More Abandoned Art Magnets

Hello!  I can't believe it's April already!  Woo hoo, summer is on its way!

I'm really getting carried away with this Art Abandonment thing.  Although I have been abandoning art for several years now, I have really gotten into it lately since I have been involved with my online group.  This month, I will continue to abandon more of my art magnets in my own and other communities as I travel.

These are miniature prints of my original art and each one measures 2" X 3.5" (see quarter in the photo for scale).

As I mentioned in my January post to our Art Abandonment Group (Facebook), magnets are great for abandoned art because they are easy to adhere to different surfaces that you might not otherwise consider as a suitable location for your art.  I have abandoned magnets on door frames, utility boxes (those big ones in public places that house city electrical connections or water shutoffs, etc.), playground equipment, the doors in public restroom stalls (inside, of course).  I try to make it a challenge for myself to find really out-of-the-way places to abandon magnet art.  It is SO fun to think how long it might be before someone discovers it and if only to be a "fly on the wall" to see the wonder on their faces when they find it.

I STILL love art by stealth!!

Cheers!
Joanna

March Magnet Madness - Abandoned Art

For the month of March, I will continue to abandon more of my art magnets in my own and other communities.

These are miniature prints from my original art and each one measures 2" X 3.5" (see quarter in the photo for scale).

As I mentioned in my January post to our Art Abandonment Group (Facebook), magnets are great for abandoned art because they are easy to adhere to different surfaces that you might not otherwise consider as a suitable location for your art.  I have abandoned magnets on door frames, utility boxes (those big ones in public places that house city electrical connections or water shutoffs, etc.), playground equipment, the doors in public restroom stalls (inside, of course).  I try to make it a challenge for myself to find really out-of-the-way places to abandon magnet art.  It is SO fun to think how long it might be before someone discovers it and if only to be a "fly on the wall" to see the wonder on their faces when they find it.

I love art by stealth!!

Cheers!
Joanna

Abandoned Art - "Reve Du Papillon"

I am probably taking this "Art Abandonment" thing too far, but I'm having so much fun with it, it's hard to stop.  If you don't know what that is, check out the Art Abandonment group on Facebook or Google "Art Abandonment" or "Free Art Fridays."  There are a number of movements out there where artists are leaving pieces of art in public places for people to find and enjoy.  I've actually been doing this for at least five years already, but it's becoming very popular now, in large part due to the Facebook group's founders and members.

"Reve Du Papillon" will soon be among those pieces abandoned.  This is a mixed media assemblage piece made almost completely of recycled materials.  The substrate is a piece of bevelled wood I salvaged from the junk pile at a woodworking shop.  Various paints, inks and other treatments form the background, along with a vintage image and various repurposed embellishments (including a salvaged butterfly and harlequin face cabochon which give the piece a 3D look).  It sits on a faux wrought iron stand.

I am not sure where I will abandon this piece but it will be somewhere in the Okanagan Valley during the month of February.

Perhaps you'll find it???

MORE FREE IMAGES TO DOWNLOAD

If you missed my post on January 13th, I included a few images that you are free to download to use for your own art.  Here's the link to that post if you need it:  Free Funky Images

Today, I have a few more for you to enjoy!  These are scans of my original collage/mixed media work from between 2001 and 2009.  All you have to do is right-click on each image and save them to your own computer.  You can do with them what you want, all I ask is that if you use my images to create something you'll sell, that you acknowledge credit where it is due.  Otherwise, you are free to play with them as you like.

I hope you have fun with these funky images.  I'll be sharing some more in the coming weeks.

Cheers!

Joanna

February's Art Abandonment Project

For the month of February, I will be abandoning more of my original, one-of-a-kind art magnets in my own and other communities.  I will be  travelling between Kelowna, BC, Calgary, Alberta and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and plan to have these with me.

These are miniature pieces of original art and each one measures 2.5" X 3.5" (see quarter in the photo for scale).

As I mentioned in my January post to our Art Abandonment Group (Facebook), magnets are great for abandoned art because they are easy to adhere to different surfaces that you might not otherwise consider as a suitable location for your art.  I have abandoned magnets on door frames, utility boxes (those big ones in public places that house city electrical connections or water shutoffs, etc.), playground equipment, the doors in public restroom stalls (inside, of course).  I try to make it a challenge for myself to find really out-of-the-way places to abandon magnet art.  It is SO fun to think how long it might be before someone discovers it and if only to be a "fly on the wall" to see the wonder on their faces when they find it.

I love art by stealth!!

Cheers!
Joanna

Where Do You Get Your Quotes?

I have been using quotes for many, many years in my art and I am often asked where I get them from.  I started collecting quotes that really resonated with me a long time ago.  This was long before the advent of all of those websites there are today where you can find any kind of quote you desire.  I used to write them down longhand in a booklet or type up lists of them to save and use in my art.

I think that a great quote (or part of a song's lyrics) are a key ingredient in my art.  I can't imagine creating art without them.  I am particularly partial to using song lyrics because music is my very favourite art form.  Yes, music, not art, although art is a close second.  I could do without many things in my life, but not my music.  There is nothing more valuable to me and I think the greatest gift we can give one another is the gift of music.  It is the universal language.

Sometimes I will have a quote (or lyrics) rolling around in my head that I really want to use in a piece of art and that is the jumping off point when I start creating.  Other times, the art itself starts to come together long before I find a quote to go with it.  Sometimes the art will sit for months, mostly finished, just waiting for the right quote or lyrics to pop into my head.  I never try to force myself to match up a piece of art with the right quote.  I have complete faith that the right one will reveal itself to me at the right time.

When I was a teenager in the late 1970s, and had to do typing practice for school, I would type up song lyrics.  I kept a huge binder of them for years!  Needless to say, many of those lyrics are still rambling around in my brain.   Trust me, you want me on your music trivia team.

Because I no longer play music (as a musician) and focus on creating art instead, I try to meld these two loves as often as I can.   I love to do homage art featuring lyrics from my favourite musicians and bands as a small way to pay tribute to them for all the enjoyment their music has given me over the years.  If I had more time, perhaps when I retire from the workforce, I would like to do a whole series of art with music quotes. 

Anyway, here are a few pieces, some brand new and some quite old, that use some of my favourite quotes. I  hope you enjoy them.

Namaste, my friends
Joanna

Paper Towel Art? Really??

Yes, really.  There is no reason on earth not to make use of some of your unappreciated but well-used background tools in your art.  They can make unique and funky additions to your mixed media, collage and art-journalling projects.

When I am using the ol' credit card  paint scraping technique to prepare a substrate (and I use this technique about every five minutes), I will often wipe the credit card off onto a paper towel before I use the card again for another color.  The same goes for brushes, my brayer and other tools.  The paper towel ends up looking pretty cool, so I've started incorporating them into my backgrounds.

Here's a couple of pieces of paper towel that have certainly earned their keep in my studio.


Close Up Of Paper Towel

 

Close Up Of Paper Towel

And here are a couple of scans of two journal pages (in the making) using paper towel (those are the pinky/orange areas of the pages).  I used Mod Podge under and over and the effect was that the paper towel almost melted into the background, leaving only the color and the interesting swirly pattern.  Cool, huh?


(Start Of) Two-Page Journal Page Spread



Paper Towel Scraps Are the Pinky/Orange Areas



Paper Towel Scraps Are the Pinky/Orange Areas

Close-Up Of Paper Towel On Journal Page

Close-Up Of Paper Towel On Journal Page

Close-Up Of Paper Towel On Journal Page

You can see why my studio ends up bursting at the seams with stuff.  It is hard to throw anything away, even the dirty ol' paper towels! By the way, many paper towels are double ply, so if you pull them gently apart and you'll double the cool pieces you'll have to add to your art.  The photos in this post are of two-ply paper towel.  My experimentation has shown that the colors on the paper towel sit up better when I don't separate the plies, but when I really want the paper to sink into the background, it's better to separate the plies.

Cheers!
Joanna

ANGEL ORNAMENTS by KATHLEEN and LOIS

I was thrilled to get messages from Kathleen Childers and Lois Inman Engle, fellow FB artist friends, with photos of the beautiful little angel ornaments they made from my post here with the instructions I posted here.

Aren't they adorable?  These ladies really have taken a simple little idea and run with it.

Thank you, Kathleen and Lois, for sharing them with all of us!

Joanna

PS - The first two photos are Kathleen's and the last four are Lois'.

The Great Canadian Travelling Art Journal Challenge

I'm always full of ideas.  Rarely though, do I have enough time to follow them through. However, when I thought of this idea, I really wanted to carve out enough time to see it happen.  It just seemed like the thing to do!  I wanted to get a few of my fellow Canadian art journalers together to each do a page or two in a handmade travelling art journal.  I have been fortunate to meet some incredibly talented artists online, and a number of them are Canadian.  Lucky for me, they were as enthusiastic about this project as I was.  I will talk about the participants in this challenge in a subsequent post.

So, I started making a little art journal out of four Christmas cards received this year.  I wanted to keep the journal small (and the project too, for that matter) so that it was easily manageable.  With only four cards, each no larger than about 5" X 5" I started distressing, painting, and texturizing to make the base pages onto which others would journal or do mixed media or collage art or whatever.

I sanded the cards that had a glossy finish.  Experience in making art journals from greeting cards has taught me that it is hard to get paint to adhere to glossy cardstock.  Then, I slopped on (and I do mean slopped) a bunch of different types of paints  including spray dyes, liquid watercolors, acrylics and poster paints.  Below are photos of the four greeting cards(front and back) with their base coats of paints.  You'll note that one of the cards has cutouts in it.  I thought this would make for some interest in the journal.

You can still see the writing coming through the paint and various treatments on some of the cards.  You can also see where I used large scale punchinella and a crackle stamp to get create some extra interest on the pages. 

I then added some bits and pieces of scrap papers to make each page more interesting.  Scans of the fronts and backs of each card are shown here.

At this point, my plan was to position or fold the cards so that the blue/green pages alternated with the pink/orange/yellow pages throughout the journal.  The simplest way to put all the pages into one was to use my decorative duct tape, which was super easy, quick and looks like a million bucks!  I chose to stick with various types of black and white duct tape for continuity throughout the journal.

Below are photos of all the pages, just waiting for some artsy souls to embellish the heck out of 'em.  In an upcoming post, I will fill you in on who the other Canadian artists are who are participating in this project.  And by the way, there are still one or two pages available for any fellow Canuck journalers who want to take part.

Thanks!
Joanna

FRONT COVER OF JOURNAL

PAGES 1 AND 2

PAGES 3 AND 4

PAGES 5 AND 6

PAGES 7 AND 8 (CENTER OF JOURNAL)

PAGES 9 AND 10

PAGES 11 AND 12

PAGES 13 AND 14

BACK COVER OF JOURNAL