the Inktense pencils worked with the stencil. The prismacolor markers didn’t work very well on gesso covered page, but the coffee cup has an interesting look to it.

 

Playing with ink and water and inexpensive watercolor pencils.

The title for this post came from the card on the right page of this last layout. The pages aren’t posted in chronological order and this last one is from Mother’s day. My husband gave me this beautiful card. There are a lot of layers to these 2 pages.