LOVER OF BLUE(S)

I'm always finding interesting things in Coastal Living magazine.  You don't have to live on the water to enjoy this magazine.  Whether it's a design inspiration or a recipe (empanadas!) or a story about a beach location from my youth, I love when this magazine arrives in my mail box. Havens or "must haves" as they call it in the May issue, features items for purchase and I saw this book and it was a must have for me!  The UPS man brought it a short while ago.

From the Collection of the

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

I love the many shades of the color blue and this book is a gem.  It's 5 x 8 and, while it may sound silly, it feels good to hold in your hand and the paper is divine...not to mention the beautiful photographs inside.  If you order this book, don't skip over the Introduction or, as they call it Blue Notes.

My very first art journal I called Simply Blue....

All of the art in this journal is about the color blue.  I started it on a beach vacation!  I have one other journal that has a lot of blue in it...actually, red, white & blue....

This book I created for my son....below is one of the pages.

Lovin' the BLUE!

The Bathing Suit

ART JOURNAL

Using magazine inspiration

The Bathing Suit

Acrylics and Ink

I have to say....I love these two pages!  Cutting images out of magazines eliminates wasting time trying to "think of what am I going to paint today."  So it was between the bathing suit and the shoe.  I love them both and probably could have painted the shoe on the left page, but then I wouldn't have a place to put the inspiration pieces.  

The suit was fun to do.  I debated what to do with the background....I could have painted a seascape but I wanted the bright colors of the bathing suit to stand out so I decided to use my black ink pen and drew bubbles of all different sizes.  I love the overall effect.  

For the inspiration page, I did add color to the page rather than just glue the shoe and the bathing suit to a plain page.  And, I wrote about the art that I created.  I think you can learn a lot about painting something from a photograph.  

A close-up

A SUNNY DAY....AT LAST!

Art Journal

Watercolors and Watercolor Pencils

Using an Inspiration Photo

from Coastal Living Magazine

After I painted the vase of flowers on my previous post with the inspiration photo from a magazine, I decided to go back through a couple of my folders where I keep photos that I've torn out of magazines....sort of like Pinterest...but in a paper file the way we're used to doing.  However, those photos never see the light of day.  That being said, yesterday I took a half a dozen of them and glued them sporadically throughout my journal.  It's a great way to avoid the "white page" syndrome.  

This is where the page started.  

I did a very simple sketch of the eggs and then started to lay in some color.

I added some writing to the left side which I will continue to do when I'm using the "inspiration" photos.  That's where I write about why I chose the particular picture, or comment on the colors used, the medium, etc.  

Since it's the day before Easter....had to get my eggs photo in. 

 Happy Easter to all!