Lynn Meets Mixed Media and Visual Journaling

 

Welcome to my weeks worth of drawings and in a few cases a dive into Mixed Media Visual Journaling.

 

My week back to front ... meaning these drawings are not all in chronological order of when I did them.

 

In fact this is the last drawing I did this week at Starbucks.

 

And this was done at the beginning of the week. But I find uploading to Blogger via my Smart Phone where the photos are now stored sometimes causes me to make mistakes that can't really be moved around once done. But does it really matter, probably not.

Meet Matthew Midgley, our teacher in Sketchbook Skool's Polishing Klass of last week. He is a Foodie and gave lessons in drawing food. My attempt was to draw some tomatoes under cellophane in a cardboard container and some left overs I was having for dinner: sautéed vegetables in a glass dish. And a yellow onion and a carrot.
My emphasis here and in my normal diet is on Whole Foods, as you can see. Since the dinner dish was left overs I could draw it quickly before I reheated it to eat and therefore did not have to let any food stand getting cold to draw before I could eat it. A problem a lot of artists complained about when having to draw food already cooked and letting it get cold to draw it first.

Early in the week we stopped at a Café in one town over from ours, a place near a house we rented over 30 years ago. Hadn't been there in a long time. They have a lot of fun stuff on their walls, really, every inch of wall space is covered in STUFF. I'm afraid I didn't do it justice.

You do realize that I make up the conversations my "people" are having don't you?

One evening we drove to Roseville, had a nice Mexican meal and then went next door to a new spot called the Acoustic Den where they had live music. The Old West Trio, that you have heard me talk about in the past I am sure, were on stage this evening. Their singing and playing were great as usual. We love Cowboy music.
And they were very friendly during breaks and came and talked to us at our table. I drew them.

 

These were the folks sitting in front of me.

 

 

This weeks new instructor in SketchbookSkool for Polishing Klass was Juliana Coles. She is into Visual Journaling, a mixed media way of creating, and I really fell in love with her teaching. I had all the necessary tools on hand, as I had tried doing this on my own in the past, but never got very far. Her demo was fantastic and I got the hang of how to put a page together and the couldn't stop making them.

 

 

I had found this old ledger at a Goodwill thrift store recently for 99 cents! I decided to use it for my substrate not knowing how well the paper, which is somewhat thin, would hold the craft paints, glue and other stuff I was to throw at it. It did amazingly well to my pleasant surprise!

 

 

This was my first one. I love how it turned out. You start with a drawing or page in your art journal that you weren't particular happy with. I took a quick drawing I'd done in my life drawing art journal and photocopied it and cut that out and glued it to my page. They I wrote free style over it and a lot of the page. I added craft paint to obscure much of the writing just letting some show through and circled words that stood out to me. I added scratching lines/marks; and used some stencils I had in my stash too. I threw in that little girl photo of myself/also photocopied and glued down and drew around it. I used letter stamps to show some of the words from my writing. And I went around the original drawing and some of the stencil shapes with bold black pen.

This was my second one, also done with the life drawing figure (a different one).

I used different stencils, more craft paint and words. You do not start with a plan, so the whole thing just evolves of it's own volition as you create. It's really fun. For instance, on this one I accidently spilled my purple paint and used a spatula to pick it up and return it to his bottle. I wiped the painted spatula on my paper and so the shapes you see there. They were integrated into the piece nicely.

 

 

Number three: This one started with a guy I drew at Starbucks in the ledger book. I then wrote over him across the whole page. Added stencils, some with wax crayons and some with paint and black bold brush pen. I added more drawing (the big white cup lower left and big letters in the talk bubble) last.

And my forth one, See I really could not stop, nor will I. I think I will leave these art supplies on my dining table that we only use for company anyway, so I can make more of these. This one is a large birthday card done on a large thick piece of mixed media paper. I started with a photo of our grandson.
I drew the VW Bug, because when he was four years old he taught my husband and I to play the "Slug Bug" game and he and I still play it to this day! I drew us grand parents at the top and his age.
I added the pot leaves. and some Hebrew (Shalom) letters from a stencil. Added some cut out quotes and wrote on it too.

Each one of these were quite different from the others and the process felt great doing each one.
Juliana suggests working a bit and then putting it way. She sometimes completes some of hers 5 or 10 years later.

Then today we were back at Starbucks and I drew as I normally  do, just collecting more people and conversations! It was a good week.

Thanks so much for coming by. I'm thinking of re-doing Beginning, the very first Klass in Sketchbook Skool. If you have been thinking of signing up registration is now open and that would be a  great place to start. See you in Klass? I created a link on the word Sketchbook Skool.

Have a Creative week, thanks for stopping by, your visits and comments really do keep me drawing!