Art

Color it Autumn

 Autumn is a great time to add the lovely, vibrant hues of fall leaves to your art work. The different colors of autumn are associated with different feelings and moods.

Red is a rich color of fire and blood.  On one side there are the feelings of love, warmth, and compassion, and on the other side are the notions of bloodshed, aggression, and war.  The color yellow is associated with sunshine, knowledge, and flourishing, as well as, with autumn and maturity, and cowardice.   

A mixture of red and yellow will give you orange.  Now, orange might be the most controversial of colors; usually people love it or hate it.  Some think it is the color of energy and fun, and they insist that it stimulates the appetite.  Others find it merely loud and annoying.

In the autumn, every day brings a new burst of color.  The leaves (in their various shades) change continuously, suggesting more ways to add beauty to your day, to your house, and to your artwork.  

Botanical Prints

 If you can’t think of an interesting subject for your next painting or drawing, consider getting new ideas by studying some of the old botanical illustrations.  A botanical illustration is an accurate picture of a plant showing the form, color, and fine points of the species in an artistic way.  

They are often done in watercolors, and some of them are very beautiful.   Not only are they widely available, some are so old that they are completely out of copyright.  For all their elegant lines, the flower drawings were meant to be true-to-life.  Such illustrations were also done of animals and especially of birds.  Perhaps the most famous are the beautiful bird paintings by Audubon.  

Consider looking through these beautiful, old paintings for ideas for your next project.  There is no need to copy the picture directly; there is no fun in that.  Just use the forms to draw your own idea of the plant, and use those sections that you might want to incorporate into your art.

Coloring Journal

Have you considered incorporating pages to color or paint into your journal?  These pictures can provide more depth to the journaling experience, and they can include some extra fun to your pages as well.  

How you decide to organize the journal page is up to you, and how you add color is also your choice.   You can use colored pencils, water color, or crayons if you like.  

The pictures can be found in various places in books or on the internet, or you can draw your own.  Personally, I think doing your own sketch is the most enjoyable. In fact, I like to make line drawings out of some of my paintings, and then built the journal page around it.

Here is a page that I invented.  It is about Venice—maybe not as it is now, maybe not even as it once was, but how I would like to imagine it.  Of course, you might not want to set up your page in this particular way, but it gives you an idea of one way to begin.  I call these pages "explorations," and they are a nice addition to your journal.  This is especially true when you can't think of anything to write.

So try adding coloring pictures.  It gives the journaling experience a whole new dimension.

Calligraphy

 While hand-writing seems to have gone out of fashion for many everyday purposes, calligraphy is still a useful talent for creative work.  Elegant scripts can enhance art projects as well as being a project by themselves, and some say that learning calligraphy can make your own handwriting more beautiful. 

In calligraphy, there are many different styles and fonts to choose from.  These range from starting with a plain, monoline style and continuing through more Gothic or Celtic varieties.  There are many resources for learning this art both in the library and on the internet. Look around at the many styles and find one that is suitable for the project you are making.

Calligraphy is often used for writing the messages on invitations and birthday (or other) cards.  

Another of the traditional ways to use calligraphy is by hand-printing a motto, favorite saying, Bible verse, or quote in fancy writing.  To illustrate the saying, you can add pictures like the ones shown at the top.  This is a quote by Keats about marigolds. 

Lace Doily Collage

Collage is the art of putting a lot of materials together to make a work of art.  I like to use old lace doilies for this purpose.  In order to do this for yourself, you will first need something to fix your collage onto. A large piece of paper, poster board or cardboard from a box are all good choices and so is a blank canvas.  

Then you will need a lot of bits of paper. You can use construction paper, tissue paper, copy paper, paper bags, handmade paper, or most anything in the paper line that comes to hand.  Be aware that the ink might run a bit, but that all adds to the effect. 

Tear the paper into different shapes or cut it with scissors.  I like the texture of torn paper, but you can vary the effect with cut-outs.  You can cut out words too, if you want to, and you might want to add some extra small items for embellishment like fabric, spangles, glitter, beads, or feathers. Build the collage in layers by gluing the paper on the canvas , starting with the background and moving forward.

Once all the paper and extras are glued down, you can give the piece a few coats of lacquer or decoupage coating to finish it.  Let the whole business dry for a few days.  This will vary according to how thick the paper layers happen to be.  Once it is dry, this is where the doily comes in.  I lay the lace out on the collage to see where it looks best, and then I stick it on with adhesive glue.  Voila, a new piece of art.

Artful Meditation

 Traditional meditation often involves sitting with your eyes closed, focusing on your breath, and letting your thoughts come and go without holding on to them.  The idea is about being in this moment, clearing the mind, and inviting serenity.  By merely following the breath, you might be able to observe and let go of thoughts as they come into your mind.  Since these thoughts are usually either of the past or the future, they can carry you into either unhappiness or fear.  The idea is not to go there.

The practice of meditation has a lot of health benefits.  It has been proven to relieve stress and help your body and mind heal.  There have been scientific studies that show that mindfulness and meditation is a very beneficial.  However, some of us find it difficult to sit still and do practically nothing for any length of time.  That’s where art can come to the rescue.

When we are creating art, we are actually in this present moment.  If we let go of the idea of the finished product and concentrate on the process, we can stay happily in the here and now—in much the same way that meditation provides.   Honestly, it’s probably not the finished piece that keeps pulling us back to the process of creative art.  It’s the doing of the art that will keep us happy.  It is an experience in the moment, where the rest of the world recedes and there is nothing there but you, your materials, and your inspiration.  Each moment with a work of art can be a gift. 

More to the Picture

This technique is about enlarging a photograph beyond its edges out into the surrounding area, so that it isn’t just a square picture but a vignette.  In order to do this (in the way that I will describe it), you will need a stiff art paper (like water-color paper), glue, watercolor paints, watercolor pencils, or wax colored pencils, and the photograph or picture of your choice. 

The first thing to do is to paste the photo (or a copy of it) onto heavy paper.  I just used regular, white paper glue for fixing the photo in place.  Arrange the picture in the middle of the sheet, and try to see that all the edges are flat and not buckling off the paper. 

Once your photo is in place, you extend the edges of the picture out onto the surrounding paper by using either watercolor paint, water color pencils, or regular wax colored pencils.  You can use whatever medium you want to extend the edges of the photograph, and you can extend those edges as far onto the surrounding paper as you like.  When finished, you have a charming vignette to frame and display.

Calligraphy Projects

Calligraphy and fancy scripts make elegant art work.  For these projects, you need a straight pen and ink in a bottle, or you can get fountain pens with several different nibs.  In addition, there are felt-tipped pens that do a nice job as well, producing the thick and thin lines that might be necessary for the style of writing that you choose for your project.

But there are other ways to incorporate calligraphy into your art work.  For example, what if you had a drawing that was sufficient by itself, but you still wanted to set it off with a calligraphy quote or a saying?  One way to do this is to write the quote around the edges of a piece of paper that has been cut out in the center like a mat. 

That is what was done in the example of the waterfall shown above.  The drawing, itself, is one sheet of paper, and around it shows the frame with the calligraphy on it.  The picture can be matted this way.  The glass will hold the separate calligraphy sheet in place so that it looks like an integrated whole.