Art, Poetry, and Journaling: a Mixed Media exploration

1. Intro to Poetry-Art Journaling: hi and welcome to poetry, art and journaling at Tangled Spirits Studio. I'm Tricia Ballot, and I'm a writer and an artist. I am so honored that you've chosen to spend some time in the studio with me. Today I'm going to show you one of my favorite projects. It's a poetry art journal page. You know, I've been collecting quotes and bits of poetry and my journals since I was a little kid. And a while back I discovered mixed media and art journaling, and suddenly something just clicked. I was able to bring my love powerful words and beautiful images together. Today I'm gonna show you some of my favorite mixed media and are telling techniques and help you really dig in and explore the meeting of one of my favorite poems. Invitation by Shel Silverstein. Before we get started, I'd like to tell you a little bit about how I've structured this class. I've always been a little bit frustrated by art classes that seemed a little too perfect, especially when I tried to follow along, and the piece that I created didn't look as polished and as perfect as the artists. This class is a step by step demonstration of my art process and the piece that you see on my wall here I've tried to show you the entire thing both those great moments of discovery and the places we have had to clean up a little bit. So I hope you're excited, and I really want to encourage you to go ahead and start a project show. Show me pictures of what you create, you know, as you go through the process because art is always wonderful, even when it doesn't go according to plan, even when it doesn't look exactly like someone else's. This is a great space to show what you're thinking, show what you're working on and, you know, get some feedback. I check in every day, and I love to see what my students were working on. So me in the next video, where I will go over some of the materials and supplies that we're using today, and I can't wait to see what you're working on, 2. Supply List: Okay, Now you get to see my incredibly messy our table. But here you go. All right, And literally on this table is everything that we will be using. So you can see it's really not that much. And I will go over each of these supplies and explain them a little bit more in the videos as we get to them. But here's your list, and I'll post a printed list as well. I am going to be doing this project on watercolor paper, and you can certainly do this on canvas if you want, or even just drawing paper if you maybe blew a couple of pieces together. But this I find, is really just nice and easy to work with. I am also going to be using both colored and white tissue. This is just plain packing tissue that I got it. I don't know, Target or Wal greens or somewhere. I'm gonna be using watercolors, and these are just really inexpensive student grade watercolors. I think I got them at Michael's for for $5 so I'm not using anything expensive or difficult here. Um, let's see her. What else? Ah, these are fun. These are Gela toes. They are from favor Casto. And these are just really, really fun. Um sticks of pigment and I will wax poetic about these in the actual in the first video of the lesson. But these air fun you can color with them. You can use them almost like watercolor cries. If you don't have jell Atos, you could certainly use watercolor crayons. Use oil pastels. There are some different options, Not go over that later. But these air what I'm using in the video. Let's see what else? Oh, yes, I do. Use a couple of stamps and both a black and a gold ink pad. This is just kind of a little tiny star snowflake stamp that I use. I like it gives it a little bit of texture in the background. Um, and a couple of larger background stamps I will also be using That's here. Ranger inks in teakwood, and I have a little spritz bottle here of ethyl alcohol rubbing alcohol. Oh, found objects in mixed media are awesome. I'm using a you can tell very dirty old Disney gift card. So and you're gonna want a rag of some sort brushes I'm using three brushes in this you could certainly get away with if you only want to do one brush one inch flat. I could easily do this entire project with just this brush, but since I have them, I'm going to use a couple of others. This is 1/4 inch flat, and I also have a is this. It's a fan brush and trying to see what size it is. Yeah, it doesn't really matter what size it is for the technique that I'm using it for. And this is just a old I think it's a baking soda container baking powder container that I took the label off and now use it for water. I am also going to be using some acrylics. Let's see here I'm using bronze burnt Sienna, burn number and lemon yellow, and that, my friends, is really it. That is all we're going to need today, so go ahead, grab your supplies. If you don't have these exact colors or these exact materials, grab something close. It'll be fun and meet me in the next video where we will get started 3. Color Blocking: Okay, We're about ready to get started. I am going to use a sheet of 11 by 15. Uh, cold press, watercolor paper. This is 100 and £40 so it's fairly thick, but, um, you could also use you could do this project using a canvas. You could do it in your art journal. Um, pretty much, you know, be creative, whatever. Whatever support you want to use. But today, I'm gonna be doing this project on watercolor paper, so just grab a sheet here and get this out of the way. Excuse me. Sorry about that. Okay, So I've got my watercolor paper here, and the first thing I'm going to do is choose my color palette. Now, the image from this poem that really stands out to me is that is the fire. Come sit by my fire. So I'm gonna be taking that, um, as inspiration for my color palette. And I'm going to start with these These air my Jell Atos and I absolutely love this product . It's from Faber. Castell. Um, they are You can see little tubes of color, and they are just, like, really thick and luscious and wonderful. If you don't have Jell Atos. You can use the stress crowns or great oil. Pastels were great that that sort of of thing watercolor crowns would even work for this process. I'm gonna go ahead and use past uh, these Gela does so from my collection here, I'm gonna choose kind of a arrange here of colors that kind of evokes that fire idea to me . And of course, we gotta have read. I've got yellow in there and some oranges, and I'm also going to include this really pretty coral and a couple of pinks as well. So you can see I'm using almost my entire collection here thes air colors that I really enjoy working with their very bright and colorful. So I'm gonna go ahead and set that aside and put these out here. Okay, so we're back, and I've got the dreaded sheet of white paper, and we're gonna take care of that right now. What I'm gonna dio is just choose any one of these colors. It really doesn't matter which one, and I am just going to start laying down blocks of color. And this is a time of the project where you can really just sort of be completely abstract and meaningless because, well, some of this is going to show through in the final project. Some of it won't, and you really can't plan for it. So just start laying down some color like this, and then the really fun thing with these gela toes, you're going to get your fingers dirty. Hey, this is art, and you just take a finger and sort of rub this in and you can see how I'm getting this really nice, creamy color. And that is just lovely. I love that. If you don't want to get your fingers in there, you can do this also with a baby wipe or a tissue or something like that. But you know what? I really just like to get my fingers in there. This is like finger painting for grown ups. So I've got that. I'm gonna go onto another color and want to use this one next and just kind of these nice organic, uh, shapes and just kind of color it in. And you're gonna want to either clean your finger off or use a different color, A different finger for this one, just so you don't muddy a pure colors and you can see this is just so smooth and creamy. It is lovely. Now, what you can do here at this border is go ahead and take your finger and blend booms, and you're gonna get a really nice graduated, blended effect. So now that you've seen that, I'm going to go ahead and speed up the rest of the video so that you can kind of see the entire process and feel free to pause the video at any point and work on your project. Come back when you're ready to move on to the next step. - Okay ? And there you go. I've got just some random blocks of color laid out, and that's really all. I'm looking for it this stage. 4. Stamped Tissue: Okay, now that our color blocking is in, I'm going to set this paper aside and prepare some book pages and some tissue to add another layer. So I'm gonna go ahead and put that aside and bring out of other things here. So I have some old books that I just got from Goodwill. And this is a 1992 Guinness Book of World Records, which has some really interesting old pictures and and that kind of thing. And sometimes those are very interesting. And then I also picked up a book that was actually one of my favorite Siri's growing up and of Green Gables. So sometimes I used those pages in my poetry art drones as well. For today, I'm actually going to be using We'll get back to the books in a minute, But first I want to show you some tissue paper techniques. I have two different things here. I have some white tissue here. This is just plain like gift wrap tissue. I think I got it a target or dollar store or something like that. And then I also have some colored tissue in my color palette, so we're actually going to use both. So I'm going to set the color tissue aside for now. I'm going to just ripped up a little bit of this white tissue. It doesn't need to be perfect. It's not going to be perfect. And that is OK, that is perfectly fine. We don't need perfect here. This is art. It's not supposed to be all neat and pretty, but I do wanna have kind of a fairly large blocks and I'll show you why in just a minute. Okay, so I've ripped it roughly and quarters, sort of maybe. OK, so now what I'm going to do here is spread out the tissue and hopefully you can see this against my work background, But we'll work with it, and then I'm gonna take a fairly large stamp. This one is kind of a map sort of image. And then this is another one of my favorite stamps. It's a tree with some words behind it. So I think that's very appropriate for this type of project. And then I just have a archival black ink pad Who so I'm gonna take the, um, tree with words, just kind of ink that up really? Really well, and go ahead and stamp my tissue and it's not going to be perfect. And that is completely okay. We don't need it to be perfect. We're just trying to get some the suggestion of the image, the words on it. You'll see why in a minute. Okay, so there we go. That actually turned out really nicely. I'm gonna set that aside and go ahead, and I'm going to stamp with the other stamp. This is my map, my world map. And I'm going to do the same thing on another piece of tissue. And again, it's not turning out perfectly. And I'm okay with that and you notice I'm leaving some space here between. That's because I'm actually going to I may end up tearing between their I don't know yet off. I'll decide. Hey, or I may just leave it the way it is. Just kind of do that. There we go. OK, so now I have for had to put my gelato is away. Okay, So I now have two sheets of stamped tissue, so I'm gonna set those aside and bring back my color blocked piece of watercolor paper. And at this stage, I kind of want to start making some creative decisions. Um, you know about orientations, Specifically do I want it to be landscape portrait. And I'm really looking at the color blocks and the focal images that I have in mind and, you know, kind of just deciding which way is it gonna look best. So I'm just gonna kind of turn it around a little bit. Maybe I'm actually kind of liking it this way. So I'm gonna I'm gonna leave it this way for now. The other thing I'm using here is gel medium. This is just Blick brand artists, Acrylic, Matt medium. And in this case, I'm gonna use it. Almost has a glue. It has some other applications in mixed media. But today, I'm just using it to apply the tissue paper. Okay, so I have my stamp tissue. This is the one with the maps on it, and I am going to go ahead and just really carefully rip this down the middle and again, I'm not too concerned about, you know, being super neat and careful, but I don't want to rip the images too much. Either stuff there. I kind of like that. That rough edge. Hi. And I'm gonna go ahead and just see her. Where do I want that one? Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and put it up in this corner. So I'm gonna said, Just paint this on here. This is the gel medium. And, you know, I'm getting it fairly thick on there. I wanted Teoh what's gonna happen here? You'll see, when I put this on is the tissue paper is almost going to melt into that gel medium, you see, And you're gonna be able to see the color through it, which I think is really, really nice. And it's not perfect you're getting I'm getting some texture there, which it's something I wanted, and I'm gonna come back over here. It is quite got far enough. Who and then I'm actually going to go over the top of the tissue as well with the gel medium and again, That's just gonna help. It kind of melt into the paper or your canvas. If that's what you want to use, that's fine, too. Okay, now I have this one little bit of paper here that is sort of sticking up, and so I'm actually going to do something a little bit interesting with that. I'm gonna kind of crumple that up a little bit. And I don't want to mess up my image too much here, but I'm just gonna kind of pat that down. And that's just gonna give me a nice little bit of texture right there. So I'm gonna a little more gel medium down like that, and I'm gonna paint over it, and that's just gonna give me a little bit of a textural element in that area. Okay. And now I'm going to go ahead and add some my trees here, do the same thing. Just riff that up a little bit. Don't see here. You know, I don't want to. I don't want to necessarily all lined up. It's not really the look. I'm going for here When? And don't worry. If you concede he here, we shift this over. Um, you can see it's it's kind of hanging off the edge a little bit here. I am not worried about that at all, because I can then go back later and just rip that off or cut it off, depending on how need I want to be at the time. Okay? and you can see here how all those nice color gradations are showing right through that tissue. So it's really, really pretty. Okay, so now I'm gonna come over here and take my colored tissue, and I'd like to add a little more yellow to this because as you noticed, I ran out of my yellow gelato right in the middle of the video. So I want Teoh kind of get more of that brightness in there. So what I'm gonna do, I have a couple of pieces that I just ripped off, and I mean, crumple those up, and then I'm just gonna unfold them a little bit so that I still have that texture, but they're not perfectly flat. And then I'm just gonna come down here and do the same thing. I'm gonna use the gel medium like an adhesive, and just kind of put those on. And again, I'm not really worried about, um, trying to straighten out those wrinkles. I like those. I want those and so you can see I'm getting the yellow color. But I'm also kind of getting it too. Sort of melt into the darker colors, the red and the pink and saw so getting kind of a nice little blended effect in here, which I really like. And then I'm also I'm actually going to overlap the tissue over here and again. I'm not at all worried about trying to, you know, keep things all nice and lined up on a grid or anything like that. That's not the look I'm going for for this piece. Just a little bit under there. Now, over here, you know, you can see it's it's that yellow to shoes. Kind of a subtle element. But that's okay. I'm good with that. And I'm going to do the same thing. I am gonna add a little bit of this red in a swell, and I'm gonna do the same thing. I'm crumpling it up, and then I'm just going to kind of bring in a little bit of that color here and now That rat, of course, is is darker, so it's not going to blend in and disappear quite as much as the yellow dead. But we'll take care of that later. We'll get it to blend in nicely. Okay. And there's our second layer. We just added some tissue, some color tissue as well a Cem white tissue that I stamped. And at this point, we need to let this dry before we can really move on. Because if I tried to do anything more on top of this tissue, it would just rip. So if you have a hair dryer or a heat tool, you can go ahead and use that to dry this. Or you can just let it sit for an hour or so, and it will dry on its own. Either way is fine. Um, make sure you wash your brush because this is a glue, it will stiffen and you will have a nice little paperweight. But you won't have a paintbrush anymore, so I will go. I'm going to go ahead and dry this and I will see you back in a couple of minutes. 5. Build Up Layers: Okay, now that we have let this dry, the gel medium is completely dry. And in some of these areas it almost looks as if I've stamped directly onto the paper. But because the tissue has really just melted in and I'm really liking that and then in other places, I've got some really nice texture. So that's that's really gonna work for me. So what we need to do next is build up some layers of color. Teoh, start creating that focal image, and the image for this piece is going to be kind of a pathway leading up to a dark cave with a fire in it. And so it's going to be a very welcoming, kind of beckoning sort of image, which is what I really love about this poem. So I've got a a cup of water here. My set of watercolors and my brush, and what I'm gonna do is just start laying down a really thin wash. I'm not really trying to cover anything up. I'm really just trying to build layers of color here, so I'm going to start with some kind of darker oranges and browns that I want kind of over in this area and you can see here. You know, if you can see, I have to kind of zoom in here. I'll try and bring it up to the camera. You can see here how the watercolor is, um, kind of clinging to those textural nooks and crannies, and so that's going to give us some really fun interest you want. Here we go. And I'm not, you know, really being super careful or anything like that. I'm really just trying to lay down some color and get some depth in here. No, on this red where it's a little darker. I'm using more saturated color than I am. Appear in the lighter areas because it will if I do it. If I use that really saturated color appear in the lighter areas, it's gonna end up too dark. But I wanted to really show up down here where it's red. And now if you're wondering this paper I have on my table, it's just packing paper. It came in ah, package that I ordered, and so I just kind of covered my entire art table with it and, um, taped it down. In that way, I'm not worried in the slightest. If you can tell if I go off the page or if I make a mess, I don't care. I really like when I'm painting or when I'm I'm creating a piece of art. I really like to just get in there and let the art happened. I don't want to be worried about having to clean up afterwards. So I try and create an area for myself where I don't have to be too worried about making a mess that I'm gonna regret later. I'm gonna make a mess. I just don't want to regret it later. Okay, so here you can see we're starting to get kind of that that deeper, darker tinge which I'm really, really liking. I'm liking the richness of that. How that's kind of building up. And now here I'm really liking me. Try and lift this up so that you can see this is one of the reasons I like to use watercolor paper. But I'm liking this kind of ripped edge here and how it's picking up the watercolor. So I'm actually going to take this this bit and just go ahead and really carefully kind of rip it some more because I do really like how that edge is looking. So I'm just gonna pull that off, and I may put that back later. I don't know. I may not. It kind of just depends on how how the piece goes. But then you see, I'm really pulling up those edges and highlighting those edges I'm liking how that's turning out. Okay, so now I've got a nice wear of kind of burnt sienna orangey brown down, and I'm going to go ahead and yeah, I do want to have a little bit of a darker, cooler tone in here, so I'm gonna grab more of, ah, straight brown just kind of down here in the corners a little bit. Um, I definitely want some shadows in this, and I'm what I'm doing here is really following this piece of tissue that I laid down. And, you know, I really wasn't anticipating that when I, um when I laid that down earlier. That's one of things I really like about this style of art is that you get a lot of happy accidents. And so, um, to me, this is sort of looking very organic, maybe like a cliff for, Ah, land form. And so I'm gonna play that up. I'm really liking that. But I'm going to come down here and put some more in and you can see even even the really dark parts here. You can still see the layers through. And so that's really nice. I'm liking that a little bit of a shadow there. Okay, so we're starting to build up our depth a little bit, Okay? I'm kind of making making creative decisions as I go and sort of deciding what I want to do here. There's another technique that I really want to show you because I absolutely love this. This is, um, Adirondack Inc. Teakwood is the color. It's from Jim Holt's Ranger inks. And these air really, really nice. These are fun to work with that it is an alcohol based ink. So I also have a little spritz bottle with, um, rubbing alcohol in it and you'll see why here just in the second. So what I'm going to dio is my little spritz bottle here at the ready because you do really have to work fast with this stuff. It dries quickly, but what I'm going to dio I'm gonna almost be drawing with this ink If that makes sense with the way that I'm going to kind of just drip it down and then before it dries Oh, come on, I'm spraying it with that alcohol. And if you can see what that's doing is thinning it out and letting it really flow and drip . And that's really, really nice. I like that. I'm gonna dio think one more drip here again. I'm using quite a bit of this alcohol and spraying it pretty heavily here if you can see, um because I really want to get some movement and some flow in that ink. And in fact, I've used up almost that whole spritz bottle there. And then I'm just going to take my rag here and dab a little bit here. McDavid up just a little bit where it got a little more than what I wanted on the page. And now this is the point where you really are gonna want to let this dry again, and this time I'm gonna show you my sort of rapid, dry technique I use. I actually just use a hair dryer. It's very simple. It's very quick, but it is very cool because you can sort of see the piece change in front of your eyes. Okay, I'm back. I have got the my hair dryer here all plugged in and ready to go. This is nothing fancy. It is just a plain old hairdryer. If you have an embossing tool or he gonna go for it, use it. Uhm, I'm going to use this. It's set to hot. I'm gonna set it on low because I don't want it to blow it around too much. Okay? And there we go. You can really see now how, um this has sort of faded in a little bit. This is come off a little bit, but I'm okay with that. I may actually play with that a little bit. Um, okay, so now we've got It's not quite dried. Still a little tacky there, but I'm OK with that. That's ok. Okay. So I do want to put a little bit more here. You know what I'm gonna use? I have a couple of little stamps here that I really like. Yeah, here we go. This is you can see just a little star snowflake. Kind of thing that I really like it. And then I'm using a gold ink pad which works really nicely on this with this color scheme , and I'm really just kind of stamping in the background. You can almost not even quite tell the there there, but again, they had a little bit of texture that I like, You know, it's one of those things. One of things I really love about mixed media is that, you know, you can look at a piece once and get an idea from it. But then you look at it again or a couple more times, and you see another detail that maybe you hadn't seen before. And you know, that's something I absolutely love about mixed media. And I love about poetry as well. So I really love how those two things come together. Okay, so I've got a little bit of background going on here, and I am going to go ahead and set this aside and we're going to start working on our focal image 6. Book Page Cave: Okay. Welcome back. I mentioned in one of the earlier videos that I really enjoyed using book pages in my spreads, and so I'm going to actually incorporate some book pages into the focal image for this spread. So what I'm going to Dio is I'm going to just I've already ripped out these pages from an old novel that I bought at good will. And so I am just very, very carefully cutting a long the edge of the words here because I don't want this blank space in between. I'm gonna put these two pages together kind of like this. I just I don't I'm not looking for the ability to read the words. I just want sort of this visual of the text, and so this is kind of a nice way of doing that. So I'm going to again use this map medium to kind of glue those together, and then we'll put my rag. There it is. Okay, so you'll notice. I am using the same paintbrush for just about everything. And when I'm doing this type of of artwork, it really is just fine. I'm not using the brush. Um, necessarily in a painterly sort of way. Um, I'm really just using it to transfer liquid mediums either the gel medium or, uh, watercolors or what have you onto the page. So I'm really okay that I'm not using a specific type of brush. I'm just kind of grabbing the one that I have. And so I'm gonna glue this together, and I'm trying to get these really lined up nicely. Okay, so there you go, and they're okay. And then this is going to become the inside of our cave, and so I'm going to grab just a little drawing pencil and kind of sketch out this cave. Um, look here, and I'm not going to cut this out. Actually, um, I'm just kind of making a very, very faint. I don't even know if you can see it on the camera. I'm just making a very faint guideline for myself. And that guideline is not actually going to show up in the finished product, the finished piece of artwork. It's going to be covered up. But this way I know where I want the pain to go and where I want it all to be. Okay, so I've kind of got my my basic cave shape. Sort of ruffed in dummy lifted up. See if you can You can see it kind of up along here. You can see a little bit. I've come down here and just down here. I've just drawn a really, really easy simple basic, um, upside down u shape. Pretty much so. I'm gonna close this up for a minute. He's out of the way, right? So I'm gonna bring back Syria. I have are emerging image are spread here. And I really like kind of this yellow this red to pink to yellow area. And so that's kind of the area that I want our my cave to be. And so I'm gonna put that there. And don't worry, you will be able to see through it. I'm gonna show you a really, really fun way to do that. But what I'm going to do first is I'm kind of just figuring out where those colors are, okay? And I'm going, Teoh, I'm going to rip out this area where that fire is gonna be. And I'm I'm ripping it as opposed to cutting because in this case, you know this is a fire. It's not nice and neat and pretty. It should be jagged and rough. Right. Okay, so there we go. Okay. I don't like that. I wanted a little bit a little bit more spiky, I guess. Let's I don't know if that's the right term, but I wanted a little more pointed here in this in this center. Okay. The area I'm liking that. All right. And I'm not throwing this way. We're going. We'll do something with that. I don't know what yet, but we'll do something with it, I'm sure. So I'm gonna go ahead and glue this down. And if you don't have Matt Medium, you could absolutely use just plain white, uh, Elmer's school glue for this. It would be fine. Um, okay, So I'm gonna go ahead and just cover this with a very rough coat of the mat medium. And I am being really careful here not to get the map medium on my page. So are you getting little bits of my head in there? Okay. And I'm going to line this up nicely there. Okay. There. I'm liking that. All right, so there we go, and I am going to go ahead and go back over this with the mat medium. And this is one of the reasons that I use this, um, as opposed to just plain white glue, which is quite a bit less expensive, but I kind of like just having one bottle of white stuff open at the time. I don't have to try and figure out. Okay, which one of my using and the gel medium when I go over the page seals it, and it does sort of alter how, um, paint will affect the paper later. So I really that's an effect that I want in this case. And so I am. I'm using this now. If you wanted, you could certainly use white glue underneath. And then, um, you know, seal it with the gel medium. You could definitely do that. I just don't trust myself to know which, which, uh, Jarhom dipping into at any one time. So I like to keep it simple for myself. Okay, there we go. So that is nicely sealed, and you can see it's it's very shiny. And let's see if you can kind of see through. I don't know if you can tell on camera, but you can see just a little bit through the paper. It's It's gotten just a tiny bit transparent, which is very, very interesting. And so what I'm going to do here is I'm actually going to Well, this is wet. And so this is you're gonna get messy. It's art. I'm going Teoh kind of get in and just rub in a little bit. And what that's going to Dio is actually to get in there with my fingernails a little bit. And what that's going to do is rip away just a little tiny bit of the paper you want to be . You want to be really careful here, Um, because you do have tissue under there, and so I am just kind of ripping away a little bit here, and that makes that really nice Organic, Um, look, that I want. So really, I'm using the book pages mostly as an outline to this cave that I'm building and just to kind of give it a more interesting shape. And look, I want to get a little bit more here. I kind of like that what that's doing there. And this is why, at the very beginning we did that color blocking because you are gonna be able to see it through. When we rip out these pages, you can you can get You can see that. Um, there we go. Death? Yeah. See, you can still see some of that original color blocking coming through. All right. Okay, So the next thing I want to dio is I'm going Teoh, start building up some of these darker layers. We kind of have sort of, ah, organic land form kind of thing going on here, and so I'm gonna build that up. 7. Ink Drip Mountain Range: Okay, so we're ready to get started. Building up those landforms and starting to work with some acrylics. And I have something that I picked up years ago. It's, um I don't see her Kansan pellet paper, and I absolutely love this stuff. It's It's so useful. It is basically a coated surface that, um, I uses a palate, and I can, you know, do anything that you would normally do, you know, color mixing and all of that sort of thing. But when I'm done with it, I just watered up. Throw it out. It's done. It's one less thing I have to clean up. And so that makes me happy. So I am going to be using here. Let's see here to see it. Still on camera there. Were you OK? I kind of just do that. There were my table. Gets very messy when I'm working on a piece. Okay, so I'm gonna be using What is this? Lupatech Sprint Sienna. A little bit of that. And some bronze. This is artist's loft from Michael's. Just because I like to give it a little bit of shine and then I'm also going to be putting in a little bit of burnt number just to darken it up a little bit and toned down that burnt Sienna. See if I can get some out here area. Not a lot. Just a little bit, huh? And now for this, Since I am doing some more kind of actual painting, I am pulling out a couple of different brushes. This is an angled brush half in jungle brush, and this is 1/4 inch flat. Although, knowing me, I will probably go back to my one inch flat. That is kind of my go to, but you know, we'll start here and of my rag. I'm just mixing the burnt Sienna and Lee the darker brown here a little bit just to see what I can get here. And I'm kind of liking that stuff. I'm gonna actually start here with this, um, this drip from the ink that we did, and I am just going to kind of follow that down. I like how that how that formed. And so I'm gonna go with a and, you know, right now, I'm just kind of outlining this. I'm also going to come in here on my pages and as best I can. I'm gonna follow the guidelines that I drew a few minutes ago and just kind of see if I can see them. Unfortunately, the, um there there, the gel medium kind of obscured them a little bit, but that's a you know, I'm not looking for precise lines here at all. I'm really just kind of creating outlines for myself. And as you can see, even the, um, acrylics aren't totally, um they are totally opaque. This is You can still see through quite a bit of the, um you a little bit of the text here. You can see through some of the stamp here that I really like. So Okay, so I've kind of got my mountain here. I've got my cave sketched out, and then I'm gonna actually leave this bit over here because I like that kind of how it sort of suggests sort of a sunset kind of thing to me. Although I do kind of like this this trip over here, So I'm gonna I'm gonna build that out as well. Kind of a mountain in the distance every time I'm doing. I do this. I've got Bob Ross in the back of my head saying, I'm making a bird. It's a bird. So there you go. That's that's not a paint drip. Now it's a mountain. And I'm gonna kind of bring this down a little bit. We'll have kind of a nice range going on. Nice mountain range. Okay, so I've got my I've got my image kind of sketched in, and yet I'm gonna go right back to my trusty old one inch flat that I just love. And actually, yeah, okay. I'm gonna actually pull in some of this, uh, bronze here, mix that in with the brown and a little bit of this burnt sienna as well. And go ahead and start filling in. Now. One thing I want to point out is established that my light is coming in from this direction because this is where my son said is and I've got this kind of lighter bit here, so that kind of to me suggests that maybe that's where the sun is setting. So I'm gonna have you know, I need to kind of keep that in mind when I'm putting in my colors and my highlights where you know, where is the light gonna come from right now. I'm kind of just putting down this initial layer of color here. You know, grab some more of that in a good trump of that and some of this over here. I'm really not concerned at this point about trying to match colors. Exactly. That's that's just not on my radar at this point, because it's not gonna happen and be it doesn't need to, um, you know this because I'm going to end up putting in some extra highlights and the colors aren't going to show up exactly the same anyway, because I'm coloring over, you know, some reds and some yellows and some oranges and and all that sort of thing. So I'm really not concerned that, um, you know about trying to match colors as I mix, just trying to kind of outline that a little bit there because I really do like that four. And so I want to highlight it. So this really is almost like coloring just with a paint brush. I'm really not, you know, doing anything particularly technical or difficult. I'm just coloring in. I just happen to be using a paintbrush instead of a set of crowns I'm just kind of putting correct putting color down. That's all I'm really worried about at this point. Now, here. I do want that to be a little bit more transparent. And so I'm just getting a little bit of water on my brush and thinning that down and kind of scrubbing it away because I do want that that tree to show up like And there you go, you can still get, you know, it's still there. The color is definitely there, but you can still see the tree through which I really like. And what, I, um, water down the occur, look a little bit on my brush. You also get, um, a better sense of the brushstrokes, which is kind of nice. A swell that gives it gives it some movement and some depth. So that's kind of nice. And then here on this kind of crumpled up tissue paper, I've got that built in texture, that I'm gonna high life you and then I just want to come up here and sort of fill in color in this book page because I wanted highlighted. I want the UN colored part to be highlighted, so I need to cover up the rest in a fairly believable wet at least attempt it right? No, I don't want this really sharp edge here. That doesn't make a lot of sense within the context of the picture. And so I am just gonna kind of extend it out, Um, so that it looks like it's meant to be there. So it doesn't look like just a Well, that's where the page ended. And again, you can still see the stamp here. It's still showing through. It's just not a focal point at this point, okay? And here I'm kind of not liking how that's coming in like that. So I am just going to take my rag and blotted away. It's not gonna come completely off, but I'm OK with that because I'm gonna kind of blend it in to be, um, the background color, and it'll look fine. You were gonna go ahead. I'm gonna go ahead and bring out my hair dryer again. Antis to dry this because this is another area where as it dries, the picture changes a little bit. And so I want to see what it looks like dry before I really go on any further. Okay? Okay, so this is it's not completely dry. It's a little bit tacky, but it gives me enough to go on. I know what this is gonna look like now. Now, the next thing I want to do is add some highlights to this mountain just so that it looks like more than just a bunch of paint. And so I'm gonna actually pull out my white. You see it? Yeah, my white gelato. And this is really, really nice because it's really thick and really opaque, and so it's not going to just fade in. And so what I'm gonna do is take this and just kind of trace along this mountain range here that I've created. And then just like before, I'm gonna blend that in, and so it's not gonna be super obvious, but it's gonna be there. It's going to be a definition of sorts. You can definitely tell that Hey, that was meant to be there. And I'm actually gonna bring this down like this that in a little bit okay. Actually gonna bring it down below this line just a little bit. Maybe a little bit more than I really intended. but it'll be fine. It'll be good with mixed media. You really do kind of have to just except serendipity. Things are gonna happen and you go with, um and it's, you know, the process of It's a lot like writing. It's taking risks, It's making mistakes. And, you know, sometimes something really cool happens, and sometimes you look at it go Oh, didn't like that. But you know what? It's fine. Either way. It's fine. Either way, it's gonna look good. And so I'm also going to just kind of highlight a little bit darker right here, this inside of the cave on this side Because again, my light is coming from here kind. Not really blending this out too much because I don't really feel like I need to. All right, I've got one more thinking that I wanted Dio. And if before I move on to putting the words in and adding the poetry to this poetry journal and I'm actually gonna use my palate paper to as a mask and so I am going to just kind of lay this across, see, see if I can get it toe mask the entire thing. I really just want this part exposed. Got another piece of just plain white paper here that I can use. The reason I'm doing this is I'm about to use a technique that's relatively messy. And I want to make sure that the paint only goes where I intended to go. Okay, So one thing I want to point out, I did go ahead and get some clean water in my bucket in my little paint bucket here. And that is important, because what I'm going to do, I'm gonna get my watercolors back out. And there were you. OK, I'm going to use a splattering technique with fan brush. You see it there? Okay, so this is a fan brush, and I'm going to use this to spatter paint on this sunset area, and that's going to give it a very nice, um, kind of a shimmery sort of effect. So I'm gonna use some I'm going to use white and this kind of nice, warm yellow color. So I'm just gonna wet those two down, let those sit and kind of come to life a little bit here. I think I'm gonna actually start with you need a relatively wet brush for this technique, and it is messy. So, you know, you might want to make sure that you've got the surrounding area covered up pretty well. Okay, so we're gonna load up my brush pretty well, and then I'm just kind of tapping it on my finger here. And I don't know if you can see it on pay on camera, but it really is just kind of going everywhere. Which is why I, um, masked off the rest of the paintings. There really isn't a good way to direct this, and but it does give your really nice, um, random effect, which is what I'm going for here. Okay, so now I'm gonna add some of that yellow in you can. Kind of directed a little bit, but not really. Let's be honest here. Not not terribly effectively. Yeah. And again, I'm kind of looking for just that shimmery kind of look. You put just a limb or white in there, I think Here we go. Okay. Okay. So as you can see from my paper, I didn't go exactly where I wanted it, but that's fine. Okay, But then I can move. Whoa, I don't drink. Move this out of the way and you can see that effect that we got there can have lifted up here. Good. So now you know. Well, we've got Well, I've got the watercolors out. I am actually gonna put some color in on this cave because I don't like the kind of gray and black of just the straight paper. I'm not digging that. So I am gonna go ahead in and just at a little bit of kind of a warm see here. Do I like that color? No, that's to read here just a really the same kind of orangey brown that I used before. And I am really just doing a very light wash here, just enough to give it some warmth and some color. And this, boys and girls is why they call it mixed media because we use a little bit of everything. But one thing I should mention about thes gel, atos, is that they are water soluble. And so, um, you can almost use them like watercolors or watercolor crayons to which is kind of fun. If you color on, you can color them on, like we did with the original color blocking and then get a wet paintbrush and you can kind of see how the right here. It's starting to kind of blend in, and I'm actually going to go ahead and use that to my advantage. Here is Well, um, just sort of blend that white in, and it's gonna be later than everything else, but without that kind of harsh Wait, look. All right, that's better. That's looking a little more organic to me. All right, Cool. Okay. We need to let this dry, and then we will add our words, and I think I'm gonna put a nice little pathway here up to our cave of fire, so I'll be back. 8. Printed Words: Okay, So I am actually sitting at my computer for this part of the project, and I'm gonna show you one of my favorite ways to incorporate poetry and words into my art journal Spreads. I have Microsoft Word open here, and you can use whatever word processor you want. We're not doing anything really fancy here. First thing I'm going to do is go ahead and type in the text of the poem that we're using again. This is invitation by Shel Silverstein. It's at the beginning of where the sidewalk ends. So I'm just going to go ahead and type it in in the standard font for now. And then once we're done, I can go ahead and we'll play with it. Okay, So I have my text here, and of course, that's not gonna look good. I don't want that. So I'm gonna go ahead, come up here and choose a font that is going to look kind of interesting and nice and fun. Um, see what that looks like? No looks to computerese. I like that one. Try hand font. We're gonna wanted a little bigger than that. Yeah, I kind of like that. I like how that's gonna go, how that's going to look. And so I'm The other thing I'm going to do is add a blank line here, and I could go and get fancy and double space it. But this is easy enough. It's small enough, so I'm going to go ahead and print this and then I will meet you back at the art table. 9. Incorporate Poetry: Okay, So what I've done, I have gone ahead and printed out the poem that we typed up on inward, and I've just gone ahead and cut it into strips because we're not going to just stick the poem on the painting. That's not really what what we're going for here. This isn't a reproduction of the poem. It's more. It's more of an interpretation. And so I'm probably not actually even going to use the entire poem, to be honest with you. Um, but I'm going to give a sense of it, and and that's really all. I'm going for it this point. So I'm gonna take the first line here. Um, if you are a dreamer, come in, and I'm gonna just trim that down a bit. We don't need all this extra paper. Get rid of that. Okay? And I'm gonna go ahead and open up my matt medium again There, you and grab my brush. I'm actually, you know, I kind of like that down there. Just kind of like that again. I'm not trying to create a work of literature here, so I'm not really worried about, um, you know, following all of those rules that you learned in in English where, you know, we read from top to bottom and and all of that, Not really. What I'm what I'm trying to accomplish here. I'm gonna take the next line and again, I'm gonna trim it down, and I'm actually gonna trim these phrases as well. I think that's going to be interesting. Yeah, and really, what I'm going for here is allowing the words to really fit very organically and naturally into the image and some I'm kind of following the path here, and they're going to be very nonlinear. And that's OK because because, you know, that's how life iss, you know, and that's how poetry is. So I'm going to kind of just have these on here a little bit randomly kind of stick, that one overlapping a little bit because I kind of like how that looks in the sense that that gives you of the message. Yes, I am getting messy. If you've gotten through this much of the course, You you figured out that I like to get my fingers messy. That's just kind of my my style when it comes to art. Um, and again on this line. You can see it. I'm gonna I'm gonna cut these phrases of parts because, you know, they really do kind of stand alone. And so I want them to act almost a sign posts along this this path of this trail there. Were you OK? Can. And again, I'm sort of covering the paper with this man medium just to seal it a little bit. I'll go over it again, probably, but I've got a little extras on my finger. So why not? Right, this one? This is a little bit longer. I'm actually going. Teoh, get my scissors messy here. Whoops. And slice that one. Because I kind of want that one. So right there, E Whoops. Careful with scissors, Children. There we go. Good. Okay, so now word this line. If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire. And one thing you could do if you wanted to kind of experiment with this is played with different font sizes. You could print in color. Certainly. You know, there's a lot of things that you can dio, um, to really accentuate these words and to maybe even maketh um well, fit your your piece a little bit more? Um, yeah, that's really all those creative decisions are up to you. This is how I did it. That doesn't mean it's, you know, the way to do it. There is no right way. Okay, so I've got that, and I Really, I This feels like it's kind of getting very wordy to me, so I'm actually gonna leave out this line. Um, this last line we have from some flexed golden tales to spend. Just because I feel like, you know, I've already got a lot of words going on in this. Um, I don't know. I may I may decide to add it back in, but for right now, I'm gonna I'm gonna leave it off and kind of see, because I want thes. He's too in here. These two come in lines. No, I definitely want those in there. - I see. Can stick that one up there. Sort of randomly up at the top. Yeah, You know what? I like that I like that. How it is. So I'm not going to use that line, and it's fine. That is totally okay. What I am going to do is take my brush, um, with the mat medium and just go over all of these to seal them in. And this is actually also going to help preserve your piece of art. Um, okay. See, I've got a little bit of an air bubble. Their initial You a little trick here. I use just a old gift card, and I will use that to just sort of smooth that out as much as I can. Here and these air. Wonderful. I really highly encourage you to, um, collect a stash of old credit cards. Will gift cards, whatever you want. Um, because they really do have a lot of uses in mixed media. And I'll show you a couple of those in a minute here. And I am really kind of working this in. Oh, a little bit. Okay, cool. So I've got that done, and no, I want to let this dry again. I know. It seems like every step. Okay, stop and let it dry. So I'm just going to go ahead and use my hairdryer here to to drive this really quickly. All right. Much better. Okay, So and you notice that this is curling up a little bit? I don't know if you concede, e. Um, but it is starting to curl a little bit. And that's fine, because once I hang it, um, that will straight now. But this is one of the reasons that I like to use watercolor paper because it is designed to take quite a bit of abuse. So you know that that really kind of helps. Okay, so what we've got now is this gorgeous layered background and these just very stark white, um, words. And so I want Teoh make those blend in a little bit better in so that they look like they're part of the painting and not just stuck on, So that's going to be our next step. 10. Highlight Words: Okay, So the next thing I want to do is help. These words sort of blend into the background a little bit more so that they feel more like part of the painting, and not just something I glued on. But I also want them to stand out. Definitely. I don't want them to you. They need to be a focal point. So what I'm going to do is take some of this bronze acrylic and just sort of go over the edges here like this. And that's going to give them a little bit of shine a little bit of, um, you emphasis. But it's also going Teoh soften those edges as well, which is something I want. So for this, I'm using actually a fairly small brush because it is sort of fiddly here. I don't want to cover up that word. So really, what I'm doing here is giving it sort of a halo effect, I guess. Um, but the shiver in this bronze is going to draw the eye, and I want that and actually, just a little bit of a hint here. You'll notice over here I'm using the same palette paper that I used earlier and the acrylic had started to dry. And so rather than kind of throwing it out and saying, Oh, well, you know that pain is gone. Something that acrylic does, it creates sort of a film. I don't know if you concede e this one. It's sort of squishy underneath. And so what that tells me is that there is still perfectly good paint underneath that film , so I just sort of peeled it back. And as you can see, it's perfectly fine. So, um, if you do end up in a situation like that, where your acrylics have dried, um, if they aren't completely dry, you can do that. You can just sort of peel back that film of dried paint and get to the stuff that's still moist underneath. I'm sort of just vignette ing these a little bit. I'm not being super, super precise or anything like that. I'm just really trying to soften those edges. At this point, I'm almost just stippling. The paint in is opposed to brushing it, just making sure that I go over the edges of the paper as well. Luckily, acrylic come will come off your fingers with a little bit of soap and water, so it's really not that big of a deal to get your fingers dirty. Um, I wouldn't recommend getting it on your clothes, but that is one of things I really like about acrylics is that cleanup is dead simple. So, you know, if you don't have a ton of time for art because, you know, I don't know about you, but I've got Mawr commitments and responsibilities than is really probably good for anyone . And so, you know, artists really away that I This is my playtime, and so you know, it's important, but I don't have all day to do it. Oh, so I really don't want to spend any more of my play time cleaning up than I absolutely have to. So that's why I really enjoy using acrylics and watercolors and that sort of thing because they leave me time to do what I really want to do, which is pain in here. I'm really making sure that I do go off the edge of the paper because that's what's going to, um, unify it with the rest of the peace. So now I'm just turn this a little bit. This is one of the things I don't often work with an easel when I'm doing mixed media. Because, honestly, I really enjoy being able Teoh, you know, kind of fiddle with the orientation of my paper or my canvas. And just really, um, you know, I don't want to necessarily be locked into one position. Sometimes another will work a little bit better for what I'm trying to dio. On the other hand, if you are comfortable working at an easel, by all means go for it. This is all about what works for you. And I'm, you know, trying not to get my fingers in the paint. I know I just talked about how easy it was to clean up, but I also have paint where I want it on the page and so I don't want to necessarily. I must let up. And like I said, don't worry. You see, this is going off the edge a little bit. We're gonna take care of that at the very, very end. So I'm not worried about that. Okay, There we go. Okay. So now we're getting there. It's better. But I want to show you one more technique. Teoh really emphasize the words. Okay, I'm pulling out a little tube of lemon yellow acrylic. I'm gonna put that over here on my canvas. And now, I told you I was going to pull out another techniques with the credit card of the gift card . And what we're gonna do is use this yellow to sort of underlying, um some of these, the more important words that we really want to emphasize. But I do. Yeah. And this acrylic dries really relatively quickly. So I'm not gonna worry. Worry too much about, um, about using the hair dryer because it's going to dry on its own. I mean, this this over here, that we did first is already pretty dry. So what I'm going to Dio is I'm going to go ahead and take my gift card and just take this short end and run it through the acrylic and you can see I've got a little bit on the edge there on both sides. And so what I'm going to Dio is just come down here and very carefully, kind of line it up where I want it, and I'm gonna make that line and then just sort of flick, and I'm going to do it again over here. And that kind of gives it a nice underlying. But it also it's not a really sharp her Flynt. You can see that it's sort of blends into the rest of the background, but it's definitely there. And so, you know, you might need to reload a little bit. I want to emphasize this one shoe, and you can get it, you know, pretty nice and straight, actually. Oh, if you want. You know, I'm not underlining every word here. I'm really just sort of, um, you know, grabbing little bits here and there. And I'm also doing just a little bit of dotting as well. Just a kind of, you know, tie the whole thing together just to give it a little bit of a hint. Okay? And so at this point, I've got all the elements in the page that I really want. And so now I'm just sort of looking at it, going okay, you know, Does it work? Is there anything here that I really want? Teoh. Does it need something? And I really do think it does. I see I'm actually going to pull out These were some sharpies. I've got a black. Yeah, okay, have a black. And then the silver metallic and gold metallic, which I really enjoy using. There are a lot of fun. And what I want to do here is just give this path the slightest little bit of outline because I feel like it's sort of gotten lost in the in the words and things. So I want to give that a little bit of a now outline. And so I think I'm actually going to use the silver for this because I've used a lot of really warm gold colors in here and some oranges and yellows and things. And so I I want to give that contrast. And so, you know, I'm not even gonna really outline the whole thing. I'm just gonna kind of pull out some of these little corners and edges here, there. And what that's going to dio is and have emphasized that pathway and, you know, make it look like Oh, yes, I did that on purpose. I wasn't just, you know, throwing random bits of paper around. And I'm actually, um, tracing outside of the paper. I'm actually on the the painting itself, which is good. You know, you could definitely if you wanted to. You could definitely use sharpies or another, um, permanent ink style marker to do the lettering if you wanted to. Oh, you got my Sharpie in a little bit of not quite dry paint. And so it didn't work too well. Oh, I'll have to wait until that dries and go back over it. So then I also want to come up here and, um, sort of give this cave a little bit of an outline as well. So I'm gonna come here with the goal this time. It's a little harder to see. Yeah. And you can see, I think I think this one might be starting to where, where? Out and have a different one. Yeah, much better. And I'm gonna go ahead and turn this just so that I have some perspective on what I'm doing . And you know these markers air nice. They're not terribly expensive, Especially compared to our workers. And they really will, you know, go over just about anything. So you know, they're going over gelato zehr going there, covering over acrylic and watercolor and pretty much anything that you need them to. So that's that's nice. Okay. And, you know, it really doesn't You don't need to be perfect here. This is just really accent color at this point there. Okay? And there we go. You know, I could fiddle with us for, you know, the next month, and at some point, you kind of have to say, You know what? I'm happy. I'm done. And, you know, if you want Teoh, you know, add another layer of you know, I could definitely see maybe doing some watercolors over this. I'm still not totally thrilled with the stark white here, but on the other hand, I'm relatively happy with the way this came out. So, you know, moral of the story. Play with your art until you're happy with it and then stop. You know, there is a point at which you have to just say OK, this one's done and you get out another piece of paper and started a new piece. So thank you so much for joining me as I've created this artwork with you. I have loved being able to share it with you. And I can't wait to see what you create