Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Playing with Colors and Pattern (8.23.2016)



I've been wanting to do another mixed media video since I did one a few weeks back, but my schedule has been fighting me every step of the way. Not only have I been working a decent amount lately, but I've also officially started my freshman year of college.

Needless to say, it's been crazy.

However, I was able to carve out time in that busy schedule to record this video today, and I'm decently happy with the way it turned out.


It's not often that I start an art journal page with an idea in mind. Most of the time, my art journals just aren't that type of art for me. However, in this case, I was willing to make an exception.

On instagram the other day, I posted a picture of a piece of newspaper I had been using as a drop paper for my art. It had collected an assortment of colors that I thought looked good together, even though I had been working on completely different pages when it happened. Those colors were an almost neon pink, a light turquoise, and my current favorite color - yellow ochre.

I knew that I wanted to glue this piece of newspaper down to begin my page, and I had a vague idea of the shapes I wanted to include (the flowers and the scalloped borders). It was more than I normally have.



The textures and colors of this page are what I really love.
  • Here you can see the quote that I chose for this page. I love this quote because it helps me to remember to focus on the present, which is something that I constantly need reminding of.
  • Something I adore about the photo on the left is the greenish color I was able to achieve by mixing a mustard yellow color with the blue I had originally put down. I ultimately loved the effect I was able to achieve. Something I wasn't as big of a fan of can also be seen in this photograph. I don't like the way I put Emily Dickinson on the page, it's too curved and sticks out too much. In the end, this might change.



  •  These are just a couple more detail shots. I wanted to get a bit of a different angle in the photo on the left, and you can see some of the subtle pen doodling near the bottom of the shot that was on the original piece of newspaper. I attempted to recreate that feeling throughout the page with a doodled, playful feeling.
  • And finally, last but not least, on the right you can see my favorite picture I've taken of this page. The colors and textures are nice, and the circles and curved lines represent what I was trying to achieve with this page. If I had to pick my favorite part, this little section would be it.
If you have any questions at all, about how I made this page, what I used to make it, or any ideas of what you would like to see from me in the future, please let me know in the comments, whether it be here or on youtube. I look forward to hearing from you!


Saturday, August 20, 2016

Happiness + Raindrops (8.20.2016)


I know it's been a few days since I've posted anything on this blog, and that's mostly because I haven't finished a whole lot. 

I've been working on and off on several different projects, but not many of them were titled or officially donned complete. Thus, today I am going to be sharing a finished page and something that's almost finished but not quite there yet. I hope you enjoy looking!


The first page I'm showing here was something I had started a while back - so long ago at this point that I actually don't even remember when I started it. There was just an unfinished page in one of my art journals (the altered magazine I've used in the video here) that I decided to go back to. In the end, I'm incredibly happy with the results.

  • First and foremost, I like the color palette. In the closeups above, you can see that there are many colors that show through in the background, but it is predominantly a soft shade of pink. If I had to guess what I did here, I most likely toned down the layers underneath with a layer of white paint because they were clashing. 
  • The turquoise circles were cut out of a piece of ruled paper I had scraped paint over after completing another page. There were a few more layers on it, and the color and faint lines showing through were far too intriguing to not do something with. As a result, I cut them out and collaged them down, adding layers of paint and oil pastel over the top of them.
  • Here's a sneak peek of what I started to do with the paper left over after cutting the circles.



Finally, we focus in on the quote. Sometimes I read a quote somewhere, whether it be on the motivational app I have or in a book, and I decide that it is something I need to remember. This was one of those times.

Happiness is a direction, not a destination.

Sometimes I need to remind myself of that.



Now we move onto the page that's not quite finished. 

This was simply done on a folded over piece of printer paper, though I decided to switch things up a bit and not fold it perfectly in half. I actually love the way this looks at this point in time, and the drips of paint remind me vaguely of raindrops, which I adore.


Here you can see a little bit of a close up of some of the layers. I especially love the upper cloud, where the paint has been picked up and reveals the background layers. There is some stamping, some stenciling (the clouds are actually stenciled as well), and a lot of paint.

At this point, all I think it truly needs is a title to finish it off. 

 So, as you can see, I've been doing quite a bit in the past few days (there's more where this came from), so you can expect to see from me at some point in the near future, with all of the pages I wrap up. I'll be looking forward to seeing you then!

Monday, August 15, 2016

Take Chances With Your Art (8.15.2016)


If you follow me on instagram, you may have already seen a bit of a sneak peek of this page. However, if you don't, I've been working on this spread over the course of several days and am glad I finally get to share it with you.

There are several things that I like about these pages, and things that I wish were different (it's a bit dark, and the font I used for the title is mediocre). In the long run though, what matters is that I took a risk.


When I chose the title "Be Brave" for this spread, I wasn't sure why it felt so right. It was inspired by the sticker on the chest of the figure, which I just knew was perfect when I saw it.
  • As you can see in the photos above, I tried to incorporate my character's hair into the background a little bit. I used many layers of stamping, collage, stenciling and paint in an attempt to try to get it to feel right. In the end, it's rather blocky in nature, and I'm not sure how I feel about that.
  • The title was created using a stencil, which I have used before when I finished Heart Split in Two. The difference is that in that piece I used the lowercase letters, and in this piece I used the uppercase. I've decided I'm not such a big fan.
  • In the right hand photo, you can see the traces of a flower stencil I used in an attempt to give her a flower in her hair. As subtle as it ended up being, due to the many layers I worked over top of it, I'm a big fan of this portion of the spread.



  • In the first photo, you can see a close up of this girl's face (also a little bit of a better view of the sticker on her chest). This was my first time doing a portrait almost exclusively with oil pastels - typically I'm partial to acrylic paints myself. However, I decided to push outside my comfort zone, and I'm very pleased with the way she turned out. I say almost exclusively because I did use a good bit of graphite pencil, as well as a few traces of acrylic paint (the whites of her eyes and the turquoise in her hair).
  • The right hand photo shows another part of the spread that I love the layering on. You can see some bits of a small dot paper showing through the paint - if you've been paying attention, I've been using scraps of this piece quite a bit lately. It was a 12x12 sheet that I absolutely love, and I'm trying to get the most out of it.
At the end of the day, the title fits.

I took risks with this spread. I created a portrait using oil pastels instead of paints, I used a stencil I had never experimented with before. There was a lot of love that went into this page, and I'm happy with it, even if there are things I would rather change.

At the end of the day, I feel like I was brave.

Thank you all for joining me today, and I look forward to seeing you next time!

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Minimal Layers + A Short Story (8.11.2016)


Today's post is going to be a bit of a shorter one, since I've been working quite a bit lately (I just finished seven days straight) and haven't been able to make much time for mixed media. However, among the chaos I was able to make time to put together one page, which is actually pretty minimal in its layers compared to a lot of the other art I've been working on lately.

This page was actually done on the inside of the folded piece of card stock Unseen Beauty was created on, and you can see a little bit of where I began the next page in the edges of these photos. Consider it a sneak peek.


I'm not quite sure why I decided to call this page Awake, considering that I most likely wan't fully awake when I finished it. However, there is a ton that I love about this page and I want to touch on a few points.
  • I started this page off with a page out of the phone book, glued onto the page upside down. The intention was always to keep the layers thin so that the text could show through and I succeeded in doing just that.
  • As you can see in both the left and right hand photos, there are some areas with a scallop pattern. That effect was achieved by putting down a bit of a thicker layer of white acrylic paint and using the end of my paintbrush to carve away the pattern for a bit of texture.
  • The pink circles were collaged down onto the page, and then blended into the background using layers of paint, both acrylic and watercolor, gelatos, oil pastels and a gel pen. I really wanted to focus on these circles in particular on this page - the concept was really what inspired the whole thing.

As much as I love this page, I want to pull away for a minute in order to bring attention to something that one of my art journal pages brought into being. I wrote a short story the other day - I'd say it was in the thriller genre, and it was inspired by a brainstorming session I did while looking at The Evolution of an Idea.

I got there in a pretty roundabout way, and it's not really easy to see any similarities between the two pieces, but there was a connection, just the same. It's called Chosen Fate and can be found here if you want to check it out!

In the end, even though I've been exhausted recently, it makes me happy to share these things with you guys. I hope you enjoy seeing the finished pieces as much as I enjoy making them and I hope to see you all again soon!

Sunday, August 7, 2016

Connections (8.7.2016)


I'm not sure if you can really tell from the photos, but the piece this post is about was done on a canvas. It's the first canvas I've done in a good long while, and I absolutely adore the way it turned out. The layers, the colors, the message - I feel like I've created something I'm proud to call my own and that's a good feeling.

As far as the message is concerned, it's a sort of companion piece to a poem I wrote for my Patreon page. If you look under the "Why Immensum is on Patreon" tab, the bits that are in bold are part of  poem I created to describe my journey. After I had done the mixed media layering of this canvas and was trying to think on what words would fit the feeling of the piece, this phrase is the one that immediately came to mind.



There are far too many layers for me to fully explain all of them, but I'll do my best.

  • The first thing that stands out to me, because it is clearly the focus of the page, is the giant pink heart. That design was actually created via a stencil I made a good while back on a simple piece of printer paper. It was never intended to be used for long term use, but it was made during a period of time when I was experimenting with hearts as a significant theme in my work. I still like the idea of that.
  • The stenciled letters in the upper right hand and lower left hand corners of this canvas are indeed the same stencil as the word 'heart' in the title. For the title word, I applied multiple layers of the while paint in order to make sure it stood out against all the layers of the background and didn't blend into it too much.
  • Speaking of the corners, the lower right hand corner is probably one of my favorite parts of this canvas. You can see that there is a lot of texture, which was created by dabbing on white acrylic paint with a paper towel. There are also a few bits of book paper, layered with some stamping, some watercolors, and a bit of masking tape.




  • In this photo, you can see the details of the title a bit better. I simply used a gel pen to outline the letters of the title, doing it several times for emphasis. The rest of the words were stamped.
  • You can also see in these photos how a bit of the heart has been lifted away. That effect was achieved when the piece got wet, due to an attempt to make some vague drip marks. However, I then proceeded to place a sheet of paper down on the canvas and pull it back up (a technique that you may have seen in the video from my last post. I love the effect that I ultimately got.
As you can probably tell, I sort of love this canvas. It has a bit of personal meaning to me, but I also think that visually it is incredible important. It defines a specific point in my artistic journey, the point where I truly decided that I wanted to try to make art for a living, at least in some capacity.

Also, from the creation of this canvas, I was able to come up with several other ideas of things I would like to try to create in the future - a potential digital drawing inspired by some of my favorite parts of this canvas. But that's the funny thing about art - you always come up with the best ideas when you're creating something else. Thank you all so much for joining me, and I'll see you next time!

Thursday, August 4, 2016

Stencils + A Time Lapse (8.4.2016)


I decided to go with a bit of a different direction for today's post, due to the suggestion of a friend. It's been a good long while since I've done any videos of my art (and even back when I did they were typically livestreams), so I did a time lapse of an art journal spread I put together.

In the long run, I'm really happy with how these pages turned out.



 As you can see from the video, this is a different journal than the one I have been working in, which is just a composition notebook. Instead, this is an altered clothing catalog/magazine, the kind that they send you for free. I'm nothing if not cheap about my bases for mixed media.

Some notes.

  • There are some turquoise dots in the final project that you can see in the photographs that I added after the video was completed. They were simply done with leftover paint from stamping the title and were added with my finger for their random qualities.
  • As is typical of me, I started this page intending to work with bright, almost funky colors. That was where I started, but eventually black came into play. What can I say, it's my weakness.


This is a page that I did on a simple folded over piece of card stock. I'm fairly random when it comes to what I decide to alter, as you can see.

The stencil used on this page is from the same pack that I used on the page above, with the four cutouts of a similar shape on the same piece of cardboard. I bought these stencils from Michael's and have gotten a significant amount of use out of them - I would highly recommend them.





In the long run, I really do like the way this turned out - it's extremely encouraging to me that I'm enjoying the look of most of my recent output. It's like everything I used to know and do is slowly coming back to me, bit by bit, and it's a great form of stress relief.
  • In the left hand photo, you can see some details that I love. After the stenciling and a good bit of coloring had been done, I stamped over the entire page with a small hand carved stamp I did on an eraser. This photo also shows the details of where I stuck down some bits of masking tape underneath a few of the layers.
  • On the right, the thing that stands out the most to me is the outline surrounding the page. I had used bright pink Portfolio pastels to outline the page and smeared it around before using a regular 2B pencil to draw into the pastels. It then proceeded to smudge with my fingers like it had been meant to do just that. I'll have to look into this technique more in the future.
Though the intention of an art journal is to experiment, rather than exclusively create pages that you like, I believe that these two examples say a lot. The more art you create, the more likely you are to come up with something you enjoy.  

So until next time, keep creating, and I'll see you then!

Monday, August 1, 2016

Creativity Will Work Itself Out (8.1.2016)


It's been a few days, and I'm back with a couple more pages out of my new art journal!

I've been playing around with a bunch of old techniques I'm just now remembering from all my time away from mixed media, and it's coming back to me, slowly but surely. Although I do like the way this page turned, out, there's still something about it that just feels vaguely unfinished to me. I can't quite figure it out though - I can always come back to it if I figure it out at a later date.


The bit of washi tape you see up close in the right hand photo (with the big arrow pointing to it) actually inspired the color palette of this page. I knew that I wanted to use that piece in particular, and so I took special care to make sure I included it. Eventually, I ended up whiting out all but the word "Relaxation!" and that became the title of my page.

Going back to the left hand photo, you can see the texture I got from the collage base of my page - before doing anything, I created a collage of paper scraps for texture. Maybe I'll go back and outline a few of them.



I absolutely adore this page.

Other than that, I'm not sure just what else to say about it. The colors are perfect for what I was trying to achieve, the title was a style I had never really done before, and hearts have always been a sort of signature of mine. I'm also attracted to the dark ink outlines of the shapes.

Between the restart point of my mixed media and now, this might be my favorite finished page.


Here you can see some of my favorite little details of the page. As you can see, I did some white dots on the teal colored title, which was a technique I had experimented with here and loved the way it turned out. You can also see the texture created from the piece of punched paper I collaged down, all the layers of paint, the way the ink on the hearts smeared a little (but in an appealing way), and the outlines on all of the little white polka dots (which I did with the eraser of a pencil and some white paint).

Every bit of this page turned out exactly the way I wanted it to, and a lot of it was much better than expected.



These are some other areas of color and texture that I enjoyed.
  • In the left hand photo, I love the colors that were obtained with the blues and pinks and lime greens of the heart. Of the four hearts, the coloring on this one is my favorite. I also love the way the ink smeared, I think it gives it some character.
  • On the right, I think my favorite part is through the yellow, where some of the doodling I did (just with a standard pencil) shows through. The way the dots behind the title compliment it is also a plus.
This page says a lot to me about the way that creativity works. Sometimes you'll go through rough patches and you'll make things that you aren't a big fan of. A couple of things I've been messing with recently have been like that recently. But, if you keep working, it'll all work out in the end.

Thanks for being here, and I'll see you all next time!