Quirky Bird

Oh my gosh don't you just love Pinterest. When I need inspiration I love to pour through art and craft books and magazines, I am one of those people who have stacks and stacks of ripped out pages of things that caught my eye and journals full of quickly jotted down ideas. Then along comes Pinterest, I don't have to dig through my closet anymore to find that one page of inspiration or try to find my long lost idea in one of my many journals. I cherish these journals and stacks of stuff and still rely on them.... but really love that quick fix of just looking through my Pinterest boards.

About a year ago I saw some wonderful work on Pinterest using book pages, something I have always loved to do. As a recycle artist I have tons of old and rescued books and love the old pages, even the smell of an old book page puts me in heaven. I combined a little gesso, Zentangle® and Inktense pencils and had a great time drawing quirky little birds. I recently filmed a YouTube for Design Originals demonstrating this fun art project.

I also have a passion for stencils, so many artists are turning their personal styles into really beautiful stencil designs. When I went to the Craft and Hobby Association Trade Show earlier this year I finally got to meet one of my favorite artists, Mary Beth Shaw aka Stencil Girl. What I wouldn't give to have every single stencil in her line...but alas I had to choose. I had some fun with them recently, Mary Beth graciously posted my project on her blog today. Take a minute to scoot over there, she has guests artists on her blog all the time...and they come up with some fabulous ways to use stencils. 

Since I am in love with these stencils I decided to combine one of them with my birds and book pages,  this page was created with Shattered, I used gesso on the stencil and then colored it in with Inktense and outlined it all with a Sakura micron pen......fun!!

Create a Painting from a Coloring Book Image

     The stacks of background pages in my studio are many. These pages are mostly watercolor paper with acrylic paints, maybe a few zentangle® patterns with markers, collage pieces....possibly the remnants of paint left on a brush before I place it in a water dish, a wonderful piece of image left from a collage or the scrap of a beautiful napkin I decided not to use. My favorite way to play with background pages is to just make random marks, alternating cool colors and warm colors until I have a pleasing combination adding more stuff as I go.

The Early Bird Gets the Worm 

                                         Mixed Media painting on 9 x 12 watercolor paper.
                                                   
     While I was cleaning my mom's house for her recent move I ran across an old coloring book, it was full of simple images. I love, love, love these images. Recently I incorporated them into a class I was teaching at Sparks Creative Arts Studio, "Run with Scissors Play with Paint™".  I went back to the coloring book images the other day while playing with the backgrounds and decided to trace this fun bird with a worm onto tracing paper. I cut it out and used matte medium to glue it down, then added a little gesso and paint to complete the mixed media painting. What a quick way to make a colorful art piece, also works wonders if you find it difficult to draw an image on a busy background.      

                    GO PLAY!!.....and borrow your kids coloring book every once in awhile.

                                                    Bird image from the coloring book.

     If you follow the above link to Sparks Creative Arts Studio in Arlington, Texas you will find some other fantastic classes offered. My next class is "Confetti Glass", we will learn some wire wrapping techniques and fire recycled glass in a kiln.