I’ve been working near-daily in my art journal — adding collage, oil pastel, tempera paint, drips of acrylic ink, and pencil and paint marker scribbles. Here is some of my recent work.
Recent Work
Tag: my art
Make Ugly Art
For each piece of polished, finished art shared online, every artist has a whole pile of unfinished, “messed up,” or ugly pieces. And that’s exactly as it should be.
I, for example, don’t love the art journal spread above.
It started out with some collage and minimal marks with oil pastel and black India ink, but I realized that it reminded me of camouflage and hunting — not something that resonates with me. I added more colors and marks, still hated it, and then covered up most of it with white tempura paint. It’s fine. Whatever. I’ll turn the page and do something else.
For years, I’ve been telling anyone who’ll listen: make ugly art.
It’s one of the first things I recommend to emerging artists, those who are afraid of messing up (whatever that might mean) or who desperately want to be able to translate what’s in their mind onto the page but haven’t practiced long enough to know how to do that.
Purposefully making ugly art lessens the fear of creating something you dislike and is a great exploratory process.
Some ideas for making ugly art:
- Use color combinations you don’t like or usually use
- Scribble out or paint over sections of your work
- Stick down collage any which way
- Try using tools you haven’t used before
- Use materials you aren’t usually interested in or aren’t special: tissue paper or wrapping paper, a receipt, a ripped ad from a magazine, etc.
- Move quickly and impulsively, not thinking about what you’re going to do next
The best part about setting out to create ugly art? If you finish it and hate it, you’ve succeeded. But if you finish it and love it or love sections of it, you’ve also succeeded.
No matter the outcome, you are creating, exploring, practicing, and learning so much more about what you do and don’t like.
Summer Greens
The best days are those where creating comes easily and the results are loose and balanced. I worked on this rich green art journal spread over several short sessions, first collaging, then adding paint pen, tempura, and acrylic ink.
Later, some black ink on another page seeped onto the edges — but that’s all part of the experience of art journaling, and the results are never a disappointment.
Digital Collage: Grandma Cordie
I’ve been exploring digital collage, remixing my own art and photography into new creations. (I even did a recent collaboration with Max Devereaux.)
I still prefer analog collage: it’s a more intuitive process, and I enjoy the serendipity of using what I find on my desk. There is also nothing that can replace the process of touching and interacting with physical art; it’s a much more emotional medium for me.
Digital collage, though, allows me to play with composition, use text in new ways (I don’t like printing out exactly what I need or want for an analogue piece, preferring to communicate with my art and not dictate it), and even incorporate and manipulate photos that have significance, like this one of my great grandmother.
Weekend Art Journaling
This weekend, I let myself play in my art journal, working with tissue paper, acrylic paint, and colored pencil. The result is an energetic burst of greens and blues — reminding me of the lushness of summer.
