It's okay to color outside the lines!

One (of many) things I've learned as a mixed media artist is that precision is not always necessary or desired.  I need to remind myself often that "Art has no rules".  And, while I'm sure many artists would disagree with that I know it is how I want to create.
Having an art journal really helps me with that.  I love to experiment in my art journal.  Especially with backgrounds.  And since it is MY journal there definitely are no rules.  If I mess something up I can look at it as a flopportunity and go with a different idea or adapt my original.  It's not like I ever have to show it to anyone - that's up to me.

Another way to free things up and let the attempts at precision go is to color outside the lines as I did in the postcard you see below.  

I doodled the image first with a fine point black Sharpie.  The design was inspired by a blog I get alot of inspiration from - Geninne's Art Blog.  She share's great examples and ideas of color, texture, shapes and design in her art and photography.  Once I had the flowers drawn I painted the whole thing blue (didn't show up on the scan) and left it pretty wet so I could let the other colors bleed onto the paper.  I love playing with watercolors and watching how they run together on the page.  I really like how it looks when colored outside the lines.

Another fun way to make these flower doodles is to make the background first.  You can "splotch" some splashes of different colors.  Then you can use those splotches to decide where to place flowers (or not-remember no rules!).  I have the background page painted for a journal page:

  I'll be doodling on it the next couple days and will share the journal page when done.

And I'll keep reminding myself to not worry about how precise it is and not take myself too serious.

Art has no rules!

Thanks for looking at my blog!  Have a great and creative weekend!

 

DIY Postcard Swap 2011

Here's examples of the postcards I made for ihanna's DIY Postcard Swap.  I made 10 postcards for the swap and they were all a variatiom of these 4 designs.  They were all sort of a spn-off from some pages I was doing in my bird themed altered book (I'll post those soon).
They all started with watercolor backgrounds.  I sprinkled then with salt while wet to make some fun designs.  Then found some of my fav bird stamps, stamped them on tissue paper with permanent black ink, then tore them out.  This is a trick I learned from a journal artist friend, Kerri .  Once you have the tissue paper image you can "glue" it to your background with gel medium.  I like to use matte medium.  This process makes for a lot sharper image when putting an image on cold press watercolor paper which has a rough texture.  I stamped or wrote the words on each card.  They went out in the mail on the 8th so are making their way to thier new homes!
Thanls for taking a look.
Have a fun and creative weekend!