Art Marks

Why hello there Bugs! Funny running into you here! It’s been so long!

Okay, okay, so I am just going to come out and say that I am aware of the fact that I haven’t blogged in over a month, despite my seemingly “genius” weekly-whimsy plan. But I have a good excuse. Well, a kind of good excuse. And that excuse is…. that life has been a little crazy lately. Then again, that’s nothing new. So maybe it’s a lousy excuse. I’ll leave that up to your discretion.

At first my blog posts were nonexistent due to the fact that I was actually able to spend time with my family –  one week during their spring break when they came to see me and one week during mine when I went home to see them. It was great to see everyone again but now it’s even harder to get through these last few weeks because I got a little taste of home during break… but I just 4 more weeks left now! Anyway, after getting back from that extravaganza, I pretty much was immediately thrown into pre-finals finals week for 3 weeks in a row; within the last 3 weeks I have literally had 6 tests and a speech to give in my classes. Oh my goodness. That’s college for you. Today was my last big test for another 2 weeks so hopefully life will calm down a little bit now. Well, that is, until ACTUAL finals week. Oh, and on top of all of this my first triathlon was this past weekend! I would love to give you guys more information about that but I actually think I will make another post within the next week dedicated completely to my triathlon story, so for now all you need to know is that I had a terrific time and am already gearing up for my next one in June!

Anyway, let’s talk about some art!

So, do you guys remember when I told you about the online art classes my mom and I have fallen in love with? Well, this is from that! This is the “Artfully Inspired Life 2015” class by Joanne Sharpe and if you like what I’m posting you should definitely look into taking some of her classes! They are simply awesome.

Anyway, I have not completed the March pages yet (even though it’s currently the end of April, eek!), but I HAVE completed my “art marks”. For this lesson we were told to make what are basically watercolored bookmarks, called “art marks”, and also some watercolor pockets. To actually make the page we simply stick the art marks in the pockets and then stick the pockets in the art journal! Super cute idea!

I really enjoyed creating my art marks, I made each of mine represent a different aspect of myself. And plus, I got a lot better at watercoloring throughout this process! I used to always feel like the color went everywhere and I couldn’t control it and color “in the lines”. This project (well, part of a project) was a success because it was a mixture of learning how to control the color a little more AND of being okay with the color not always staying in the lines, which is quite the dilemma for an OCD mind like mine.

Anyway, these were a lot of fun – and I absolutely LOVE the way they came out! I honestly can’t decide which one of the 8 is my favorite, every time I think I’ve made up my mind I end up changing it again.

The bike and running shoes represent the triathlon-and-fitness-loving side of me. Although the bike also kind of represents the fact that I can enjoy a nice bike ride without it being for a “workout” as well, since it’s more of a ride-out-to-the-park-for-a-cute-picnic type of bike than a competition bike. This works out well though because it shows that I can be the type of person to go out for a leisurely ride, as well as the type of person who goes out for a ride intended to be for exercise.

By the way, it took me a long time to get the running shoes to look right – it’s apparently really hard to get the proportions just right when drawing sneakers. Who knew?

The dress represents my girly side – and honestly if this dress existed in real life I would be really excited and buy it in a heartbeat. I love the way the colors came out on this one.

The guitar of course represents my musical side – and although my guitar in real life does not have flower tattoos, you have to admit that they do give the guitar some wicked personality.

The hummingbird I won’t get into too much detail about because it relates to an inside joke among my friends and I, but the basic idea is that it represents my friends because it reminds me of laughing and having fun with them.

You guys have seen enough giraffe pictures on my blog by now… I don’t think I have to explain this one anymore. You are all aware of my obsession by this point.

The snap dragon is pretty straight forward… snap dragons are my favorite flower. If you say that you’ve ever met another flower with more personality than one that can bite your finger off, I won’t believe you.

And lastly we come to the mushrooms. These represent me because they are my two favorite colors, purple and yellow, and of course because they have ladybugs on them. Plus I really enjoy drawing mushrooms for some strange, unknown reason. I find their shape to be whimsical.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy my lovely art marks bugs! Be sure to check out Joanne Sharpe’s online classes if this looks like something you would enjoy 🙂

Also, tell me which one is your favorite! I can’t decide, so I’m interested to see everyone else’s opinions.

Happy arting bugs, keep your heads held high – the semester is ALMOST OVER!

Signing off now,

Love,
Laney-Bug ❤

(Medium used: black Micron .1 pen, Koi watercolors, Proart Watercolor Paper)

Weekly Whimsy – Dreams are Forever

Hello, bugs!

So, remember last week when I told you that I was working on a plan to post something at a certain time each week? Well, I have a plan. It doesn’t exactly match that description, but I have a plan. This is improvement.

I love writing to you guys – half the time I don’t realize how much I love writing until I’ve started rambling on to you about my most recent creation and I simply can’t stop typing. However, I don’t have something to say every single week. Crazy enough as it is, life as a college student does not always mean that I have time for weekly art projects or even weekly events that are exciting enough to talk about. About 80% of my time is spent doing homework or studying, and call me crazy but I don’t really think you guys want to hear about that. And I don’t particularly want to write about it either, I’d rather write about something that gets my mind OFF of homework.

So anyway, here’s the plan! I now pledge to post on here once a week, with some sort of inspirational quote of sorts. These will range from quotes about creativity to quotes about staying strong while training for something such as a triathlon. Pretty much any quote that really speaks to me and inspires me in my art and my life in general will be up here. These topics that my quotes may relate to include but are certainly not limited to; creativity, health, nature, animals, music, family, friends, love, and life in general. As you have probably noticed, a lot of my art incorporates quotes – so I’m always on the lookout for new ones.

I’m not going to pinpoint this to a certain day of the week, simply because my life is hectic and I don’t want this to be a stress for me – I want it to be something I enjoy. If I just promise myself, and all of you loyal bugs out there, that I will post once a week – then I know that at some point in the 168 hours I get in a week, I will find a 20 minute period of time to type out a quick post about my most recent favorite quote. Oh, and by the way, these posts will be called “WEEKLY WHIMSY”! (Clever, huh? You can thank my boyfriend, since he helped me come up with it and everything he invents alliterates)

Don’t worry your pretty little minds though, I promise to continue posting my art as well. But for the weeks that I don’t have any art ready to talk about, or simply don’t have time to write a longer post, this will do! That way I can stay in touch with all you bugs out there, even if I haven’t had time to create anything new that week.

So today’s quote is from one of my favorite people (or at least I’m sure he would be one of my favorite people if I could actually meet him – he did come up with cartoon dancing penguins, after all), Walt Disney;

“Laughter is timeless. Imagination has no age. Dreams are forever.”

I’m not sure what it is about this quote that I love so much, but it speaks to me. Not in the creepy I-hear-voices way, but more so in the this-is-something-to-live-by way. I guess it just makes me happy to think about the fact that throughout my life, no matter what sort of sticky situation I might be in, the fun parts of life such as laughter, imagination, and dreams will always be there. And if that’s true, then I can get through anything. Not to be cheesy or anything…. (hey, if you’re following my blog, you should get used to cheesy. Cheesy quotes are the best quotes.)

Anyway, happy arting bugs, make sure to laugh today!
And stay tuned for my next weekly whimsy post next week! 🙂

Love,
Laney-Bug ❤

Good Thoughts

Hello, fellow bugs!

I know, I know, I promised I would be posting more. I’ve decided to stop making promises to you guys that I can’t keep because then I just feel bad when life doesn’t work out the way I planned. Instead, my new promise to you is that I will just post whenever I can, however often that may be, because that I can definitely agree to.

However, looking around at other fellow bloggers’ blogs, I’m realizing that many people are more consistent with when they post – for example, they always post on a certain day of the week, or they always post on the first of the month, or something along those lines. Well, I would like to come up with an organized plan like that because that is something I would more likely be able to stick to. Rather than just “I’ll post soon”, saying “I’ll post on Friday” is more promising in the inner workings of my crazy mind. However, because this has transformed into an art blog, I’m not sure how to go about doing that because I can’t guarantee that I will have new art to post on a weekly basis. I also can’t guarantee that I’ll have time to type out as much as I would like to if I did it on a weekly basis because, well, getting a college degree while simultaneously working a part time job, training for a triathlon, and MAKING the art that I would later post is a bit time-consuming. So for now I’m brainstorming with the idea, but I’ll keep you guys updated on what I decide.

Anyway, on to the featured art of the day!

So I did this one a few weeks ago over break, but I decided to talk about it today because I am unable to do this style of art while in college and I miss it. It turns out that there isn’t a very easy way to transport liquid ink sprays from one state to another, so I decided it was best to keep them at home for the semester and play with them again when I return this summer. And plus, I won’t pretend like I don’t have enough other art supplies to keep me busy until then…. no judgements allowed.

So as you’ve probably picked up on by now, especially if you’ve read my previous posts, this is done with dylusions ink sprays, which are super cool. I did this one when I was still figuring out how they worked, so I used a loose-leaf piece of card stock rather than in my journal. For those of you creative bugs out there, I’m sure you understand the fear of putting a new medium in a journal for the first time. Crazy things start to happen in your mind, such as “If I mess it up it will ruin the whole journal!”, “I have a perfect vision in my head and I don’t know how to make it reality!”, or even “If this isn’t what I want it to be the entire world could explode!!”. Okay, maybe that last one was a bit over the top. But if you’re anything like me, that might as well be what you’re thinking because you’re terrified out of your mind to actually put color onto the page in front of you. My roommate has heard me have to mentally prepare myself for this process on a number of occasions. She’s a trooper, that one. Dealing with her crazy roommate and whatnot.

Anyway, the colors don’t blend quite as smoothly as they would on another type of paper, but they still blended pretty well for one of my first attempts. I sprayed the page first, picked up extra color with paper towel, sprayed again, and continued this process until it looked like the masterpiece I was hoping for. Next I stamped the borders, and next was a super fun part; the zendoodles. I took my black micron .5 pen (possibly the coolest pen in existence) and zendoodled the hills along the bottom. Next I stamped and colored the leaves on the side and the bright happy sunshine. Coming to the end now, I stamped the houses on a separate sheet of paper, colored them with my zig markers (okay, technically my mom’s zig markers. But for the purposes of this post I’m going to pretend that they are rightfully mine), cut them out, and pasted them on there. Lastly of course, I added my quote with, you guessed it, my black micron .5 pen.

So a side note I would just like to throw out here – this was the first time I used Elmer’s Craft Bond Extra-Resistence glue stick. This stuff works wonders but it literally took us 30 minutes to figure out how to open the stupid little thing. And by “us” I mean my mother, my father, and myself as a team. The cap is impossible to get off. Even now, after I’ve used it multiple times, I still don’t have the magic touch. If anyone else has had this issue and knows the secret trick, please share it and save me an extra 30 minutes of frustration towards an inanimate object each time I use glue in my art. It would be much appreciated by both me, and the people around me who are tired of hearing me yell at my glue stick. Shoutout to my roommate again for dealing with my insanity.

So, the quote may be a little strange. I didn’t have a quote in mind when I started this project and after I had done everything else on the piece I decided to just scroll through my pinned quotes on pinterest (which trust me, is a lot) until I found one that spoke to me. I liked this one so I used it, although my boyfriend thought it was weird. But he’s weird. So we can’t trust his judgement. (Love you sweetie!)

Well, lastly I have one other thing to throw into this post. I recently found a site called bloglovin that I’m still trying to figure out and understand, but if I understand correctly, I can link this blog to it and get followers over there as well. It’s kind of like just another giant collection of super cool blogs, which I am definitely interested in being a part of;

Follow my blog with Bloglovin’

Not completely sure how this works yet so I guess we will find out as I go. But here’s to hoping I put the correct link on my page. If you are happy following me on here and don’t want to check out bloglovin, feel free to ignore this link! Though if you really enjoy reading assorted blogs, I highly recommend you check it out! You just have to click on the link above or even find my bloglovin link on the left side of my page!

Well, happy 3-day-weekend, bugs! Make good choices!

Love,

Laney-bug ❤

Medium used: Black micron .5 pen, zig markers, delusions ink sprays, dylusions stamps, black archival ink, card stock

Life is like a Bicycle

Hello Bugs!

Firstly, I would like to say that I’m back at home in Texas and don’t have the luxury of a working scanner here like I do in my dorm room in Montana, so we are back to photographs of my art for the time being. Sorry about that. Anyway, continuing on….

So you remember when I said that I would be posting a lot over break? Well clearly that hasn’t exactly happened. But the good news is that I have done a lot of art over break, I just haven’t had many chances to sit down and tell you about it yet. But here I am now, making up for it.

So today I decided to share with you one of my newest art journal pages. For Christmas I got a bunch of new art toys that I’m really excited about, and this page was kind of my experiment to use all of them and see how they worked. I started by spraying the page with my new dylusions ink sprays (which are the best thing since sliced bread), and stamping a simple border along the bottom of the page. I also did a few fancy things with some stencils on the page, such as spraying over a stencil with water to make faint marks on the page (see all of those funny little lightly colored bubbles all over the page? Voila!). I also stuck some matching washi tape in the middle of my page so that the ink sprays I will use on other pages in the future won’t soak through and mess up my lovely composition. Next I grabbed some card stock and my sakura gel pens (which weren’t new, but they are one of my favorite art supplies ever so I still decided to use them), and created that lovely bicycle you see on the right hand page. Here’s a close up of the bike after carefully cutting it out and pasting it on the page.

As you can see, it’s not perfect. I didn’t always color perfectly in the lines and there are a few random smudges on the white part of the wheel (I honestly have no idea how a green smudge got there since I didn’t use green). But I am trying to teach myself to go with the flow when it comes to my art journaling and not be a perfectionist, which is quite the process for me. Overall though, I’m pretty happy with my shimmery gel-penned bike. And I think it really ties the whole page together.

My next step was to create the purple hearts that are scattered around the page. I sprayed another piece of paper with purple and white ink sprays and cut out the hearts, stuck bicycle washi tape to them (because when you are both an artist and a triathlete, that’s something that will be inevitably sitting around somewhere in your house), and darkened the edges with black ink and a sponge. I got this idea from a pinterest art journal page that did the same concept with music note washi tape, and I really like how it came out. Here’s another closeup.

After my hearts were completed all I had to do was draw a sunshine on card stock, cut it out, paste it on, and draw my quote on the left hand page. I also fixed a little mess up of mine; you see the Albert Einstein tag on the bottom of the quote? Well, I originally had stamped something there. But once I wrote my quote, I didn’t like the way the stamp looked with it, I thought it was too close to the writing and didn’t like it anymore. So, with some advice from my swell artistic mother, I decided to both cover up my mistake and give credit to Einstein for his words of wisdom all at the same time, and I love how it came out. I simply used the same paper that I had used earlier for my hearts, so it was super simple!

For my very last finishing touches I dipped the edge of a glue stick cap in red ink and stamped it all over the page, making those little red rings you see scattered around. It needed just a little touch of color, and that did the job!

Well, I hope you enjoyed my rambling about my art journal page. I’m loving my dylusions ink sprays, I highly recommend them for you artistic bugs out there!

Happy 2015, bugs! Keep arting!

Love,

Laney-Bug ❤

Medium used: dylusions ink sprays, dylusions stamps, dylusions stencils, washi tape, card stock, sakura gel pens, black micron pens

But What if you Fly?

Hello bugs!

I told you I’d be back before finals came to a close! And in case you haven’t noticed, my scanner is finally working again so you have a much clearer image of today’s masterpiece!

So I found a picture on pinterest of an itty bitty baby giraffe (or at least I assume it’s a baby based on it’s funny proportions) hanging onto a balloon. I thought it was adorable and got tired of studying one night, so I drew it. And then I felt that I needed to add something to my itty bitty baby giraffe, so I looked up quotes about flying because it seemed appropriate. Then I found a quote that I really liked, wrote it in a pretty-like-fashion in the balloon, and voilà! My itty bitty baby giraffe had a quote and was given more meaning! Next I decided to break out the water color markers and color my itty bitty baby giraffe, along with his ever so exciting balloon. Next I wanted to add a whimsical background, so I randomly started drawing blue circles with some of my fancy pens as the sky that my itty bitty baby giraffe was floating through.

I like the quote I ended up using because I think it kind of relates to me as a new college student. It’s not that I think I will “fall” in college, but simply that I like the idea of if I ever feel that I might, there’s always that possibility that I could also “fly”. For example, I’m stressing out over finals right now, but when I sit back and think about it I realize that each final is really just one test and that if I don’t get a perfect score, life will go on. I am in no danger of failing any of my classes and in fact am doing quite well in them, so it’s much more likely that I will “fly” than I will “fall”.  So of course I won’t stop studying, because I’m Laney and studying is what I do, but I just shouldn’t worry as much as I have been.

Well, that’s that for today! Good luck on all of your finals bugs!

Love,
Laney-Bug ❤

(Medium: Koi Water Color Markers, Black .5 Micron Pen, PaperMate Felt Tip Pens)

Place

Hello bugs! Long time no write, huh? Well I sincerely apologize for that.  It seems that college is a bit of a time-consumer, especially with finals coming up so soon. I can’t believe that my first semester of college is almost done! With that being said, today’s post is actually about just that; my first semester of college. Well, in a way.

One of my classes this semester basically consisted of looking at different forms of self-expression. We especially looked at the aspect of “place” a lot, and how much place can define you, your life, your daily routine, etc. For our final project we were instructed to choose 2 forms of self-expression to describe our first semester of college, particularly relating to place. The center of campus is referred to as “the oval”, and pretty much every building you ever have to find is found right along it, or at least branching off of it nearby. With that in mind, I decided that for my first form of self-expression, I would draw a map of the oval, since I spend pretty much all of my time in its general vicinity. The second part of my project was a poem I wrote that basically depicts a typical day for me on campus. So I drew my map, wrote my poem, and with the help of my roommate (who knows how to work a computer much better than I do), put them on top of one another for the final product. Oh, and I also have to write a “reflection paper” about creating it. Though that part doesn’t sound nearly as fun so I’m trying not to think about it for the moment.

Now keep in mind that I would most definitely not call myself a “poet”. I have written poems from time to time, but they are typically Dr.Seuss-style. I think I’m literally incapable of writing a poem that doesn’t rhyme.  Though despite my seussian ways, I do have fun with it when I do have the opportunity to write, and I am completely okay with my funny little rhymes. Poetry just isn’t my usual choice- If I am given a pen and paper I am much more likely to sketch than I am to write, as you’ve probably noticed from the whole artsy-fartsy thing I’ve got goin’ on.

As for my map, I had a lot of fun with it. The coloring wasn’t all that exciting since there are only about 5 colors involved, but buildings and grass just typically aren’t bright neon colors like they would be in my perfect world. My map was drawn in a bit of a strange way – It is a bird’s eye view in terms of the placement of buildings, but I drew each of the buildings as if you were looking at them from standing in the middle of the oval. The top view of the buildings simply didn’t look very interesting to me, so I improvised – and I’m glad I did, I think they are more recognizable this way and I overall like how they turned out.

Well, pretty short post today, and now it’s back to studying for me! Though my breaks for studying typically consist of some sort of art project so you’ll probably hear back from me at least once or twice before the dreaded finals finally arrive. And over winter break I will be doing lots of art since I will actually have time for things other than Calculus and Biology. Plus, if Santa got my letter, I will hopefully be getting more art supplies pretty soon, which of course will result in a week or two of nonstop art. Yay!

Happy arting, bugs! 🙂

Love,

Laney-Bug ❤

Things I Love

So this one I actually started quite a while ago, as in a still-living-in-Texas time frame. I had found multiple art journal pages with this basic idea in mind on pinterest (have you noticed yet that I’m a bit of a pinterest fanatic?) and decided to do my own take on it. I’m not really sure why I didn’t finish it, I think I just got distracted by my other millions of projects, which happens quite a bit. My brain has more ideas for art projects than I have time to actually complete, so it’s a recurring theme.  But I rediscovered my half-finished drawing this week and decided to finish it up, so here it is! I’ve had 3 major tests in the last two weeks so this has kind of been my side-project to distract me from classes when I needed a study break.
Well this one is pretty self-explanatory but I guess I’ll elaborate a bit on a few of my favorite “loves”. Firstly I would like to point out that the running shoe on my “to run” section is drawn to look like my pair of running shoes – they’re a very bright purple-y color and they’re just very… me. That being said, I like to think of them as a sort-of-representation of me, as strange as that may sound. So I thought it was appropriate to incorporate them into this.

Second, I would like to point out that one love is “anything Disney” and another is “Olaf”. This may seem repetitive, but I just feel that you should all know how deep my love for Olaf truly is. I love him enough that I feel it necessary to list him in his own category even though he was already represented. If you tell me that you’ve ever met a happier singing snowman, I won’t believe you. Don’t mess with Olaf.

Next I would like to point out my “Volkswagon bug” section. See how I colored the bug yellow? That’s because I drive a bright yellow bug, although I currently miss him very much because he’s back in Texas with my parents for the year. His name is Buzz and he is quite fantastic. He is a “turbo” bug, which means that he’s as close to a race car as a Volkswagon bug gets. Also, fun fact, turbo yellow bugs are a much brighter yellow than regular yellow bugs, which makes them even cooler. He also has super spiffy yellow-rimmed wheels and black-and-yellow leather interior. He looks a bit like a bumble bee, hence the name Buzz. He’s my favorite.

Oh, and there’s giraffes, which I am also ridiculously obsessed with. They are my absolute favorite animal, but you guys have already been exposed to this obsession of mine a bit – so I won’t repeat myself again. For more on that topic, refer back to my “Giraffes Can’t Dance” post.

Next on my list that I feel worth mentioning is the fact that I have country music, cowboy boots, and country chic all mentioned (for those of you who don’t shop at Bath & Body Works, country chic is a fabulous scent of theirs  that supposedly smells like the country side). I just want to point these ones out because they all kind of relate to each other and show that I do in fact have a country girl side. Hey, I’m from Texas – can you blame me?

Lastly I would like to draw your attention to “Sakura art supplies”. Sakura makes a bunch of amazing things, but I particularly love their gel pens. This one I felt was important to mention because you will probably see Sakura gel pens used in a lot of my creations since they are my personal favorites. Ironically enough, I didn’t use them on this piece. But that’s actually quite rare. If you enjoy creating art and haven’t used them, I highly recommend them (particularly the “moonlight gel pens”, bright colors galore!)

Well, there’s many more on here that don’t really need an explanation. Who doesn’t like chocolate, sunsets, or puppies? Well, my boyfriend doesn’t like chocolate, but for the sake of this argument his beliefs are now invalid. But anyway, now you know a little more about me and my love of Italian food, minions, and cheesy movies.

Oh, and don’t forget the lady bugs…. but by my blog name I’m guessing you can put that one together.

Well bugs, happy doodling!

Love,
Laney-Bug ❤

(Medium: micron pen and Prismacolor colored pencils)