Flowers and Peeling Paint Effect

The mixed media online class has ended.  It ended with quite a lot of inspiration from the work of other students.  I have lots of ideas, and a few pages left in my journal that I would like to fill, as well as some pages that didn't get very far and could stand some more layers.  My goal is to keep working on that as I am enjoying playing with mixed media very much.  Time is barely allowing, however, now that it is fall and the garden harvest still requires a lot to finish and now we are supposedly doing school every day.  This year I have 3 school age kids, plus a toddler and preschooler (and put together those two are sort of tornado-ish these days).  I also have several of my own educational goals including working through a course about teaching writing and an online book discussion/study group.  Supposedly I am reading The Brothers Karamosov for a discussion next week, except that I have only made it to page 40 out of, I dunno, 4 hundred million or something.

But art is fun and addictive, so I have bee doing a little here and there in my journal.  Here are the results.

The idea in the class was to just "get something down" on the pages and see what happens.  I have trouble with this.  I really like having a plan.  I am a planner.  It's what I do, fruitfully or otherwise.  I most enjoy having an idea in my head of where I want to go with a page-- I feel like it is all more cohesive that way.  With this page, I had it planned out about this far:

That is ruler lines with black and white china markers, then concentric circles and paint marker dots on the circles, watercolor over it all.  I actually like it a lot that way.  But I kept going...

Here is what I ended up with.  Tinted texture-paste chevrons, stenciled dots and flowers, a little rubbed gesso to blend some of it back and lettering on top.  I feel like it's a little busy with a lot going on, but I really do like it.


Another thing I've been wanting to play with is a technique that gives the effect of old peeling paint.

My kids tell me that this one looks like ladybugs.  Indeed.  I guess it does, and that is not what I was going for... But maybe I should add something to that effect with collage.

This next one was really fun.  I'm not a big motorcycle fan myself (I want to live, thank you.), but I know lots of people who love them.  And there is something about a motorcycle that lends itself to an interesting silhouette.  

I actually would like to try this again and use a vintage motorcycle ad or logo as the underlayer, if I can come up with such a thing.  The bike itself was a silhouette that I printed out, but the print quality was so bad that I ended up coloring it in with black paint markers and then adding a few details with white.  I quite like the effect.

We have also done quite a few trips to interesting places lately --some while my Mom was visiting us, and yesterday to the zoo-- and it occurred to me last night that it would be nice to show those here.  However, I am ashamed to admit that I have been horribly remiss in taking photos of our excursions.  Something about keeping my  hands on the toddler causes me to keep my hands off the camera... I do have a few things I can show, so hopefully I will get to that soonish.