Occasionally on facebook I will put up a status that says I am fearless painting and I know full well that none of my friends or family have a clue what I am talking about.  You can find out all about fearless painting over here at the Dirty Footprints Studio.  Fearless painting is just about letting go and letting your intuition guide your painting. 

So here is one of my very imperfect, but completely fearless paintings.

I am trying to add more actual writing to my art journal pages.  I used to think I had to have something profound to say but I decided to let that go and just put down the exact thoughts and feeling I was having that were frustrating me. 

I think this is one of my favorite journal pages to date.  Not because it is at all artistic but because it flowed out of me and I was able to release some of my pent up emotions onto the page which is, of course, the whole idea behind art journaling.

Well I finally did it.  After watching every You Tube video out there and reading numerous books I still was not able to wrap my mind around how to do a Coptic bound art journal.  But finally a ray of hope, through the Willowing website I was able to find a workshop put on my Rhomany of Rhomany's Realm that teaches a simplified Coptic stitch and low and behold...my first born Coptic art journal made all by myself.  It is far from perfect but I am confident that with some more practice they will get better.  If you are at all interested in learning this technique I would highly recommend Rhomany's ecourse, it is very well taught and easy to follow.

So over the weekend I took some time to watch Teesha Moore's  You Tube videos on how to make a 16 page art journal and then the videos that walk you through her process.  You can find all of these videos here.  It was a fun and simple way to make a journal but I wasn't very confident about the collage and drawing part but I thought I would give it a try. 

I did two pages side by side and the one I thought I wouldn't like turned out the best and I ended up ripping up the collage off the other side of the paper because it just didn't work for me.  The issue then was a spent the rest of the day trying to force something onto that page and nothing would work at all.  I finally realized after a couple frustrating hours that I was just trying to hard and I needed to let it go for now and the right idea will come later.  I decided jus to enjoy the picture I had completed that I surprising liked, although she still scares my husband a bit. 

So here she is big eyes and all. 

I was at the bookstore the other day and I came across a great book called "Collage Couture, Techniques for Creating Fashionable Art" by Julie Nutting.  I quickly flipped through the pages and fell in love with the ideas. 

She is basically creating fashion figures using collage art, she actually used to draw sketches for a fashion designer so she is very talented but she breaks it down so simply that even an art newbie such as myself can follow along.  You can check out the book on Amazon here. 

It's not a book I would have picked out if I was online shopping so I am lucky I found it in the local Chapters because they typically do not have a very good selection of art books. 

Anyway here is a painting I made based on one of the techniques in the book.  I named it "She's So Lovely" but I don't really think she is.  I think perhaps she is actually a bit homely but for a first try at something new I am okay with that and I thought I would share her anyway and talk about this great book.

I have done a few ATC swaps now and I am starting to feel a little more confident doing them.  I find doing these swaps kind of intimidating because I don't yet have a lot of confidence in my art so I tend to try to use stamps and other things to make nice cards that don't require me to actually draw.  But for my last swap I really wanted to draw something so I decided to give it a try. 

These were for the May swap over at Willowing and the theme was owls. 

I had asked for help from anyone who happens to read my blog because I was stuck with this paiting.  You can read the original post here.  Thankfully two lovely ladies, Ingrid and OStarr gave me some great input and today I was finally able to finish my painting so i thought I would show you all the finished product.  It isn't perfect but since it is only the third piece I have done on canvas I am quite proud of it. 

I added branches (yes, those are branches and yes, I know I need to work on my branches :) to fill in some of the empty space and then painted a very light metallic gold wash over the whole painting to tone down the brightness in the middle and make it a little more cohesive.  I have a cheap, cheap metallic gold craft paint that I just on just about everything I paint it was the best $2 I have ever spent.  I then touched up the bird and the butterfly outlines which I had done in oil pastels. 

Just a note about oil pastels.  I love working with them.  I like to outline certain things in my paintings and add depth with the oil pastels and to me they work so well for that.  I had been told that there isn't really a big difference between cheaper and higher quality oil pastels.  Based on this is was blithly running through life using a $3 box of oil pastels from the dollar store but the other day I was at the art store and they had $60 boxes of Rembrandt oil pastels on sale for $20 so I thought since I like them so much I would give them a try and see if it does make a difference.  All I can say is "WOW" there is definitely a difference between the cheapies and the higher quality and my friends, I will not be going back!

Hope you all have a fantastic weekend, my is about to include a glass of wine on the patio.