Digital Collage – Glowing Gown

Posted on by December 17, 2013
Reply

Glowing Gown Digital Collage

glowing gown digital collageI call this digital collage “Glowing Gown” for lack of a better name. I am not very good at naming my artwork although I do try to name every piece I create, so I don’t get too confused in the long run.

I created this digital collage in Adobe Photoshop, the most amazing digital art program on the planet. (Can you believe a ton of companies turned down that idea when it was first shopped around?!)

I created this digital collage using an old vintage image of a woman, and the background palace is also an old public domain photograph. I was able to create the glowing and sparkling effects with custom brushes that you can download for free all over the internet.

The hazy, smokey effects in the room was created using overlapping images that were set to setting like “overlay” and varying opacities.

Abstract Collage Flower

Posted on by December 16, 2013
Reply

collage flower cat whipple smI was playing around with some abstract doodling pages that I created. I have this need to doodle with markers and paint pens, especially if I am watching a TV show – my hands must be busy.

I don’t consider myself an abstract artist so I was thinking of ways that I could use my many abstract doodles in collage pieces. This abstract collage flower is my first attempt at using one of my crazy doodles in a collage.

I scanned the doodle into my computer and made a print out of  it. (That way I can use it over and over.) Then I painted a solid background on heavy mixed-media paper and pasted on the doodle print in a flower space. The flower center is another doodle that I also scanned in.

For the leaves I pasted some text into a word program and set the text to green color. Then I printed it out and cut it out in leaf shapes. I hand drew the stems with markers. Overall it was a fun project but I think I have a ways to go before it’s something I totally love. But that’s how we get better, by experimenting.

Art journaling With Magazines

Posted on by November 27, 2013
Reply

Art Journaling With Magazines

Mixed media collage.

Mixed media collage.

One of my favorite types of collage art is art journaling. If you’ve never heard of it, it has become a huge form of art in its own right within the past 10 years or so.

To the left is a page from my art journal that I just finished. I used an idea that I got from Teesha Moore on her website at Teeshamoore.com. She has a video page on how she creates art journal books from large sheets of paper (very cool by the way.) One of the ideas she had that I liked was using magazine bits and pieces to create frames for your collages and art journals.

Now there is nothing new about the idea of using magazines in collage art or art journals, it’s just the way she did it that I really liked. One thing that always concerns me when using magazine images in collage and art journals is the copyright infringement. I don’t really worry when it’s just me messing around in my own personal art journals. But lately I am starting to think about the future, and what happens if I create collage art or art journal pieces that I would like to license to publishing companies. Then the copyright infringement becomes a big issue.

What Teesha Moore does is take bits of magazine images and just work them over until they’re not that recognizable anymore. The videos can be viewed on her website by clicking on “videos” on the top menu bar. But if you look at my art journal above, even though I used a bunch of magazine images for the border you can’t really tell. So I think I’ll continue to use this technique in other collages.

A couple of other sites that are really worth checking out:

Create Mixed Media: has lots of videos and tutorials on collage and art journaling.

JenniBellie Studio: This link goes directly to JenniBellie Studio videos, which takes a while to load. But she has tons of videos posted there that are free to watch.

Traci Baustista: Traci Batista is a pretty well know designer, blogger, artist, doodler and author. (I have one of her books, love it.)  This isn’t her official website, but her Youtube channel with over 30 videos on journaling and collage making.