Winter Art Exploration

It's been a long winter; it's been a short winter.  Whichever it has been for you, hopefully it has been a productive winter, a creative winter, and a healthy winter.

For me it has been a winter of exploration of art beyond and including photography.  Previously I posted about using my photographs in mixed media artwork.  This winter has been a time of great learning all about various types of mixed media artwork as well as the fun and addictive art of what is now known as Zen Tangle or Zen Doodle.  I've spent many hours learning and practicing this art form with mixed results, most of which turned out pretty, although some were quite messy.  I've incorporated them in new art journals as well as simply filling up colorful page after page of doodles in my sketch book.  While some of the typical doodle patterns seem too difficult for me for now, most of them are very easy to do and gave me much new inspiration and creativity.

Along with doodling my winter away, I have found even more beautiful ways of using photography in mixed media artwork.  Especially the kind of photographs I make using post editing of all sorts of photography subjects.  I have always said that my designs would work beautifully in scrapbooking, but as winter comes to a close I am even more convinced that the possibilities are endless!  The other day I browsed through some of my oldest designs on this blog and my other photography sites such as Flickr, and now Viewbug, only to realize that if I stopped taking photographs and turning them into strange and beautiful abstractions, I would still have an endless supply of art to use creatively in mixed media artwork.

On the other hand, while browsing, I discovered something not so wonderful, but still useful.  That is that over time as I have taken on more and more new methods of creating my photographic artwork with new filters in my editing programs, I have forgotten much of what I used to do in the early days when I was still learning.  This turned out to be a good value lesson for me though.  I realized that it is not always necessary or even good to continually upgrade our abilities to create.  While I go for the freebie options for filters and plug-ins for my editor, it shows me that maybe, at least for awhile, I should just stop looking for new things and spend more time going back over what I did in the early days.  Maybe it is a good idea to re-explore everything I have right now to see what more can be done with it.  There is a tendency sometimes to spend so much time with the new stuff that it can end up boring.  Especially if you have allowed yourself, as I did, to forget that sometimes making do with what we already have can lead us into great discoveries.

For the next few weeks until the weather is warm enough to spend lots of time outdoors taking new photographs, my art exploration will include discovering more ways to combine my digital fusion photography with my mixed media artwork.  Last year I created over 500 different patterns alone, not counting everything else I did with my photographs.  Those patterns would make very interesting mixed media work.  So I am thinking now that stocking up on a good supply of printer ink is very important as I am going to be printing off a lot of digital fusion artwork to be used on canvases and in art journals.  I can't wait.

On a sad note, I said "Goodbye" to my Jonah.  Jonah was my Shih Tsu rescue dog I had for 4 years.  He was a good dog and rescued me in many ways too.  After he passed, I decided to get a new companion.  Meet KatieKat. 

You can see Jonah's photos under the tab dedicated especially to him.  He is greatly missed.

I also became a grandma for the 9th time this winter.  Photos of my grandchildren remain private, however.

Below are just a few of the projects I have been working on this winter.

 These are 4 examples of Zen Tangles or Doodle Art.

 These photos are of my first, believe it or not, toilet paper roll mini mixed media album.  I saw several videos on YouTube for how to make these cute little books and had to try it.  The toilet paper rolls become the pages which include pockets to add tags to.  I found that this was a great way to use the sports photographs my grandchildren give me each year.  For those who for whatever reason do not want to use toilet paper rolls, you can also use paper towel rolls cut into 2 or 3 pieces.

 Below are the 10 tags I made for sticking into the pockets I made.  I painted one side with oil pastels and used colored pencils, notebook paper and antique buttons for the reverse side of the tags.  The pencil shows just how small these little albums are.  This is the same album in the photo of KatieKat above.

Using My Photography For What????

Oh my gosh!  I hadn't realized it had been so long since I last posted here.  Time has flown the past few months.  I've moved to a location much better suited for my work as well as my play.  But really my work IS play for me.  But in addition to this, I've discovered something totally new, for me anyway, and that is mixed media art and mixed media art journals.  So I have spent much of the past couple of months anyway, learning as much as I can so I can be able to do this kind of art properly.

No, don't worry.  I am not leaving my photography behind, although it seemed like it there for awhile.  Actually, I think I want to find a way to incorporate my photography into my mixed media artwork.  I think this would be so much fun as well as how it would make the ephemera (new vocabulary word for me) I use in the artwork totally my own instead of things I find elsewhere.  Or maybe a combination of both.

So, what I did in October and the first half of November was to create my first mixed media art journal.  Now the problem I had with this is my own impatience because I wanted to be able to do everything right away even though I don't even have all the kinds of supplies I need to do so.  For instance, stencils.  And stamps.  And that darn ephemera.  I also do not have a lot of options in the mixed media types of pigments such as watercolors and inks.  I do have colored pencils, black Sharpie pens (so far) and acrylic tube and bottled paints.  But to compensate, I used the computer to find and print out and then cut out or tear out various pictures of possible things I might want to use.  That didn't work as well as I had hoped, but to that I blame on not being well versed in this kind of artwork yet.  I learned how to make some of the things I will need also and have begun making my own stencils, and stamps out of things found around the house.  I think the most unique of these items has been the mallet end of a broken meat pounder (tenderizer).  It makes pretty cool dots in pattern and in two different sizes.  My best and favorite, so far, homemade ephemera or paper has been plain old coffee filters I've been using to blot excess paints both on the artwork itself and on the pallets.  Blotting over and over on the filters has thickened the paper quite a bit and I have finally used some in a mixed media canvas that turned out interesting.

Now I am looking at ideas for how to do this using my own photography in different parts of my art.  I think that especially the abstract photography or digital fusion photography will work best in my abstract art.  I am not sure yet how I would use landscapes, florals, or other photographs, but I am sure I will figure that out.  There is one layout in my art journal where I cut out flowers from actual photographs and put them into the design.  But they are thicker and heavier than the rest of the page they are put on so they required a heavier amount of gel medium to hold them down and cover them well.  I used glossy gel medium which took longer to dry properly even though it felt dry to the touch.  When turning the pages, they ended up sticking together and did some major damage I am not sure I can repair.  So I have decided for now to use my own printouts of my photos on regular computer paper or maybe card stock instead of photos from the photo developing places.

Then, some sad news, my little Jonah ended up needing to be put to sleep as he was in obvious last stages of his life.  He was having increasing difficulty walking and holding his bladder, as well as no longer eating after vomiting his last meal a whole day after he ate it.  It was very hard to let him go but it was harder to watch him struggle and have bouts of pain where he would make sounds I never knew a dog could make.  You can see more photos of Jonah in his own tab at the top of the page.

This past week I have focused on my photography again because I knew I was away from it for too long.  I've done some still life photos of fresh vegetables prior to making homemade tacos, and then later some still life photos of marbles and a flower vase with some different backgrounds, such as felt pieces, and the mesh wrappers that come on fresh fruit.  After that I went on to do some digital fusion artwork with the still life photos and have been posting those to my Flickr photostream.  Here is one example that turned out looking like a big open mouth on a fish...but hey, to you it might look like something totally different.  What beautiful dark blue eyes this fishy has!

So, this being very early the morning after Thanksgiving, I want to say that I hope you had a wonderful day and spent some great time with family and friends.  Or if you are like me and having your holiday on a different day to accommodate various scheduling issues, I wish you a happy Thanksgiving yet to come.  The Christmas season has officially begun and that means a lot of different things to different people.  For me it means a celebration of the greatest man who ever lived, Jesus Christ.  It's a busy time for many and I hope I will be back on here before this year is ended.  But, if I don't make it, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!