Journal Friday #4

It has been a busy week, and I came up a little short on the daily challenges. I'm hoping to make up for it next week, but next week is going to be even busier with a trip to New York for the National Art Education Association's Annual Convention. But we'll see.

Watercolor pencil with water-based marker 

Choice 

Overlapping tracings 

Hand prints 

Growth

Journal Friday #3

Small actions lead to big results. Working with the daily challenges has been a great way to build up layered pages in my journal. Some days I have only a short amount of time to work, and other days I have much more time. It has also been a great motivator to do some things that I normally don't do.

Drawing small objects

Action

Drawn text

Shape templates

Systems

Pop-up using accordion folds

Wrappers and packaging

Find Your Style

This is just a little reminder that I am part of Find Your Style, a collaborative ebook put together by Kristal Norton. Along with eleven other artists, I share my creative journey to finding my style giving a little bit of practical advice as well.

I am honored to be a part of this collaboration, so please check it out!

For more information or to purchase your own copy, visit Kristal's website, and see how you can FIND YOUR STYLE!

Journal Friday #2

Cut Pages

Random Lines

Crayons

Integrating Collage with Drawing

Black Out Poetry

Inspiration

Watercolor - Salt

Art and Soul: Portland

I can't believe that Art and Soul: Portland is a little less than 2 months away. Time is ticking by so quickly. We'll be teaching three classes the weekend of April 8th, and we're looking forward to going back to Portland, Oregon.

On Saturday, April 8th, we'll be teaching Wish You Were Here, a full-day art postcard workshop that uses your life as inspiration. That evening, we'll be teaching Stencil Savvy, a 3-hr workshop learning the basics of making your own stencils. Finally, on Sunday, April 9th, we'll be going back to where it all began with Journal Fodder Junkies of the World Unite. This full-day visual Journal workshop is an updated version of the first workshop Dave and I taught together  long time ago.

To register for our classes, click here. We Hope to see you in the Pacific Northwest!

But if you can't make Portland, we'll be teaching the same three workshops at Art and Soul: Virginia Beach at the beginning of October. Don't forget our other workshops! You can find a complete listing on our Events page.

Journal Friday #1

For the past month, I have been trying to work in my journal on a daily basis and post about what I have done on the blog and on social media. I must say that I am pretty proud that I have kept it up for 34 days now, and I hope to keep working in my journal daily for as long as I can. But I won’t be sharing daily from now on. As not to bombard your social media feeds with daily in progress journal pages, I am going to begin sharing on a weekly basis. When I taught high school art, I had Journal Fridays where I would share something with my students, and allow them an entire class period to work in their journals. It was the only day where students worked all period and did not clean up early.

So, I’m going to implement Journal Fridays here on the blog, where I plan to share the things that I have done in my journal throughout the week, and if you want to join in and try some of those things, great. From now on you will be able to catch what I've been up to in my journal every Friday instead of everyday.

And if you started to add things up, you may have suspected that the pages and ideas that I have shared over the past month are related to the new book that I’ve been working on since October, and you would be correct. I have been using a different challenge each day to guide my work in the journal. It’s been fun to focus on just one thing each day, but of course, there have been many days when I have done additional work in the journal. That’s the beauty of working with daily challenges, they spark new ideas and new directions.

Unfortunately, work on the book hasn’t been going as quickly as I had originally envisioned. It’s absolutely amazing how many things can get in the way, and my attention is easily diverted by the other projects and work that I have to do. I was really hoping to have things wrapped up and have the book published by the first of March, but that’s just not going to happen. I’ve written two hundred of the 365 challenges, but there’s still the matter of designing the book. I’m now looking at the summer or fall. I will keep things updated here on the blog and on social media. Until then, please follow along as my new weekly feature Journal Friday!

Shading

Shading adds depth and richness to spaces and shapes. It's a great way to make letters, and shapes stand out from the surrounding areas, and create a lot of visual interest.

Any drawing material can work. I've used colored pencil in these three examples, and since it's a material that I don't use a lot of in my journal, it makes for a nice change of pace.

Southwestern Virginia Workshops

Time is moving so fast! I can't believe that it's February already, and that means that in just a month and a half, I'll be heading to Galax, Virginia to teach at the Chestnut Creek School of the Arts.

I want to invite you to come and create with me one or both days. For the past two years, I have had the pleasure of teaching classes at Chestnut Creek, and I have absolutely loved teaching there. It's a wonderful space, but the people make it so much more. It's always a grand time and so much fun. I'm excited to go back with two new classes this year, Mapping the Journey and Luminous Liquid Layers, and I'm looking forward to sharing new ideas and new techniques.

I hope that you can join me in this small southwestern Virginia city for an awesome weekend of making art!

Check out the the Chestnut Creek website for more info and to register.

To see a complete listing of the classes and workshops that I'll be teaching, some solo and some with David, check out our Events page!

Coffee

What do you do with your coffee when it gets cold? Paint with it, of course.