Textured Landscapes

Hello all!  So the removal quotes, the sorting and the early stages of list-making for packing have started... I'm going to be more distracted than ever for a while, I'm afraid.  Not much time for trying to make my peace with New Blogger, so I'm taking the easy option for this post.  Rather than struggling to get the photos where I like to have them, I'm sharing something a bit different where I can just let them all go down the centre because that's where they belong.

This is a series of textured landscapes with light.  Though some of them are really seascapes with light.  They emerged after conversations with my closest friend last year after her father had died.  I didn't decide on them, they just happened, one after another, seeking the light.

So I'm not going to say much more about them, and rather let them speak for themselves.

But for those who are curious about such things, they are in a 10 x 10 inch journal on heavyweight paper, using heavy gesso and Golden heavy body acrylics for the most part, with some occasional collaging.

I hope you like them, and that perhaps they speak to you in these dark times.  We have to keep seeking the light.

Thank you so much for stopping by today.  If you're interested, I'll try to document a bit of the dismantling of the craft room and the remantling (?!) at the other end, where I'll be moving into a larger art space... though I'm pretty sure I'll be filling it up straight away.  I hope you are all doing okay, and I'll try to do some catching up in between the busy stuff.  Stay safe, stay well, stay creative.

Light chooses an unexpected part of the landscape to trick out in gilt, and then the shadow sweeps it away. 

Annie Dillard

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

Marcel Proust

I would like to share these at Art Journal Journey where the lovely host Jo is looking for Texture

And I'd also like to join in at Paint Party Friday where it is Week 30 of Year 10 (pleasing round numbers!)

A Winter's Night

Hello all, and welcome.  It's another grey, damp day here as I write this, and it's not even chilly, so I'm having to get my fix of proper winter weather via the craft table.

I've been playing with the brand new Curio Box just released by Tim Holtz.  I couldn't resist it.  I can see it being useful in all sorts of ways.

Given it's brand new, it fits in well with the Something New theme at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge.

And the Funkie Junkie Boutique Blog are playing a Tic Tac Toe challenge so I chose to play the line across the top to fill up my shadow box - Layers, Winter, Heat Embossing.












Unfortunately, I'd already been experimenting with the Curio Box die before I decided what was going inside.  I tried it out with some Idea-ology papers - working out which side of the paper the creases for the folds would turn up so that I could get the side of the paper I wanted either on the inner box or the outer frame.













The die comes with a number of Thinlits frames so that you can cut different apertures for the opening of the shadow box.  This is the largest of the apertures.  There's a smaller one also this shape, and a couple of ovals which will give the shadow box a very different look.













When it turned out I needed to add some layers for my night sky, I had to snip open the tissue tape fastening the inner box together so that I could lay it out flat again for the paint sponging...










... and then the star-stencilling.  Next time, I'll work out what I'm doing before building the box!

The night sky is sponged in PaperArtsy Fresco Blueberry, and the snowy landscape in Snowflake (of course).  And the star stencil is one of Tim Holtz's.

I sponged some more Snowflake through the stencil and applied some ancient Ranger Silver Pearl powder which was hiding in my stash.











It has a lovely shimmer to it - just right for starlight.  And the top layer is, of course, a spattering of snowy white paint droplets.












I cut one of the houses and a couple of trees from the Thinlits Ghost Town set (also new to me - picked up at a bargain price) from the same paper as the outer box frame.  But I then gave the trees a coat of my favourite Wow Primary Bark embossing powder to darken their silhouettes.














This is the house with the reverse side of the paper showing, but my camera seems to have decided I didn't need the photos I took of the before and after with the trees.  It does that annoyingly often at the moment.  Hopefully I just need a new SD card rather than a whole new camera.












I glued the house down onto some plain card - right way up this time - and added some Antique Linen Distress Ink to the windows with a water brush, to give the illusion of warm glowing lights within.











I then had great fun adding snow to the roof and windowsills with some heavy body white acrylic paint.  I'm very happy with the dimension of those heaps of snow!














This fence is part of a set intended for a Christmas model village.  I spotted them on sale and I thought they looked useful!













Of course, I had to do a bit of weathering... PaperArtsy Crackle Glaze to create my flaky paint, and in the long run a bit of extra Pumice Stone shading and "dirt".














It was easy to cut the railings with scissors so that I could put a couple of posts the other side of the frame, creating a gateway to walk through.














The Paper Doll was a slight afterthought... the scene still needed a little something even with all that lovely snowy texture around.  I think she's exactly right standing just inside the gate there.














She seems to have trodden in a pretty deep snowdrift (a.k.a. a mound of White-tac - same as Blu-tac only white!













I also added extra heavy body white acrylic to the mound, to blend it into the ground.

There's plenty of snowy splatter...















... both inside and out.















And I used the cut-out from the frame to add a little interest to the back of the box.  It's not that anyone's likely to be looking at that side, but you never know.















It was, yet again, a tricky photographic job.  The shadow box casts shadows - of course! - so from some angles the sky looks really dark...
















... but then from others, with a slight tilt, you can get a much better look at that lovely Blueberry blue and the twinkling stars.
















You simply can't catch all the angles at once!




















Nonetheless, I hope you've enjoyed stepping into the winter night garden with me - and I hope you are wrapped up warm and snug like the little girl.

Thanks so much for stopping by today, and I'll see you again soon.

Snow was falling,
so much like stars
filling the dark trees
that one could easily imagine
its reason for being was nothing more
than prettiness.
Mary Oliver














I'd like to play along at the Funkie Junkie Boutique Blog where the challenge is Let's Play Tic Tac Toe - and I'm playing the top line across... Layers, Winter, Heat Embossing
At the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge they want to see Something New

Going for a walk

Hello all!  I'm just making it in under the wire with my entry for this month's Art Journal Journey theme.  I promised myself I'd play along at least once a month this year but the lovely Chris of PearShapedCrafting slightly stumped me with her "We're All Going..." theme.  It's a lovely idea, and opened up lots of possibilities for everyone, but I found myself paralysed between two phrases which really didn't inspire me at all.

Firstly, there was "We're all going on a summer holiday... " - thanks for that earworm, Cliff Richard! - but that just isn't true for me this year.  And then there was "We're all going to hell in a handcart," which seems a lot more apt for the current state of world affairs, but was far too depressing for me to want to start journalling about.  I know that you can use art journalling for all kinds of emotions and expressivity - but, just at the moment, I prefer to escape from nightmarish reality when I head into the craft-room, rather than take it in there with me.

In the end, with July rapidly running out of days, I decided my best bet was to run for my happiest possible artsy place, so on my art journalling page we're all going for a walk in the meadow.  When the world is looking dark, some sunlight and a gentle breeze are sometimes all that's needed to feel a little more cheerful.







This is a heavily textured page, since I started with a thick coat of watercolour ground to prepare the page for using watercolour paints.  It gives you a deliciously grainy, sandy texture which also allows the pigment to flow as though you had watercolour paper.

It means you can get lovely soft background effects before applying more detail in later layers.













The paper in this large 10x10 inch album from Paperchase is already sturdy (it's the same book as has the Inspiring Herbs and Wild and Organic pages), but the ground gives you even more weight and texture. 











Watercolours are the main medium here.  At this stage, that's all that's on the page, apart from the watercolour ground itself... but then I moved on to a more mixed media approach.














There are some nice thick applications of heavy body acrylic to create texture in the flower heads.















I love the dimension and movement this gives you.
















I used some large PITT artist pens to add some variation in line to some of the stems...














... as well as adding some soft blue flower heads to the distant stems in the background.  














And it wanted warming up a bit so I added some of my favourite Broken China Distress Stain, creating turquoise shading beneath the flower heads as well as deepening the colour of the sky.
















There's some script stamping in Olive Archival adding texture to the undergrowth.














I used my dipping pen and some Turtle Dove Grey ink by Colorex to write the words, which are layered over some torn strips of tissue tape.












I've no nearby meadows to head into in real life, so the craft table version will just have to do for now when I need to escape.

I hope you've enjoyed coming for a walk with me, and I'll be back soon with some exciting posts in the next couple of weeks.  Stay tuned and happy crafting in the meantime!









In a meadow full of flowers, you cannot walk through and breathe those smells and see all those colors and remain angry. We have to support the beauty, the poetry, of life.
Jonas Mekas

I'd like to share this over at Art Journal Journey for this month's theme of "We're All Going..."
At the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge, they're looking for projects which are Bright and Cheerful - my sunshine meadow has made me feel a little more cheerful about the world, so I'd like to play along there too
I'd also like to share this at Paint Party Friday - continuing to work on expanding my experience with watercolours, and also exploring how they fit in with my mixed media work

Wild and Organic

Hello all and welcome to a rusty post!  It's been a while since I got my rust on, but that old distressing itch took hold with this page.  (I mean the itch to weather and distress things, rather than a nasty rash, if you see what I mean!)

There are some more words from the Neal's Yard catalogue on this textural spread, so it's another chance to join in over at Art Journal Journey for Halle's Words To Live By theme.  







I recommend clicking on the photos for a close-up view of all the textures, but I'm not going to give you much in the way of a step-by-step, sorry.













That's partly because there aren't any process photos (I was too busy with the process itself), and partly because I don't really remember much about it.















I find that when you're in a state of flow you don't necessarily know much about what's going on.  You're just channelling it.















I know there's some tissue wrap buried somewhere under there on this 10 x 10 page...















... and blue Colorex ink deep down in the layers.
















There's crackle, both paint and glaze, but both DecoArt, I think...













... and then plenty of paint - mainly DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics, with Quinacridone Gold playing a major role.
















I super-heated it in places...

















... creating these glorious bubbles of texture.

And I've used some of the Rusty Patina made by Imagination Crafts...















... for the turquoise and aqua touches of extra texture along the cracks and fissures.















Here are those words from the catalogue.  I meant to use the dip pen and ink over the top of them, as I did with the Inspiring Herbs page, but I forgot.  And now I quite like them like this, not taking too much attention.













Any paint or medium left over on the craft mat got mopped up with a watery brush...















... and splattered across the page to create even more deliciousness.














I seem to remember adding a burnishing touch of Florentine Treasure Gold to highlight the textures even further.















And the whole thing has a really pleasing glimmering sheen which catches the light.














That's where I think I'll leave things for now, with a final close up of my favourite bubbles!









After all this wild, organic, rusty decay, the next post will take you somewhere far more tidy and controlled.

I hope you'll be able to drop in again for that at the weekend (especially if you're one of those people who enjoys the miniatures side of things) and, in the meantime, happy crafting all!

All things that have form eventually decay.
Masashi Kishimoto

I'd like to join in with Words To Live By over at Art Journal Journey
And I'll make this my third and final entry over at the Creative Artiste Challenge Blog where they are on their 50th Anything Mixed Media Goes theme