Secret Code

Okay, is it lame for an adult to make a secret alphabet?
I don't think so. But I did notice that I didn't mention it when we went to a friend's for dinner last night. Even though it was the most exciting thing that I had done that day.
Here it is on a largely unfinished art journal page.
These are pages from one of my latest art journal. The one I have not been posting (mostly).

I have been doing a couple of 'private' art journals because I want to make sure that I am not censoring myself. I like to share my art journals with my students, and online, so it hasn't been a great solution.

I am imagining a combination of mostly normal writing with some coded writing when I feel the need. Usually it would be entries about specific people or sometimes private angst stuff. Or, I could actually combine it with normal writing, like people's names could be in code.

I haven't used it a lot, but even so I notice that I am already remembering some of the alphabet. I wonder if I could get to the point where I could read it.

I think it looks kind of cool too.

Steal this Idea

Steal this Idea. Please.

I read a comment on one of Ricë's posts where a woman suggested that there should be an artist's exchange. What she meant by this idea was a place where people could contribute stuff for artists to make art with. Isn't that the coolest idea? Afterwards we could post the contributer a photo of the finished work.

I am not an organizer. If anyone wants to steal this idea (I didn't get the impression that the commenter wanted to do it) please go for it.

I would love to give the original commenter credit for this idea, but there was no profile to get in touch with her.

More Patches - Refashioning Projects of the Moment

Here are the refashioning projects I am working on at the moment. I am enjoying personalising thrifted clothing with hand drawn patches.

Above is a sleeveless denim shirt that I thrifted in the U.S.. Do you think the patch is going to work on the back? I am planning to add embroidery as well. Suggestions are always welcome.

I drew her with a fabric pen and then painted her with acrylic paints combined with fabric painting medium. If you want more details go here.

My other project started out as this t-shirt dress below. I found it at a garage sale, in pretty good condition. I wouldn't wear a t-shirt dress, and especially not a short one.

I cut the sleeves off and hemmed them. I also cut off the length to make it into a t-shirt.

I sewed it by hand because I can't get my machine to sew knits very well. I also enjoy the hand-sewing.
I don't think I have shown you the frog patch before. I drew him a while ago, and then painted him in with crayola fabric pens after I knew I was going to put him on this shirt.

I am putting some coloured embroidery in the running stitch around the arms. I want to do something to the neckline too. I want it to have some more spots of pink and orange, and maybe green.

Drawings from my Art Journal

To see the floating woman, you should click on her.

My newest art journal is also my plainest. All it has in it are drawings and writing. No painted backgrounds, no collage, no sewing, no added bits.

I am a little self-conscious about its unadorned look. Does it still qualify as an art journal?

What is the difference between an art journal and a sketch book?

You Just Never Know

It was my ugliest background in my ugly art journal. I didn't touch it for at least 6 months. The rest of the journal progressed, but not these pages. Every time I went past I would wince at their ugliness.
Then suddenly one day it just went ahead. I had some collage I wanted to put down and the colours went with this background. Later we were doing stitching in our journals in class and the stitching came through. A bit later the writing. Now this spread makes me smile when I go past.

You just never know.

Beginning a New Painting

Is there anything more exciting than the start of a new painting? At the time of inspiration anything is possible.

I took a series of reference photos with a neighbour girl nearly two years ago. In that time I have only used them for compositional sketches and a single finished drawing. The subject matter was good, I liked some of the photos very much. I knew I would use them, but was unsure how to approach it.

Today I know.
I spent the morning resizing and redrawing the compositional sketches. Sometimes I can get enough of an idea from a black and white photocopy of a reference, other times I need to draw the composition.

I am very excited.

21 Secrets Workshop

There is an online art journal workshop running in 2012 with 21 teachers who teach 21 different classes. It runs for 10 months and is only $59. Pretty amazing way to check out all those teachers and get a slew of different classes.

It is called 21 Secrets.

I will tell you something else, if you haven't already guessed. I am one of the teachers. It will be my first online class.

You might know that I have been teaching art journaling for the past 3 years. I thought I would never teach online, but there is something about this workshop that intrigued me.

If you want to know more, like who the teachers are and what we are going to teach: Click here to view more details

I am at the very end of the list of teachers - comes with having a name that begins with 'Z'.

Colouring on Fabric

I wanted to put some colour onto the drawing that I did on the t-shirt. The black and white drawing looked rather plain on the grey stripes.
I had some Golden GAC-900 that I bought months ago. It is a medium you can combine with acrylics paint to make fabric paint.

I mixed it with acrylic paint and painted over a drawing on muslin I had done a few weeks ago. I think it looks very much like regular painting. That wasn't the look I was going for, though it is interesting.

The medium is supposed to make it so that the fabric still feels soft after you paint it. I didn't find this to be the case, perhaps I didn't use enough.

As I didn't want a painted look on the t-shirt, I tried Crayola fabric markers to colour the drawing. It was more the look I had in mind. The colours are very limited. I wanted some opague white to separate her face from the grey stripe, and some pink for her lips and to warm parts of her face.

A brown stain mysteriously appeared when I was ironing it. (You have to heatset the markers to be able to wash the garment.) They might have come from the muslin patch that I was ironing at the same time.

What to do with those Drawings?

Remember the 120 Day do What You Love Challenge? I kind of wimped out. I say kind of because I still want to do spontaneous drawings, I just got annoyed with 'having to'.

But what I wanted to show you is that I found a use for at least one of those drawings.

It isn't finished yet.