Today, I am creating content for my tiny accordion books. For the first one, I used journaling stencils and traced out designs that I thought were interesting and created patterns. There is no particular message, or order, other than I went though the stack of the stencils, one-by-one and if I saw something I thought would be fun, added it to the page with pencil. I may add more interesting designs directly with the paint, but I think I’m off to a good start here!

Now that I have my Arteza gouache paints all set up and ready to use, I’ve folded a few accordion books from 140 lb watercolor paper. I don’t have any particular themes in mind yet, but I’m thinking for one, I want to use some journaling stencils that I have to create various random shapes throughout the book. I think that would be fun to paint, like using a coloring book!

This is my new, Arteza Gouache swatch board, based on the layout of the colors in my boxes. The top three rows are in the blue box, and the bottom 3 are the grey box. There are 60 colors, total. When I did the original swatches, I used paint right from the tube. For this board, water was added to the dried paint and then painted in each rectangle.

Yesterday, I showed you my planned palette set up for my Arteza gouache. Here, you can see that I’ve added the paint to each well, in the pre-planned positions. I let it dry over night. It is really interesting to see how matte the colors are now that they have dried. Originally, they were very shiny and wet looking right out of the tube. The paint was very creamy and easy to squeeze out of the tube.

I have had a large set of Arteza Gouache for several months. When I first got it, I swatched out the colors but then I put them away to concentrate on another project. Now that I have a lot of time on my hands, I decided to pull them out and set them up in the palette boxes. I cut apart the little swatchs, and that allowed me to arrange them on top of the wells in the order that I want.

This is the big sister to a layout in my tiny art journal, which I showed you a few days ago. While this has a different arrangement, it started with the same concept, circles and the same quotation. It also has the same paint colors. Both backgrounds were painted at the same time. Just as with the tiny version, this began with text papers from a book, magazines and junk mail being attached to the page with Liquatex Matte Medium.

While we are in the PT (Pandemic Time), I am, like many others, having trouble concentrating on long-term projects. I am finding myself drawn to new and different things that I hadn’t previously considered. For example, I tried knitting an stuffie. It went well, until I got to the head. I want to knit the “hair” as I am knitting the head. I keep loosing my pattern count and I still don’t have a completed head, although I’ve started over many times.

This is the third exercise in the Watercolor Workshop book (by Shasha Prood). Here we are swatching our blue and purple paints. I had several blues in my box, but only one purple, which I’m not thrilled with. I am thinking that I will, eventually, purchase another couple of tubes of purple paint. But I’m happy with the variety of blue. I am doing this with my friend Sandra Mitchell.

This week, I challenged the members of the Micro Art Journaling group on Facebook to create a micro layout, micro page, or tiny artwork using circles as the theme. They were also given the quotation below. This layout began with various pieces of paper, including some text, being glued down to the page with matte medium. When that dried, I added a light, irregular coat of gesso that had been thinned with some water.

On the second day of working on the Watercolor Workshop, (by Shasha Prood), we’re making swatches of oranges and reds. I have one true orange, Cadmium Orange, but I think these other two colors, Burnt Sienna and Cadmium Red Pale, fall into this category, also. For reds, I have a primary color, Cadmium Red Deep, and another that is a cool red, Alizarin Crimson. Indian Red is a very earthy red and (again) Cadmium Red Pale is a very orangy red.

Another card, but this was actually cut from a greeting card. I liked the red printed texture and I didn’t want to cover it completely. But I did want to add to what is there. While not finished, by any means, the bit of stencilling added has given me an idea of where I might go from here. I will be working on this one some more. #liquatexacrylics

Another junk mail card. Here, I’ve used leftover paint, swiping it across the card. Then I used the other end of the brush (the handle) to draw into the wet paint. I saw a splotch of red-orange and decided to set the card aside to dry. Later, when I examined it closely, I realized it was person, that I think is either on a skate board, or roller skates.

This is another junk mail card. The base is, again, created by peeling paint off my palette and sticking it to the card using Liquatex Matte Medium. When that dried, I used a few different Liquatex markers to add some interesting marks around the sides and edges. Then I used fresh paint with stencils to add more interest. Now I’ve set this one aside to think about. I may want to add more to it to create a firm focal point sometime in the future.

This is my first day of working on the “Watercolor Workshop” (by Shasha Prood) with my Facebook friend, Sandra Mitchell. For the first exercise, we are painting swatches of green and yellow. We are just making a color reference and understanding what happens when each color is applied to the rectangle on the paper. I started out with a “waterbrush”. You know the kind, it is sometimes referred to as a travel brush because you can fill the handle with water and take it with you.

A Facebook friend of mine posted a photo of a book she had that she was thinking about learning from. It turned out, I have that same book, and I’ve never gone through it! Both of us are needing some extra motivation to get things done around the house. So we have decided to use this book as motivation. Here’s how it works. We set some chore that we dread, but really need to get done.