Ghungroo painting

 

Hello!

Don’t you love it when sometimes you find something so inspiring that you have to try it right away! This project was like that for me. The inspiration for this project was a drawing of a Indian classical dancer with ghungroo I saw in pinterest.

I first drew the foot and painted it in with acrylics. For the ghungroo and payal I used gold sharpies to color them. I also added a gold stencil paint on the ghungroo for extra sparkle. Once all the paint was dried, I covered my precious drawing with masking fluid and let it dry.

For the background I used acrylics using the stippling technique with a stippling brush. I would have liked to add alot more texture in the background against the flat focal image, but with the hours of effort I had put in the drawing I chose the safer option and kept the background simple.

I learnt few things while doing this project:

1. Drawing is super difficult! It took me embarrassingly more than 2 hours just to draw and loads of patience.
2. Masking fluid works even with acrylics! I can’t wait to use it in other mixed media projects as well.
3. I should remember to clean my paints off my hands while painting! The black smudges didn’t make me happy.

I hope to redo this painting on a canvas and attach real ghungroo on the painting.

 

 

 

Be Strong

Hi,

This art journal page was a beautiful journey. I started with left over paint from another project which was mostly black and purple, specifically Golden Dioxazine Purple. If you have used this fluid acrylic, you would know how strong and ‘dominant’ this color is. When I started working on this page, I had no idea how I will subdue these dark paints. I did what I usually do when I am clueless, I picked up random colors and let them show me a way. I applied all the lighter and brighter colors I had randomly on the page and once the background was done, the purple patch looked like ground to me. I used Stampin Up girl stamp as my focal point and after that rest was easy. I made the flowers with dot technique; and to celebrate the victory of the girl, I applied red acrylic paint through a star stencil. I also used white Posca pen to highlight the stars and sentiments.

This was the first art journal page where I used left over paint on the page and I loved the process of spontaneous decisions.

How is your approach? Are you a planned artist or the spontaneous one? Leave me a comment below or send me a message on the ‘Contacts’ page – I love hearing from my wonderful readers!

The Red Door

Hello!

This is one of the initial first few pages that got me hooked to art journaling, especially acrylics. I was feeling apprehensive before even starting the page, no idea what I wanted to do, but then I thought no one has to know if the page does not turn out nice, and just started adding colors to the page.

I used a gift card to make the background with acrylics, with my favorite colors. It was alot of trial and error (as you can see) but a wonderful learning experience, especially regarding black. I learnt I like to add black to the initial layers – doing so, black peeps out under different colors and does not look as bold as when you add it towards the top layers (as you can see in this page). I also learnt, that I like to add a focal image in all my pages, and a little bit of planning helps in bringing all the elements together. But the most important thing I learnt in this page was – art journal is for myself and the journey can be fun even if the end result is not!

Do you feel the pressure of having beautiful end results before starting any kind of art work? If so, how do you deal with it? Leave me a comment below or send me a message on the ‘Contacts’ page – I love hearing from my wonderful readers!

Cosmic Abstract

Hello,

This page is one of my initial pages when I was afraid to over do and mess a background. I added 2 shades of blue from top to bottom in the background and once that was dried, added another layer with greys. Added some contrast colors with cling wrap and also made border with dark blue and cling wrap.

I wanted to make a galaxy with this background but liked the background so much that decided to stop instead.

Do you ever feel conflicted about when to stop while making art? Leave me a comment below or send me a message on the ‘Contacts’ page – I love hearing from my wonderful readers!

Acrylics rain

Hi there!

Here is a super colorful art journal page made with acrylics. This page makes me really happy. I don’t often go for the messy look but I liked how this turned out. This is also one of those pages where there was no planning, instead I decided the steps on how the page looked in that moment.

This page already had left over paint from another project – mostly red, and some blues. It also had some texture from modeling paste (again from a previous project) which I had added randomly.

I started this page with adding mostly cool colors and brown with a foam brush and swiped the brush from top to bottom. As I was going in a single direction, it reminded me of rain and I had to write this Picasso quote for this page. I wrote the quote with Tombow brush pens and used gel medium to stick it to the page, which spread the Tombow pens. Not my intention but I didn’t really mind it. Used a Faber Castell Pitt brush pen in grey for some shadows around the words and doodled around the words and border with white Posca pen.

Here are some closer up looks to see the texture from the foam brush and modelling paste.

 

Do you prefer a clean look or a messy look like in this page? Leave me a comment below or send me a message on the ‘Contacts’ page – I love hearing from my wonderful readers!

Starry night

Hello,

One of my favorite pages in this journal. Here is forest scene focussing on the sky. I started the page with the sky – yellow and pastel greens in the center and added more darker shades of blues as I went outwards towards the page. They key for the background here is – apply colors in circular motion and keep blending them.

Once I was happy with the background, I made the trees first with chalk pastel, and later colored them in with black acrylic paint. If you are like me and are not confident with your drawing, I suggest drawing roughly with chalk pastels first – they are easy to clean with a wet cloth on acrylics if you want to redraw and are easy to paint over with acrylics.

For the trees, I made sure to thicken the barks towards the edge of the page, and made them thin once they reached the center of the page. This gives the illusion of lying down amongst the trees, and looking up from a clearing.

Rest was writing the quote and adding the stars with the Posca pen.

Do you like to draw in your art journal or only paint? Leave me a comment below or send me a message on the ‘Contacts’ page – I love hearing from my wonderful readers!

 

 

Art and Music

Hello,

This one of the pages I made when I was in love with green and kept picking that paint over others. I started by making a background with different green paints with gift card.  I decided to use this beautiful fairy stamp. Initially I thought I will stamp some animals around (like the examples on the Lavinia website) but wasn’t feeling like it. I decided to make some magical rays coming out of the fairy’s palm, spreading music around. I painted the rays with pink and purple and made circular pattern with a sponge with teal color. Added some music notes with gold stencil and some doodles with white posca pen.

I also added the teal swirls/clouds, under the fairy to give her some ground and added Liquitex ‘Iridescent medium’ to the clouds and fairy. (I didn’t like it on solid black much though!) I also did some stamping with white and platinum inks with music note stamp and text stamp to add some interest to the background. Wrote the sentiment and felt something was still missing, hence adding the branches on the top.

Here are some close ups. You can see the gold notes and shiny teal clouds:

Have you ever been in a phase where you wanted to paint with mostly one color family, like I had with greens? Leave me a comment below or send me a message on the ‘Contacts’ page – I love hearing from my wonderful readers!

Chaos

Hello,

This was a very difficult page for me. I planned something but kept changing my plans, having no idea what I wanted out of this page. So that’s what I created – chaos.

I had made circles all over the page with left over warm colors and purple from a previous project. You can see some of that paint in the girl and on the quote page. When I started this page I used different shades of blues and greens and made wavy shapes with a paint brush. At this time I was thinking of making a water scene. As I was making waves, I decided to add pinks and purples, abandoning my initial sea scene plan. I was mostly clueless how to proceed and decided to use this girl stencil. As I still had no idea where I wanted this page to go, I just made an outline of the girl. I struggled alot to decide which section I should paint black. Ultimately I decided to create what I was feeling – which was total chaos.

I painted outside black with acrylic paint, added black for the quote and also did some stamping with black on the quote side to ‘join’ the pages together. I also added some texture with Liquitex ‘Coarse texture gel’. I liked the grainy texture it gives but it takes some time to dry which I didn’t realize and smudged some of it. On the page with the girl – added some white with posca pen for outlining and some letters with white ink. I also used gold stencil paint on the texture gel.

I liked the colors on this page and loved how I was able to reflect what I was feeling in that moment. I also ended up with 2 new pages where I applied the left over paint and am excited to use them in future projects.

How is your approach when you feel lost before starting a project? Do you still create something or try only on days when you have the inspiration? Leave me a comment below or send me a message on the ‘Contacts’ page – I love hearing from my wonderful readers!