Wintertime in my journal

This time of year brings out the peaceful colors of BLUE and GREEN. I use these colors in my home, journals, clothes and planner.
I challenge you to use these colors in your art journal. Use what you have! I used a favorite stencil, some gesso, torn book text, paint, ink and even some reinker ink. I found a quote to write on a scrap of paper and glued on top.

Tip: if you are adding paper to your page and it isn’t quite the right color, sponge some of the page color onto the scrap and it will perfectly blend! Take 30 minutes - just enough time to relax, have fun and feel satisfied with your completed pages!

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas

Holiday traditions

My Hobonichi Techo is quite fat, but I decided to squeeze in some sketches and watercolor of holiday traditions. (The left hand pages are tough to work on!) As I thought about traditions that had special meaning to me I wondered about the origin of them, so I decided to research them as well. Here's a sampling of a few pages. Hoping you will document the holiday traditions that are special to you and your family. Happy Holidays!

Everyday Matters

I decided to challenge myself to draw every day in the month of November. It's not something that comes naturally to me, but when I practice I do get more comfortable doing it. I chose my B6 Slim Tomoe River paper insert, pulled out my carbon ink pen, Pentel brush pen, foundation pens and watercolors. Even though I love the crinkly paper, I found out quickly that the fountain pen ink bled too much so I switched to the carbon ink pen. I discovered that COLOR not only influences my art journals but also my everyday life.
I found the best way to sketch was to have the item right in front of me to really look at, instead of drawing from memory. I hope you give it a try. It doesn't have to be perfect, just a quick sketch of your "everyday" item can be uniquely expressed in your journal to remind you that everyday matters.

Happy Halloween

I had fun sketching and inking my owl!

Inktober

There's an Inktober 2018 challenge with prompts for drawing each day which you can follow on Instagram. I've created my own version of Inktober using my Hobonichitecho, Pentel brush pen and watercolors. It's a quick way to art everyday and forces me to keep it loose in the style of etegami.