I’ve been working steadily on my 15 Words or Less art journal and think I can mark it pretty much D for Done. It was a great learning experience for me on how to use various paints and inks, how to make textures, and how to add layers. I don’t love every page but I like them all and love a lot of them. The handwriting bugs me the most but not enough to paint over it and start again. It’s a learning journal, not a piece of museum art. A lot like an early draft of novel.

I’ve posted a few of my favorites here. You can click on the picture to see the larger versions or go here to see the entire album on Flickr.

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I made these yesterday, playing around with ATCs (Artist Trading Cards) and some larger cards, trying to get a feel for what size I like best. The first one is slightly larger than ATC. The next two are standard ATCs (2.5 x 3.5 inches) and the last two (the largest) are magazine subscription cards that were built up with paint and collage. The wordy backgrounds were from when I ripped up old Horn Book magazines a few weeks ago. I glued them onto to some cards to have some bases ready and just reached for them when I started to play. I didn’t plan the collage elements around the words but it is funny to see that the barking dog points to the word “violence”.

Even more fun than making them, was seeing the look on ’s face when I gave them to her today. She’s been playing with some artsy stuff of her own and I was hoping to inspire her to continue to do so.

You can click through see the larger versions in the Flickr album.



 

117, originally uploaded by susanwrites.

See the full album on Flickr.

I promised that I would post some of my art so here are my first attempts at collage from the ongoing collage workshop I’m attending now. This is all new ground to me as I’ve never done any kind of art before. But I’m having a wonderful time trying.

Click through for larger pictures.

From First Forays into Art

This is my very first collage from my first week at class. I was having a heck of a time with the leaves on the tree on the right until I looked in my craft supplies at home and found a bag of moss. I had so much fun doing this.

From First Forays into Art

This was the second thing I made in collage class as a gift for a friend. This isn’t the final version. You can see there are areas of brighter yellow around the words. I worked with watercolor crayons to blend the yellows into a color that faded nicely into the paper. I just forgot to take a picture of the final version before I wrapped it up.

From First Forays into Art

This is the cover of what will become my poetry journal. This was pretty much tear and affix as there were some giant chunks of handmade paper in class for me to us. There are places big enough for me to add a title once I figure out what I am going to call it.

From First Forays into Art

This is the cover for a second journal, this one will be just for haiku. I had originally planned for two trees on the front, even tore the paper for it, but then decided that one tree was a enough. There are also a couple of places for a journal title once I get one.