Inspiration - Black Cats and Bats Week #41 Artful Journeys

Hello my Lovelies!

I hope you are all doing awesome!

I loved this prompt, not just because of its Halloween theme but also because of the black cats! I love animals and have a soft spot for black cats, did you know that black cats are more likely to be euthanized than any other color? Because of the stigma of black cats being bad luck many people pass up wonderful animals, here in Phoenix at a local pet store that helps adopt out cats they actually have a special for black cats! They give food, a cat tree and a litter box along with a reduced adoption fee!

I actually have 2 black cats Gable that I rescued 15 yrs ago,



















and Matty who had to be given up because his owner was moving

They are both awesome pets and I wouldn't trade them for the world! Ok enough of my speech! On with the art!

This week I went for simple, my tools were Mixed Media paper, watercolors, black and metallic gold acrylic paint.
I was inspired by a silhouette Halloween window decoration I saw and decided to put some color into it!

I did a simple background using all the shades of blue and purple in my Koi watercolor pallet and brush wet layers of color over the entire page leaving it streaky for a cloud effect.

I then grabbed a paint brush and painted the tree, cat and bats into place, I planned on being done at that point but I wanted a bit more contrast so I grabbed my Lumier metallic gold paint and added the moon, stars and the eyes of the bats and cat!











I was thinking I may add some words but I wasn't sure what would fit so I let it as is.


















I will put it in my art journal as a tip in and maybe I will be inspired then!


Big hugs and Mushy stuff!

-Shana

Inspiration - Leaves - Week #38 Artful Journeys

For this weeks journal entry I decided to go cute! To be honest I started the page without it actually being for this week! The page started out being the pages I used to clean my stencils after spraying my Dylusions inks through them. the colors that were there already had a fall feel to them and I went from there!

I wet the page and reactivated the inks and move them around a bit on the page then coated it with watered down gesso.

Then I went looking for what images I saw in the spots! I found this cute little guy! holding an acorn getting ready for winter!

I brought him out using craft acrylic paints and prismacolor pencils.

I love my journal! I can work in my journal with no fear of error because it will only be seen if I share it!

I'll keep it short today!

Big hugs and mushy stuff!

Playing with Dylusions Ink in a new way - "dreams"

Hello All! I just thought I would share this process with you all, this is how I like to play with Dylusions spray inks. This is the process I usually follow when I am at a loss for inspiration but I want to create!

I have been using this process for quite a while but I never thought to share until I realized I had never seen anyone else use their sprays this way! I shared this video in some facebook groups I am a part of and could not believe the response I got! This is by far my most popular video on Youtube and I think I need to record my play time more often.

The reason I love this process so much is that it is soo uncontrolled, because I start with the black background I cannot see where the spray ends up very clearly and I dont see how the inks are mixing together, when I add the white to it and Smoosh the pages together I have no control as to how the white will lay on the page and what color ink it will attach itself to.

I hope you enjoy the video, if you have any questions feel free to ask! I am usually pretty good at answering them!

Big Hugs and Mushy Stuff!

Inspiration - Go To the Fair - Week #37 Artful Journeys

I am sorry in advance for this short post, but sometimes time is not in the abundance that I wish!

This weeks prompt was "Go to the Fair" I had the idea for a watercolor and ink like I had done in the past that I wanted to tweak and to make it better. I did this a few years ago for a art swap and I wish I would have kept it for journal! but I have the picture so I can try again and make it better, it was a lot of fun to make with the simple sunset sky and the black silhouettes. I will do it again I swear!

I did make a new piece this week, but I did it digitally! I love playing with Photoshop to create instead of just adjust images for printing!

For this piece I took about 6 different images and used some effects to get the great gradient shading then added the blue yellow and red to give the illusion of Electricity at the Fair!

I know it is simple but I think once I get it printed out and in my journal is will be a great addition to my creative collection!

Go over and check out what the other ladies have done with this weeks prompt over at Artful Chicks!

Big Hugs and Mushy Stuff!

- Shana

Remembering to Enjoy being an Artist

I love being an artist, but just like anything when you start worrying what other people like or what they will think it causes stress, I have actually ended up roadblocked in my creative process! The prompts from Artful Journeys are easy, I am not trying to make art that I think someone will want to buy, I am excepting a challenge to create a theme.

For years I have created without thought to what others liked, just what made me feel good, and I have sold many pieces! but suddenly with the need for income from my art I pretty much stressed myself out into creating mud... I have had enough of being stuck in my own head, I decided to get my journal out and create just for the fun of creating!



What I came up with is just a fun piece, Its not something anyone would want on their wall, I made it where it belongs, in my art journal. Its there to remind me that I have to make sure I enjoy what I am doing or I might as well go back to my desk job being stressed all the time working on deadlines and trying to find satisfaction in someone else's dream.

Art should be enjoyed not only by the person who views, reads or hears it, but also by the creator. I want people to see the love, joy, anger, sadness, remorse what ever I am feeling, that I put into my art and I have been trying to force myself to make happy sweet art when I am stressed out, that is not achievable for me!

So I just used all the art supplies I hadn't played with in a while and just chose the colors I wanted, giving no thought to the process, just being happy that my hands were getting full of color and I was ruining another t-shirt.

I just kept telling myself as I played, if it looks too bad Ill just throw a layer of gesso over it or cover it with papers. It turned out perfect for a journal.



And I feel much better!




Big Hugs and Mushy Stuff!

- Shana
                                             Check out the video to see all the fun I had!

Inspiration - Dream Destinations - Week #36 Artful Journeys

This weeks prompt "Dream Destinations" was an easy choice for my subject, Hawaii! To be honest I was in Hawaii once, for about a half hour! I was on a layover on my way to the Philippines so I got the wonder and awe of walking around the airport!

Flying over the islands and on our way in and our way out was magical! From my airplane window I got to see, Pearl Harbor, the beautiful landscapes and cityscapes, a whale in the wild for the 1st time, and a new island being formed from an underwater volcano eruption. it was beautiful! I think that because I never got to see it from the ground it is a place I really want to go.



I am in love with the Art Deco style and I attempted to recreate it, I used colored prismacolor pencils and acrylic paint to create the page as seen here. I like my girl and the floral pattern in the circle behind her but I think it was my color choices that made it not really feel Art Deco-ish, and on top of that I didn't plan ahead for a place to actually write "Hawaii" on it!

So I went to the other Artful chicks asking for help, actually is was more like "HELP!" I received awesome ideas from the ladies, but the one I hadn't thought of was digitally altering it!

I took this photo of my page and uploaded it into my photoshop program, Originally I was just going to add text, but when I went scoping the internet for inspiration I decided to go a slightly different route trying to work the Art Deco style I wanted back into the piece.






I used some vintage Hawaii brochures and postcard images and cropped them down put for the green and blue spaces, I then brought the opacity down to about 60% so that they didn't overshadow my hula girl and I love how it turned out!

The page still doesn't have the full Art Deco feel I wanted but I think I got some of the style back that I was looking for as well as adding some depth to the piece,

I hope you enjoyed my very basic review of my process! 

If there is ever anything you would like more details on in my process ask and I will see what I can do!

Big Hugs and Mushy stuff!

- Shana

Inspiration - Sunset and Fireflys - Artful Journeys Prompt Week #35

This weeks prompt got my blood boiling! I had this grand idea of a watercolor sunset background and the bold black silhouette of a corn field and the fireflies brightly lit up in the field. I thought it would be easy! I am a pro! I can do watercolor sunsets with my eyes closed!

WRONG!!!

I grabbed my Strathmore 400 Series Watercolor Journal and started up! I wet my page to get it ready and started adding color, it was one of those days... even the skills I think I have down pat are impossible to accomplish!  I was overworking the color I could not keep a light hand!  I tried to fix it and I picked up too much color! This is what I ended up with, all the colors to bold, no dreamy color what so ever, and a muddy mix of color that I could not pick up and it was sopping wet from trying to lighten the it, this picture is from about and hour of trying to fix my initial error.

I was so frustrated I closed my watercolor journal went and played with my puppy to cool down and came back to it. I opened my journal and I still did not like it for what I wanted to do, but....

The page on the opposite side was beautiful and reminded my of my scouting days when I took a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters , it was so beautiful there! I was inspired! Woo hoo!!

The colors that were bold on the opposite page came over as muted on the opposite page that gave it the dreamy surreal quality that I remember from the Boundary Waters. 

Right away I found my inner Bob Ross, pulled out my fan brush, and started painting some happy little trees using a mix of black and forest green watercolor. 

The muddy mix of color from the page gone wrong was concentrated in mostly one area of my new loveliness, and reminded me of some of the bluffs we had seen during our trip, I always wanted to go to the top and camp out looking over the waterways and see the everything from above.

So I painted the bluff in and put people camping on the top, I even remembered to put their food pack up in a tree! In reality you would put it further from your campsite, but it's my world! Oops! how did they get there!? So, I added the canoe banked at the bottom of the bluff.

I added another tree into the foreground to add a bit of depth, and added my lightening bugs (aka fire flies) here and there. In hind sight I would have left the foreground tree out, the fireflies make it look kinda like a Christmas tree, but, I don't hate it entirely, so that's a positive, right?

I really like how this page ended up! I really was so frustrated with the whole thing, but life is so full of happy accidents!

I know I will end up using the original page for something else, I don't know what but it will be used, I do like how the colors turned out on that page, it just wasn't what was in my head! I am still going to do my original idea at some point, just not now!


Big hugs and mushy stuff!!!

Special thanks to my Puppy for helping me keep my cool! It is impossible to look at him an not smile!

Go on over and check out what the other girls made over at Artful Chicks!