12 Books Of Christmas - Part 2

Happy Tuesday!

Well... any cause for a celebration eh? The weather here is wet and dreary, but even with the damp and cold and chill there are THE most beautiful skies to be seen and celebrated!

Yeah. I know.  So anyhoo, I thought it about time that I wrote a part 2 for that 12 Books Of Christmas - I'll still need a part 3, but I promise that's not far away.  So....where were we...? Up to page four I think......  yep. Here we go:

Page 4:Gus The Theatre Cat by T.S. Eliot

This page was painted completely with Derwent watercolour pencils - they're so easy to move around on this lovely Bockingford paper. Using the brush to take colour directly from the tip of the pencil gives a nice vivid colour where needed too. I added detail with Uni Pin fine liner pens (0.1 and 0.3),Uni Ball Impact gel pen (1.0mm) and gorgeous, rich Winsor & Newton gold ink.

Die-cutting the page added a layered effect - I like that!

I love Eliot's work, but I wanted to choose one of the poems from 'Old Possum's Book Of Practical Cats' in particular - partly because mum and I both love musical theatre (yes, I know, but we do) and also because we've always had cats for pets, and this poem about old Gus reminds me of a cat we had when I was little. His name was 'Tuesday' (go on - guess on what day mum found him...) and she rescued him after he'd been abandoned (horribly) by some scumbags. She nursed him back to health, and although he remained thin and scrawny all his life, he was tough as old boots, defending his territory against all manner of invaders.... foxes, other cats...the invading undead hoardes...you know the sort of thing.

  ...hey! Where'd the cat go?!

Page 5: The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen

So - there HAD to be a mermaid, right? The story of the Little Mermaid was so beautiful to me when I was a child. I think Andersen's stuff is way less creepy when viewed from a child's perspective...as an adult they can be...um... a bit depressing! But then - there was the wonderful Danny Kaye, who made it all wonderful, then Disney with their sugar sprinkles and singing crustaceans and kapow! A whole big McFilet o' Fish of awesomeness! Mermaids are fabulous. I decided to give this one a golden tail and seaweed hair - and a li'l seahorse (have to give SOME nod to Ariel!)

I used the Derwent pencils to set down the base colours and then used Neocolor II soluble wax pastels from thereon in. A Uni Ball Impact gel pen (white 1.0mm) added texture and detail once a quick spray of Chestnut lacquer added a base, and I highlighted with that yummy Winsor and Newton gold ink.

I also added some Tattered Angels glaze (Mellow Yellow) to the tail and super-heated with my heat gun to make it bubble, then highlighted the textured surface with some 'Treasure Gold' gilding wax.

I cut away quite a lot of the page as I wanted to have her look like she was floating to the surface of the sea in a whirl of bubbles...kind of thing. I resisted the urge to 'Disney' her up and gave her a look of longing, which seems appropriate for the original story. 

Page 6: The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde

This was done using a combination of Derwent Watercolour pencils and Neocolor II soluble wax pastels - they blend so completely beautifully it's a delight!  I was given an illustrated collection of these short stories when I was about 9 years old and completely fell in love with them. I chose this one in particular as I recited a large extract in a 'speech and drama' competition/festival thingy and my mum remembers it fondly.

This picture represents the part of the story where the little swallow, left behind to brave a freezing winter, sheltered by the glorious statue of the Happy Prince, takes flakes of gold from the statue to deliver to the poor people of the city at the bidding of the Prince who can't bear to witness the suffering that their poverty brings. It's a tragic but beautiful story. I'd recommend that you read it - and have a tissue ready for when you have a good old cry!

Detail added again with Uni Pin fine liner pens and that Winsor and Newton gold ink is just perfect for the gold leaf. Again - LOADS of die-cutting! WOO!

Page 7:The Marvelous Mongolian by James Aldridge

Yuh-huh....second only to mermaids.... there HAD to be a horsey! I read this book when I was 11 years old and when my mother found me sobbing as a result she took the book off me and read it herself ....and sobbed! Oh it's a wonderful book, written in the form of letters between pen-pals, about a wild Mongolian stallion, and a small tame pony. Read it. More tissues. You'll sob too or else you're not human and/or alive!  This, along with 'Black Beauty' affected me SO MUCH that I can't read a book about horses, or watch a film about horses without sobbing uncontrollably if anything happens to them! In fact - I'm not permitted to OWN a copy of the Black Beauty movie for the sake of my own health and sanity! Pathetic, yet true...

I used the Derwent pencils for this one with plenty of gold ink swirls to represent dust. Before anyone points it out - yes, I did give horsey a longer mane than these ponies actually have, but I like him this way - he looks more wild, so shush.

Page 8: White Fang by Jack London

Hmmm....another weepie! I'm an emotional wreck! I must have read this book a hundred times as a child and loved it more with every read. There's a darned good reason that this is a classic.

For this page, I used the Derwent pencils as a base colour agent and then Neocolor II pastels for layers. As this book was done for my mum, I chose an extract from the beginning, about White Fang as a cub with his mother and reflected it in the illustration.

 

Detail added again with Uni Pin fine liners and Uni Ball Impact gel pens.

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Ok. I'm going to leave that there for now as I have a stack of journals waiting to be bound and/or decorated and they're making me feel guilty for avoiding them! Grrr...  I'll be back in no time to finish this set of posts with the last few pages and HOPEFULLY some finished journals for Etsy. I'd love to hear what you've been up to, or hear your thoughts on these pages. Please feel free to leave a comment as it's awesome to hear from you, and very encouraging. If you'd like to have updates on new posts you might like to 'follow' my blog - just click the link in the right-hand border.

Thank you for visiting! Huge hugs from Shroo :) xxx

Free-Fall vs Ebb & Flow - Mermaid Journal Pages

Hello again!

Are we all ok? We had a maHOOsive hailstorm in the early hours of this morning which let me know in no uncertain way that winter's just around the corner. Out with the extra blankets and the hot water bottles! ...and six BILLION hot, steaming cups of tea to keep my insides from freezing!

So - I have a couple of blog posts set up for you in response to an awesome new prompt/challenge over at

I've not entered one of their challenges before so I hope they like my offering. So many talented artists answer these challenges that sometimes I get that wobbly feeling ..you know the one... I was thinking about this, letting my rambling mind spiral this way and that, in the labyrinth of uncertainty where it scrabbles and scampers, and it struck me that often, I feel like I'm falling - a kind of free-fall descent that tends to tempt out the frighteners ....wobbly, wobbly... But if I take a step back... change perspective a bit... I see it's not so much a fall - it's a kind of a flow. The ebb and flow of life's powerful tides, I suppose. It's all very well to fight them, but sometimes that just leaves me exhausted, whereas if I trust the flow, let myself drift with them occasionally, I find that life takes me to new, exciting shores. Scary? Oh yeah! But full of adventure and opportunity. Sometimes, I figure that the Universe knows best.

Um....so how do I journal these slightly self-indulgent abstractions? Hmm? HA! - that'd be a MERMAID OPPORTUNITY!! WOO! NEVER turn down the chance to paint a mermaid. That's...a law...probably! I wanted to represent the sense of falling, the change of perspective, and the acceptance of 'going with the flow' in one page and a single image. You be the judge of whether I achieved it, k?

First - the free-fall:

Change perspective...and...going with the flow -

Hmm? Either way, your back's to the future - who can ever really say what will happen? But one way you've lost control to Fear, and with the other you give control to Trust. One seems preferable...

The other thought is that generally, if you're falling, the only thing that can happen is that you collide with things. Usually that's less than awesome. On the other hand, if you're trusting to the flow of life, you stand the chance of CONNECTING with things  - and that can bring happiness? Ok, not EVERY time, but SOME of the time, and that's worth the journey if you ask me.  How to illustrate that then... Well, in clearing my mum's junk room out of all the years of collected rubbish, I found the hobby-horse that she bought me when I was a child. He's hand-made from carefully shaped and polished wood, with real horse hair mane and leather bridle. I loved him - STILL love him so much! Finding him brought back a stream of good memories. The link? Well, life's led me on one hell of a journey, some free-falls, a lot of collisions, some ebb and flow, there and back again, but it's brought me back - at least in part - to the house I grew up in, full of memories and it's strangely reassuring. No collision this time, just a string of connections, fitting like jig-saw pieces to help mend the broken picture that is my adult past.  I might not like the way it's all happened, but if I choose to accept this destination then I can handle the journey.  Prompted by finding my horse (his name is 'Guy'), here's the journal page that grew from these thinky particles of brain dust:

 

If you're interested in 'stuff wot I used' on these pages, I've stuck to the Derwent watercolour pencils, and Caran D'Ache Neocolor II soluble wax pastels as a base, with Tattered Angels Glimmer Glaze, Treasure Gold (Classic) gilding wax, and Uni Ball Impact gel pens (white and black). The only new 'stuff' added - some yummy gold Winsor & Newton ink, and I used a Tsukineko Brilliance Dew Drop ink pad (BD-63 Pearl Poppy) ink pad as a paint for the red of the bridle and the mermaid's hair decoration. These pads are awesome to use as paints, with the soft, squishy sponge and shimmery finish. Lovely.

I hope you like these journal pages. How would you represent 'free-falling' or 'ebb and flow'? If you like my posts, please save me as a favourite or add me to your Circles (if you're on G+) so I can send you updates, and as always you know I love to read your comments and suggestions. Thank you for reading - Love and hugs - Shroo :) xxx

Time Versus Creativity

Hi again!

Well...it's been a funny old week. It's been one of those work-heavy weeks, mainly playing 'catch-up' with all the tasks I'd stupidly put off the week before...I never learn...!  Along with that I had a bit of a creative 'dip', mainly due to a bit of a downward mood swing.

So, what to do when you're up to your eyeballs in important stuff, working late, sleeping badly and feeling fed up? Well....I know from experience that if I ALLOW myself to stay fed up I'll just get more grumpy, and no matter what the workload, all work and no rest makes me a right moody girl. Too tired to do much in the way of active stuff, and too busy to indulge in time consuming distractions - that sounds like a PERFECT opportunity to start off my little recently made junky mini art journal! It's My logic!

As is often the case, uber-business means that creativity can be a little elusive so in these cases I start with basics...I think how I feel and find SOMETHING positive to record as a means of motivation. The awesome awesomeness of art journals (I think we can all agree here) is that you don't have to produce a masterpiece on every page. Art journaling is a useful process for me, not only a way to practise tecniques and new media whilst recording my journey through life, but also a way of working through mental blocks in a creative way.

So how do I work artistically when I am blocked and can't access those skills and processes I'd normally rely on, but which go into hiding at times like these? Hmmm.... One way is to doodle and sketch - often when I'm on the phone, or absent mindedly while having lunch or watching t.v.  If I like a doodle I cut it out and use it as a prompt for a little journal page. It's a good start! Raiding my collage elements folder and bits-box can help as well.  Another useful tool is 'Pinterest' - an addictive collection of wonderful diverse images INCLUDING a fantastic collection of quotes. I tend to write any that I particularly like in a 'quotes journal' for future reference and it comes in handy at times like this.  Combining these things - whilst considering how I'm feeling - tends to help jog a creative process into action.

Below are the pages I've managed to produce over the past few days, in chronological order, which may or may not be helpful? They're not my most awesome work, but I want this blog to reflect who I am as a artist, and hiding scrappy stuff is just plain dishonest!  The little book is roughly A6 size, made from junk mail bound in three signatures with simple pamphlet stitch. I stick washi tape down a lot of the page spines to stop leakage and help keep the book strong and then cover each page with colour and texture, which also helps as an idea/mood prompt.

This is about as basic as it gets! A phone-call doodle cut-out and a couple of bit-box elements and the absolute honesty that SOMETIMES a cup of tea is the best thing to soothe mind, body and soul!

Collage elements again - just a way of journaling how I felt. Life's not always how we'd like it to be, but the only way to get through the bad stuff is to deal with it and move forward.

Another little phone-doodle (birdie)! I layered on some tissue paper and the bird image,  then couldn't decide what to do. I kept coming up with blanks every time I returned to the page through the day and night but was determined to finish... once I had a small epiphany about what I was doing, the quote seemed to be perfect and the page pretty much finished itself!

I love this quote, and when I strengthened the page spine with wood-grain patterned washi tape it seemed like a good excuse for a tree pic. This is an awesome way to use up scraps of patterned paper and leaf shapes are a doddle to cut out! Add Faber Castell Pitt pens, some Glimmer Glaze and Glam and hey presto! Easy apple tree! This was actually FUN to do, which helped a lot. No thinking required!

I took a break from work and just chose images that made me happy to collage onto this fold out page at the centre of the journal. (Apologies for the split piccy - my scanner didn't like the full width of the image and point-blank refused to co-operate! ). This is why I like having images ready cut-out in my folder and ephemera boxes - it allows for full, free creaive flow even if time's a restrictive factor.

***In case you want to know - I use Claudine Hellmuth multi-media matte gel to adhere collage. It's fast-drying, effective and leaves a nice surface to add colour and detail to.  Give it a go - you'll like it!***

The next page is just one of my standard escapist comfort zones - a mermaid on a beach - surprise! (not!!!)

Layers for the sea and sand are torn from scrap paper kept handy while I work to use up paint excess and such like. It creates excellent texture and layers with absolutely minimum effort. I keep EVERY piece of paper like this and I'm always glad of it! The mermaid is a Stampendous stamp image, cut out and coloured with Neocolor II soluble wax pastels and Cosmic Shimmer watercolours.

A quick journal page at the end of a busy day. I was feeling completely washed-out, but wanted to leave the day with a postitive message lodged in my brain. The rocket's cut from scraps - a quick and easy collage - and the stars are punched from more leftover bits and pieces. I used some "Ocean Breeze" Cosmic Shimmer Dazzle Paint for a shimmery look around the rocket...lovely stuff that paint...highly recommend it!

This page was prompted by the back-colour - that bright orange and yellow. It reminded me of the countryside around here which is always lovely, but looks spectacular against the splendour of a glorious sunset. Trees are evocative of strength and growth, and I felt that the image of trees, standing firm independently but with branches reaching towards the light and to each other was perfect for this quote, which is one I particularly like.  The trees are done with Sharpie marker and then india ink. The 'ground' is a torn strip of homemade paper and the foggy effect is made with a Staz-on Brilliance white ink pad dabbed gently about the page  with a text-stamp added for some interest in the ink. I like hand-writing the quote text as it feels more unique and personal to me.

This is today's page. The horsey was a phone-doodle and I really didn't want to throw him away. I pasted him to the page with that matte medium (see above) and swirled and smooshed some Magic Color white acrylic ink around him to make him stand out from the background and add a hint of motion to the image. I added some 'Amarillo Taxi' and 'Heirloom Blue' Mister Huey's spray inks along with some 'Aquamarine' and 'Tiger Lily' Glimmer mist, dabbed with a baby wipe then dried with a heat-gun which seems to bring out the sparkle a bit more. Doesn't show up hugely well in the scan, but is jolly pretty in real life! I have no idea what quote I'll add....or whether I'll add one at all, but I quite like this page and it makes me happy to have done something creative in an otherwise paperwork-based day!

I hope you enjoyed my latest journal work - I'll be back with more asap. Please feel free to comment or contact me if there's anything you want to ask as it's lovey to hear from you.

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Because I hope to make my posts practically useful as well as being an opportunity to share my art with you, I'd like to highlight the awesomeness of Cosmic Shimmer products, which I've used a LOT in these journal pages. I'm not sure how readily available they are in shops around the world, but thanks to the wonders of t'interweb you can find them pretty easily there I think. They don't receive as much publicity as Tattered Angels or Ranger/Tim Holtz on Youtube and the like, but they're truly exceptional and have a really HUGE variety of products in stunning colours - for example:

Glitter Glues

Shimmer Mister Sprays

Shimmer Pearlescent Watercolour Paints

Embossing Powders

Shimmer Inks & Ink Sprays

High Pigment Mica Powders

Sparkle Paints

There's a lot more to the range supplied by Creative Expressions which you can view on their wholesale site HERE. I chose them for their variety and competitive prices and stuck with them because of their quality. No - I'm not employed by them, but I've always found honest recommendations to be incredibly valuable so I'd suggest giving the brand a chance ...I think you'll be pleasantly surprised! Hope that helps!

Thanks for visiting! Hope you have an AWESOME week! Stay positive and be happy - big hugs from Shroo :) x

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This post is shared on Artists in Blogland: Show & Tell Saturday. Click below and check out the beautiful work shared there by other artists!

A Little About Me...

Okee - first postie post about me and my art and stuff and such. Err... where to begin, eh?

Right ... so... I'm an artist. I cannot TELL you how weird it feels to write that! I've been an artist as long as I can remember, but I've drawn and painted and created to keep myself happy and make beautiful things for the people I love in life, not for commercial gain as I've found self-promotion SO difficult, doubting myself and my abilities in typical artist fashion.

The beginning? Well, as soon as I could sit upright and focus, my mum - also an artist - jammed a pencil into my eager grippy fist and let me loose on ginormous pads of paper. I can't say I created anything recogniseable, but my mother would have you believe I was a genius. Well...a genius at random squiggles and splodgy mess! Mothers, eh? Pretty much from that point on I lived life with a pencil or brush in my hand, mainly cartooning, like mum and her friends did. As time's gone by I've faffed about with various styles and would now classify myself as a mixed-media illusrative artist....in other words, I like to play with all art media and have a wide appreciation of styles and am WAY too graspy and selfish o pick just one! I wanna play with ALL of them! And why not? There are so SO many limitations in life - those we impose upon ourselves, and those imposed on us by others - that we should grasp the joy and freedom of choice whenever we can and create something that brings on a smile - even if it's just for us to brighten our lives with.

(pic: scrappy paper collage in one of my art journals. Background's a watercolour crayon/sennelier oil pastel and acrylic mix with flowers and swirls added with acrylic inks and Cosmic Shimmer inks...which are very sexy - highly recommended for adding gentle shimmery sparkle! I don't draw out collage paper shapes - just hack away at paper till it looks right. Kinda. )

In talking to friends and colleagues, I know that artists often lose their muse. Life and all its tribulations and distractions get in the way and block the beauty of what's there around us to see and feel. Often we have jobs which are all-encompasing or relationships with people whose goal is to diminish and destroy those who they feel envy towards and don't understand. And so was the case for me for a while. Family troubles, relationship nightmare and job pressure conspired to capture my fragile muse and lock her up in a room with no view and I stopped making art, bit by excrutiating bit and eventually felt that it was lost to me forever. NOT SO!! Life has a way of presenting oppotunities to find paths to freedom, to break those grim, oppressive shackles and break into the light - to a world full of colour and beauty and LOVELY people and kindness and encouragement. We have to remove the things that poison us and have the courage to embrace change. So it was for me. I left my job, and removed the destructive, small-minded people from my life and all of a sudden, the muse was back and art has been my happy and constant companion ever since!

(Pic: this was a play with acrylic paint mixed with gloss medium. It's good fun! This ...for want of a better word....'landscape' took just shy of 10 minutes with a selection of sticky splodgy gel/paint mixes and was entirely finger-painted! AWESOME messy fun - highly recommended as it really frees your mind to do splodgy quick art!)

Like most creaive people, my confidence to promote myself as an artist is low. I judge myself and my art VERY harshly - in fact, for most of my life I've ended up destroying my paintings and drawings once they're done - a weird kind of catharsis. However, thanks to the encouragement of those around me now I've found the courage not only to keep my art, bu show it around...and bizarrely, people LIKE it! I find that insanely awesome! And a bit frightening! I've been invited to exhibit in a couple of galleries and competitions, my first gallery exhibit being last autumn as part of a national exhibition of art. I've been asked to blog about my work and ideas so that people can get to know me as an artist, which is WELL freaky, but I'm taking the plunge (hence, blog) so I hope you wish me luck and remain kind in your comments.  If you're an artist please get in touch as I so love to see other peoples' work.

In my next post I'll yatter on a bit about my influences and generally about art wot I likes... and hopefully not bore the socks of you and leave you chewing off your own leg as preference to reading further! Thank you bajillions for your time - I appreciate it! Big hugs to lovely people - I'll add some pics for you to look at!

Shroo :)x

(Pic: Horsey horsey horsey! Love horsies! Awwwww.... This pony horsey cutie was done almost entirely with water soluble oil pastels/crayons. The brand used was 'Aquastic' by Cretacolor and were my first ones - just a few - bout in a closing-down sale of a local (much missed) art shop. Since then I've been seduced by the divine Neocolor II pastels by Caran D'Ache. I swear I would marry them if I could. They are a real artists must-have! Pricey in shops, but check out ebay as a lot of sellers can give you a real bargain! Oh - horsey background is torn book pages stuck with matte Mod Podge and brighter colours added with a teeny bit of acrylic crafter's paint and, again, sexy Cosmic Shimmer inks. I love that the versatility of the pastels allowed some text to show through the main image. Cool. )