I love all kinds of art, but there's something about quirky collage that just makes me happy. So when I began work on my new studio, I knew I wanted to create something for the walls that would make me smile. I used Graphic 45's Old Curiosity Shoppe papers and embellishments to create four torso tags that I've mounted and framed. Here's a closer look.
Working with a limited color palette can produce interesting results. Check out the work in this week's Quirkle Gallery at Digital Art Quirks to see what I mean. This week's challenge, put together by DAQ regular Indybev, is to create a piece of art that is tone on tone, offers a piece of wisdom, and uses an overlay.
As soon as I saw the challenge, I knew I wanted to use the mini kit being given away this week by Nancie Rowe Janitz at ScrapArtist as part of her Art Therapy Challenge. You can find the kit here.
My "Don't Throw Out the Baby" piece uses lots of blending to maintain the tone-on-tone effect.
Background papers
(blended) and hearts from Nancie Rowe Janitz's Art Therapy kit (a
freebie on the ScrapArtist blog); baby from SherrieJD's ATC Babies;
overlay from Lie Fhung's Lumoz Whimsy; and garland from Lorie Davison's
Brownies and Bunnies kit. Font is Brother Bear.
The theme for the December ATC swap at Digital Art Quirks was "What's Black and White and Red All Over?" All the stupid responses to this riddle ran through my head (a newspaper, a blushing nun, a skunk that's been run over), but I finally settled on the sun-burnt zebra.
Zebra and sunglass images from stock.xchng. Word labels made at Atomic Cupcake.
I had even more fun doing the back of the card.
Stock.xchng image; Lisa Dozier ATC Build a Card brushes; JSL Ancient font.
Who knew? My favorite blogger, Patti Digh, ended up receiving over 120 pieces of art for her 37 Days book project. Lucky me, I was assigned the essay, "Save a Grocery List," to illustrate. In her article, Patti talks about the importance of handwriting, about the impact seeing a written name, letter, or yes, even a grocery list, can have on our descendents.
I ended up doing a vintage collage, using a shopping list in the background to carry the message.
If you've been following along on my blog, you already know that I'm hosting Quirkshop 101 at Scrapbookgraphics. It's a six-week workshop aimed at teaching traditional digiscrappers how to incorporate artistic techniques into their layouts.
This week, we're looking at all of the tools available in Photoshop -- filters, actions, styles and blending modes -- and how you can combine them to artistic effect. I've been meaning to do a piece of artwork for one of my nieces, a high school sophomore and a real sweetie. Since one of this week's workshop assignments was to do a piece of art, I finally got motivated enough to pull out her photo and begin blending, filtering, and erasing. Here's the result:
Materials by Sausan. Blended papers from her Dream On and Rose's Passion kits. Torn paper and wings from Dream On. Wordart from Stitched Words, and button from Lil' Jake.
I wrote yesterday that I was missing the river where I grew up. I decided to do a little experimenting with technique to see if I could get that Paul Sawyier look. (You can see the inspiration piece in the post below.)
Here's the road I walked each day to catch the school bus. I modified the painting effect that I used on the photo of lemons last week, using watercolor brushes. I also used Photoshop's color matching tool to get the tones right.
Going Home, 2007 copyright, Donna B. Miller
"She put the lime in the coconut. She drank it all up..." I have this silly song bouncing around in my head as a resut of working on my entry for the Frameworthy Challenge at Scrapbookgraphics. You may remember that the challenge was to be inspired by the work of artist Duane Keiser. I love his fruit paintings, so I tried to replicate the look of them with this photo of limes that I found on StockXChng. I used a tutorial from the "Photoshop Photo Effects Cookbook," and I've got to admit that I'm pleased with the result. I may have to do a whole series of these for my kitchen.
My absolute favorite thing to do in Photoshop is digital collage. Applying filters, blending papers, adding cutouts -- it's the next best thing to crayons. For collage work, it's hard to beat Kathryn Balint's Ultimate Altered Art series. The digital papers and elements are pretty, and funky, and very versatile.
I used several of her kits while creating this piece, The Little Prince. The model is my grandson.
Background paper is from Kathryn Balint's Artisan Papers; bird and nest from Kathryn's Bird Sanctuary; and crown from her Make a Fairy kit. Everything has been colorized and blended. The glitter leaves are Ztampf's Sparkle Sprays overlays.
Even as a kid, I liked to doodle little pictures on my envelopes before I mailed them. Well here I am, 40 years later, and I’m still at it, only now I’m using the computer instead of crayons. Some of my envelopes are just for fun; some are just pretty; and others are more artsy.
According to Wikipedia: "Mail artists like to claim that mail art began when Cleopatra had herself delivered to Julius Caesar in a rolled-up carpet. However, perhaps the initial genesis of mail art was in postal stationery, from which mail art is now typically distinguished (if not defined in its broadest sense). The first example of postal stationery was the pictorial design created by the English artist William Mulready (1786-1863) for mass printing-press reproduction on the first stock of prepaid postage wrappers or envelopes produced for the launch of the Penny Post in Britain in 1840."
Today, you'll find mail artists all over the world using many different mediums. If you’d like to learn more about Envelope Art, be sure to check out The Envelope Collective.
Here are a few envelopes I've done just for fun:
