What is your creative style

Through Craft Therapy I found a test on Psychologies.co.uk on art and what your creative style is.

This is my result:

Creativity is a release

For you, creativity is first and foremost a form of expression: it creates a special link between the internal and external worlds. It allows you to get a grasp of your powerful emotions, by moulding them into a physical form. In fact, the most important thing for you is to be able to release your emotions. You need to be able to touch them or look at them in concrete form, and to do that you have to find a way to make them come alive. This is how your desires and anxieties take shape. Keeping things bottled up creates a tension that can only be resolved once you have expressed how you feel. This means you have to be strong enough not to let yourself get swept away by chaotic impulses; if you turn your creative urges on everyday life — making a picnic, singing to the baby, choosing what to wear — you can express yourself while staying rooted in reality. Creativity is principally cathartic. It relieves a deep need, an almost primal, archaic impulse. For you, being creative is about having the power to give form to something you feel, to those deep personal issues that are often raw and disorganised. For these reasons you are usually attracted to art that demands physicality, that allows you to express what’s inside, and that unites spontaneity, strength, freedom, power and movement.

Wow. That is really spot on! Especially lately my Art Journal has been filled with personal stuff rather than making 'a pretty page'. It's more raw and dark than what I have done in the past, and it feels more real that way.

Want to do your own test? Go here and be sure to let me know what your result is!

Car boot sale Haul

I'm sure you've seen me talk about car boot sales before. Here in the UK, usually during the weekend but in some places during the week aswell, people pack their cars full of unwanted stuff, drive to a field somewhere, pay a fee and start selling their items on tables or rugs they put down, hoping buyers are interested in their stuff.
It's one of my favourite things to do during the spring and summer months, looking for a great deal or something unique or something you've always wanted.

When we first started going, I was keeping an eye out for books, and wooden egg cups for me to paint and put up in my Etsy shop. The hunt for books is still going strong, but I'm now looking for art supplies and I have found many, many great things.
After watching a couple of haul videos people put up on Youtube after having been to craft or art stores, I decided to do a quick video of some of the items I've scored (and I really mean scored) at car boot sales.



And I haven't even shown my alphabet punches, my other punches, my stack of stencils, glitter paints, one of my art journals was a little book I found at the car boot too...

In the video I show you the embossing powders I had not used when I filmed it. Right after I cleared away all the stuff, I decided to try them out and was rather happy with the result:

Sketchbook

Searching Vimeo for some cool sketchbook videos to share here on my blog, I stumbled across this one. It looks more like a diary with sketches thrown in, and without knowing anything about this person I'd say they've gone through a lot in the few months it took to fill this book.

book 20 (oct 1993 - apr 1994) from womanonfire on Vimeo.

Black gesso texture

The other day at the car boot sale I picked up some black gesso I have been keeping an eye out for for ages as well as a heat gun. Yayy!

Time to play, but I had no clue what to do with them just yet.

Thankfully, Ky aka Scrapacat posted a challange on her blog. So this afternoon, I cleared all the stuff off the desk (yes I know I had only just cleaned it but lots of my supplies happen to live on my desk) and try out a new camera angle while I tried out my new toys.



Because I had never used a heat gun before I was surprised to see the paint start to bubble up! Perfect for this challenge! Added some Pearlescent paint I picked up at the car boot sale last year, wiping some off with my trusty babywipes and in no time I had a fun textured page.

Thank you Ky for your challenge!
It took some blood, sweat, tears and many many naughty words before it was fiiinally uploaded to Youtube (still haven't got a clue where I went wrong today, but let's not think about that anymore, it's there and that's the most important thing!) but now I can safely go to bed knowing it's all done and ready in time for Ky's deadline.
Yay!

Amazing travel art

Although the weather would be nice if it was late October instead of August, it is still summer, which means it's time to go on holiday! What a perfect time to take your art journal or sketchbook and do some work while you're on the train, ferry or on your flight to wherever it is you're going.

Christoph Niemann went from New York to Berlin and documented the flight in this visual diary, and it is absolutely brilliant!

If you're travelling any time soon, try and fit in some art time and be sure to give me a link to post on my blog when you're back safe and sound.

Drawing 101 starting in September

As you've seen on my blog and Youtube, I've started to sketch a bit here and there. I'm enjoying it very much, but without guidance and complete lack of education, I'm just doing what I think I should, making numerous mistakes along the way.

But from September, I'm going to take an online drawing course, 'Old skool art: drawing 101' run by Leslie Herger.

This is what she has to say about the course:

The intention of this course is to introduce you to some basic drawing tools and skill building exercises. I make it no secret that I believe that drawing is something you can improve with practice. Just like exercising a muscle you can exercise your drawing skills.

By gaining knowledge in the use of your tools you’ll have more confidence in your abilities. Drawing is a combination of learning how to properly see what is before you so that you can translate that into an image. You train your eyes to see so that your hand can record. Learning different ways of recording can help you translate what you see to paper. We’re going to focus on that first before anything else. After a few lessons of learning different ways to use your tools we’ll start to look at images to record.

Old Skool Art: Drawing 101 is the drawing class you never took. It's a kinder gentler approach to drawing than you've had in the past. We'll focus on ways to use pencils and skill building exercises. We'll have live content as well as PDF.

The cost for this course is $35 and it will officially open on Sept 6th.

And here is where you can sign up and join me in learning how to draw!

Sketchbook video

Three updates in a day? Well, it's almost 11 pm here in the UK, so almost tomorrow..

Just thought I'd show you the sketches I've been doing lately. It's all Leslie's fault, she got me started on this!



Please note that this video is labelled 'PG 13' due to 2 nudes.. Not that I think anyone I know would mind, but hey, you never know who might get offended. Which truth be told I'd take as a compliment because that means that my scribbles actually resemble a nude lady. ;)

This is what I'll be doing today

Peanut shapes. Yeah. I know. Sounds ridiculous. But I've been looking at Youtube videos on drawing, and these seem fun. Of course I'll do them on paper, not on screen.



Matthew Archambault is an adjunct instructor at the School Of Visual Arts in New York and has his students do these peanut shapes in their first week at school. He considers it a great warm up as well as a shape that will help you draw figures later on. In this student's sketchbook video there are two or three pages filled with these shapes at about 6:14 into the video.

I'll be sure to let you know how I get on.

The Top Secret Project revealed!

If you are already a member of Artjournaling.Ning.com, or have been following me on Twitter, and certainly if you've been attending Blade's ustream shows on Thursday night, you will have heard that Leslie, Connie, Rhomany, Blade aka Artistic Biker, Samantha Kira and I have been working on a Top Secret Project.

We have been teasing people for weeks now, telling them that we would be revealing the secret, but then decided that we just were not ready yet. We still had a lot of things to sort out, and although some decisions have yet to be made, we can now reveal that...

No wait...
Let's get Blade to tell you what we've been up to, about 7 min. into the show.


Are you excited?? I know I am!!!

So I finally tidied up my desk

It was needed. Very very much needed. I could not see the desk itself anymore. It was covered in.. well, stuff that was thrown on the desk. Besides my pens and brushes and babywipes and a book or two that live there, it had grown to be the place to dump letters, things that I would take downstairs but not right now, where I kept the Hama-beads we had picked up for dirt cheap at the car boot sale to keep the nieces happy, my own beads, you get the picture, right?

So yesterday, I finally took everything off, threw out two bags of *&^$$& that I didn't need or want or even thought of keeping for 'you never know', and tadaaa.. I have a desk again! A desk I can work at! A desk, I thought today, I could sit at to work in my new Art Journal while having the camera rolling. (Not rolling exactly now that we all use digital camera's, but still...)

And here it is, the first video since my very first two that I've actually done sitting at my desk. I do apologize for the crappy camera-angle. Or not really the angle, but me forgetting where it was and what would actually show up... I'll do better next time, promise!