Lisa J - Playing in Deb's Pinterest Journal

Deb's theme is Inspired by Pinterest, and when I saw this, I was thrilled.  I have been a Pinterest devotee for ages and agree with Deb; you can stop for a quick look and still be there hours later.  Yes, it's even worse than Facebook!

Despite the addictive qualities, Pinterest is fantastic for finding inspiring things.  For those that haven't checked it out yet, you can set up your own 'pin board' of things that you like (e.g. art journalling), and pin pictures, recipes, links to websites there for future reference.  Pinterest gets to know what you like, and you'll see more of those things on your home page - your feed.  I use Pinterest regularly to find ideas for journal pages or illustration challenges, recipes, and inspirational (or just funny) quotes.

Deb has not made an actual journal, rather she has provided a stack of good quality A4 watercolour paper, to be folded in half - similar to a Deconstructed Art Journal but a tad bigger.  This means 3 opportunities to make art on - the front, double sided middle page, and back page.  Woo hoo!

For my front page I decided on an old book page with a tree on it.  The idea is to paint out the background, so the words on the page become your focal point.  I'd seen a few of these on Pinterest and thought it looked fun, and I love painting trees, so voila!  This page was done with acrylic paints and a Micron pen.

My middle page was a labour of love.  I'm (pardon the pun) drawn to faces; I love drawing and painting them and trying to improve.  The work of Australian artist Toni Burt has always interested me, so I decided to use one of her mixed media pieces as an inspiration.  Well, I like how her face has turned out, despite my daughter insisting that her eye is too big.  Bad luck!  I always find it more difficult to do a face when you're only doing half of it for some reason...  

I'm not sure what Toni uses to draw her faces, but I like experimenting with water soluble pencils, so had a go with that.  The flowers are painted with acrylics and modeling paste, with some white gel pen.  Bit of collage in the background, and more water soluble pencil.

For the back page, something different.  As I've said, Pinterest knows what you like, so recipe wise, my feed is full of delicious but fattening sweets - primarily things with chocolate, peanut butter, and/or caramel in them.  My downfalls.  So scrumptious but so bad for me...  So instead, I decided to do a drawing of a luscious looking fresh fruit tart, compliments of Sally's Baking Addiction.  So decadent but - it's fruit, so it's not bad for you, right?  Right?!

I recently splurged (birthday money - yay!) on some arty stuff, including gelatos (which I haven't tried yet!) and a new Koi watercolour set, which I used for this page.  Tiny pans of colour but the colours are so vibrant!  Love them.  Can definitely see why I should move on from my kiddy palette...

Thanks so much Deb for thinking up the Pinterest theme - I had such a great time doing these pages and will definitely do some more experimenting!  Hope you like it! xx