More Journal Pages

It has been a crazy wild weather ride here in Raleigh over the past few weeks.  Ice storm, snow storm,    more snow, then seventy degrees, then freezing rain...I am ready for it all to be over and for spring to arrive.

During one of the snow events, my granddaughter and her best friend Annabelle/Tinkerbelle played in the snow and inspired this journal page for the 21 Day Art Journaling Challenge theme of Faces.

I did a watercolor wash for the background, painted my granddaughter Charlie in watercolor from a photo reference, collaged in a photo of her BFF Annabelle, and added dimensional paint and glitter to finish the scene.

I also had time to do Day 3 of the challenge, Zentangle.  I have had some experience with Zentangles, and decided to do something similar to a Suzanne McNeill workshop that I took at Art of the Carolinas.

Basically, I traced a photo I liked from the web, transferred the drawing to the journal page, and then put down a wash of light colors like blue, yellow, turquoise and light red.  Next I painted the zebra stripes with a black watercolor marker.  After that I divided up all the background space with a pencil, and pencilled in some Zentangle doodles.  Once the doodles were in place, I accented them with more watercolor paint in similar colors.  Last of all, I found a quotation that I liked and added it with permanent black marker.

My husband called this one "Calm Before the Storm,"  since we are babysitting for our 2-year-old granddaughter for the rest of the weekend.  Sure do love to paint with her!

New Journal Pages

I got busy on the scanner today, and have pictures of some of my newer journal pages.

The first one is for The Sketchbook Challenge.  This month's prompt is "Can't Resist This."  Who can resist a little cutie like this happy baby?

To play on the word "resist,"  I spread some gel medium on this next page and scratched some floral designs into it before painting.  This one is in my favorite journal, my Moleskine. 

The next one should have been done in my mixed-media journal.  Instead, it is on sketchbook paper, and is curling a bit from all the collage and gel medium I used.  The quote by Vera Brittain:  "I thought that spring would last for ever more- for I was young and loved, and it was May."

The next one is an example of a spread where I kept adding stuff and did not know when to stop.

Here is another page starring my dog, Kasey.  I painted the tree first with gel medium to add some texture.

I painted this girl's face and hair with gesso for a first layer, so her hair especially is kind of dimensional.

I have been practicing my Zentangles in my Zentangle journal.  I have going through the  Alpha Tangle book by Sandy Steen Bartholomew and making tiles of each tangle while riding in the car on the way to the mountains.

And, because I have a set of watercolors at the cabin but had no watercolor paper handy, I tried coloring some of the Zentangles with paint.  I 'm not sure how successful that looks.

That's it- I have been working on another art quilt for my Pamela Allen online class, Figures and Faces.  I hope to have something to show tomorrow.

Peek at my Zentangle Sketch Book

I have not shown any of my Zentangle doodles in awhile.  Every once in awhile I get out my sketchbook and enjoy a little doodle therapy!  I made a pocket in the front to keep my Alpha Tangle book by Sandy Steen Bartholomew.

Here is a Zentangle version of the Streak of Lightning block!

I've done a couple of Zentangle posies.  I see that this first one has attracted a little red ink on one petal.

This one is just a page of doodles.

This is my Zen version of our mountain cabin.

And a Zen kimono.

There are several free sources of Zentangle doodles.  One is Suzanne McNeil's blog.  She shows one per week, along with the step-outs of how to draw them.  She usually incorporates one of the weekly tangles into a beautiful illustration.

Another is the Zentangle website.

A third is the Enthusiastic Artist blog.

Take a look at a few of these, and give Zentangle a try.  It's kind of addictive!