Hello from my Creative Squad! Today we have a post from Jordan Hill who is working with gouache this month along with my ATC Mixup stencil, Triangle Love rubber stamp set, and our theme: Favorite Art – My Way – Look at a favorite work of art and create something inspired by it, drawing from the colors, shapes, subject matter, feeling etc. that strikes you most when you look at it.

Hello everyone! I’m excited to be back for the month of September to share another art journal page with all of you. For this month’s theme of “Favorite Art – My Way”, I thought it might be fun to do a master study of a painting by copying one directly into my art journal. I’ve been wanting to play around with gouache for a while now (its been quite a few years since I last used it), and I decided to use the painting ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’, painted by Johannes Vermeer as my inspiration. Let’s get into it!

The first step was to select a page to work on. Since I had a pretty specific idea of what I wanted to paint, I chose a page that I thought the illustration would look good next to. 

Once I had determined which page I was going to use, I decided to create the background first. In the original “Girl with a Pearl Earring” painting, the background is quite dark. I added some green and black paint directly onto my page, then moved it around with a paintbrush. Once it had been spread out, I blotted a crumpled up paper towel over the surface to give it a mottled texture.

Once the background had dried, I used a white colored pencil to lightly block in the shapes of the painting. I copied directly from a photo of the original and tried to focus on getting the general idea of the painting down on paper, since I knew I was going to cover it up anyways.

Next, I prepared my palette. Like I mentioned before, I knew that I wanted to use gouache, so I selected some colors of paint that matched the tones in the original painting. Though I didn’t have the perfect assortment of colors, I knew that I would be able to mix them in order to get the colors I wanted.

I then worked on building up the painting itself. I worked with the gouache in layers, starting out by applying a thin layer to each section of the sketch. This first layer was mostly about blocking in the colors. I then let that dry, and added another layer on top. In the second layer, I focused on the shadows. While working on this painting, I continued to cross reference my painting with the original, observing where the colors and shadows were placed and trying my best to replicate that.

This is where I deviated from a typical study. Since the shirt consisted of such a large empty block of color, I thought it was the perfect place to add in a pattern. Using one of the patterns from Nathalie’s “ATC Mixup Stencil” and some light pink acrylic paint on a makeup sponge, I applied a pattern across the surface of the shirt. I then went in with a Prismacolor colored pencil and started to add lines to the piece, defining some of the areas that I lost while using the paint. 

At this point, I wanted to add some subtle texture to the background, so I used Nathalie’s “Empire Triangle” and a black ink pad to create a pattern over the dark green color. Since the background was almost black, there wasn’t a lot of contrast between the pattern and the background, which is exactly the kind of subtlety I was looking for.

Finally, I added a quote to my page with a white gel pen. This quote seemed fitting considering the subject of the page, and it was a nice reminder to myself that everyone goes through struggles with their artwork, but that’s just part of the process!

I hope you enjoyed following along with the process of creating this page and that you consider doing a master study of your own! They’re a great way to learn and grow as an artist.

Thank you Jordan – wonderful idea to practice by copying a master and then putting your stamp (or stencil lol) on it. Looks awesome!!!

Give it a try: you can find all my Stencils and Rubber Stamps in my Online Shop and here are some of the supplies Jordan used:

Looking for more projects? Follow the Creative Squad on Instagram here.

Nat

We’ve got an extra project from Creative Squad member Judi Kauffman for you today. If you enjoy sending notes in the mail or even tucking little cards in lunchboxes or laptop bags with a special note on them then this is definitely for you :) Judi is on a roll with my ATC Mixup stencil with these and rocking all the patterns. Read on!

If you’re like me, far too often all attention is paid to the exterior of the cards I make and the interior is left blank, getting at most a line or two and my signature. I thought it was about time I do something different so while I was stenciling insert cards for my early April “Lost in a Book” library pocket project, I stenciled a big bunch of extras to keep handy for stamping with a birthday, anniversary or other sentiment, or for adding a hand-written note to the inside of some of my upcoming folded note cards!

These are larger than ATC size, but this same idea would work at 2.5 x 3.5 as well. Masking the center area with torn paper before stenciling the rest of the surface provides interesting open spaces for writing or stamping and for adding collage or found poetry.

Thank you Judi – love the combination of color and bold pattern on these. They are also a great reminder when you’re working on a larger project to keep some cards, tags, or ATCs around to stencil, stamp and work on as well.

Give it a try: you can find all my Stencils in my Online Shop and here are some of the supplies Judi used:

Nat

Hello from my Creative Squad! Today we have a post and video from Riikka Kovasin who is sharing an art journal page that is an ode to a favorite book from childhood. She is using my ATC Mixup Stencil and our theme: Lost in a Book – What is one of your favorite books (from childhood or as an adult) or a book that you recently read and really enjoyed? Create a project inspired by the characters, plot, or any element of the book that really stuck with you.

The Muse of Poetry 

Hi there everyone! It’s Riikka here today with an art journal spread with the month’s theme “Lost in a Book”. I had a number of possibilities here – like “The Blind Assassin” by Margaret Atwood, the only book I’ve been reading when a complete stranger walks up to me and says: “That’s a really good book” to start a conversation. Or Agatha Christie’s “Big Four”, a really neglected looking volume in the school library that I ended up picking for a reading assignment and it blew my mind so that I ended up reading everything the local library had from Christie.

But while these could have been the books to draw inspiration from, instead I chose perhaps the first book memory I have. I had this children’s story book called “Satuja” by Raul Roine, and I was leafing through it before I could read. When I then could read, I did like the stories, but I especially loved the illustration. The pictures were done by Rudolf Koivu, a beloved Finnish illustrator and artist. I was captivated by the beautiful pictures, the ornate details but also about the fact that none of the pieces had any yellow! 

I still have the book, but I wasn’t going to cut into it. Instead, I found a copy of the same book in poor shape in a second-hand bookstore. It had water damage but I didn’t mind as most of the illustrations were still intact. I bought the book just for art journaling. You can see me leaf through the book in the beginning of the video.

My next task was to decide which one of the beautiful illustrations to use. I again took a trip down memory lane and tried to remember which illustrations I was most drawn to. There were three, that I remember. An Asian princess with a big fan and a graceful stance, a princess with blue garments flowing in the wind while she hurried away from the palace, and a muse of poetry opening a beautifully decorated door, all dressed in black. As you can see from the photos, I went with the one mentioned last. There was a couple of reasons, but one was the name of the character – “Runotar”. It’s somehow such a beautiful word, the beginning meaning a poem (runo) and then the female suffix (-tar), corresponding to English “-ress”. Although poemress sounds a bit daft, the Finnish version is really beautiful to my ear. As the topic was connected to books essentially, I thought that following the words would be the thing.

I used the thing that used to make me ponder as a child, to my advantage in the art journal page. That is the lack of yellow. I went with just red and dark blue. I first dyed the paper with a pink dye and then layered the patterns on top using Nat’s “ATC Mixup” stencil. I just love that stencil! It’s so handy with different patterns so you have plenty to choose from! If you want to see how I made the spread, please see the video below.

As you could see from the video, I used two book pages as my background for the whole thing. Like I say in the video, they are printed with blue, not black. As a child I also found that really intriguing, too, as all the other books had black text! Using the pages was another way to add the words, the text to the project. The final addition of text was the text stickers and the image caption I added to the spread. The black word stickers make up a recent story, a journaling for the present, while the caption adds another reference to the past, the story which the illustration belongs. The story is that of Peukaloinen, Little Thumbling, by the way. In it he decides that he wants to be a poet and needs to find his way.

Thank you for stopping by today! Wishing you a wonderful day!

Thank you Riikka – loved hearing about what drew you to this book as a child and then seeing how you incorporated these unique style and color elements in your own artwork.

Give it a try: you can find all my Stencils in my Online Shop and here are some of the supplies Riikka used:

Looking for more projects? Follow the Creative Squad on Instagram here.

Nat