Category Archives: technique

Technique Today: Watercolor Pencils

Watercolor pencils make me incredibly happy. A 12-pack will give an infinite range of colors allowing for bright jewel tones to dirty muddy earthy colors. Anything is possible with watercolor pencils.

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Technique Today: Color Theory

Color is often discussed but understanding the theory of it can helpful for mixing paint, layering markers, and color choices. Like composition we talk about it, some understand it intuitively, and other study color theory. Like anything some understanding of the theory is helpful.

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Technique Today: Ink

I love ink. It's a great thing to fiddle around within art journals. It also goes well with last weekk's topic, lettering.

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Technique Today: Lettering

Lettering is one of those things that the more you practice it the better you get. Lettering can be fun and interesting.

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Technique Today: Glue

glue. It should be a simple topic but it's not. you've got glue stick, PVA, Elmers (same thing as PVA BTW), Aleene's, superglue, Matte Medium, Gloss medium, heavy medium, etc… And everyone has a glue that works best for them, and we've all got an opinion about it.I've picked out a few videos to give you some ideas about all the opinions on glue, and different ways you can use it.

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Technique today: Stencils

This week I chose a variety of videos featuring the use of stencils. I picked some videos showing usual techniques and some with unusual techniques.

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Technique Today: Washi Tape

Washi tape is a neat thing. I've made some of my own and it's super simple. These videos all deal with how you can make your own.

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Technique Today: Binding Your Own Art Journal

I do a lot of bookbinding. I've done a class or two about making them. There are a lot of godo tutorials out there and some really horrible tutorials as well. I've picked a selection that I like and feel have sound technique.

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Technique Today: Writing

I don't always write in my art journal. Often when I do I paint over it. Sometimes, writing in an art journal is an absolutely essential part of the process.

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Technique Today: Composition

One of the questions I get pretty often is about composition. "How to make a good looking art journal page, that is composed well?" It's one of those questions that usually annoys me, because I dislike the idea of planned out pages in an art journal. But as someone who has studied composition for art and photography, I intuitively arrange what i'm doing around the rule of thirds and the golden mean. I no longer think abotu composition, unless I'm working on a specific project.

So my initial response is that you should study composition. In school we spent a lot of time looking at art and photos. Looking specifically at how things are aranged on a page and how our eyes moved around in relation to those objects and color. I filled pages of a journal with little doodles based off the covers of magazine.Simplifying the objects down to simple shapes. faces became ovals, bodies triagles and rectangles. Works becames rectangles. And so on. Now when I work in my art journal I simply don't think abotu these things. So go to barnes and noble, pull a dozen magazines off the rack, grab a cuppa coffee and look at each mag, and block the cover and a few pages out in basic shapes. Think about how you look at the page. Do this a dozen times across the next 6 months. Composition will become much more natural to you over time.

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