Amber Gibbs - Art Journals, Collage Art & Mixed Media Adventures

Inspiration File - Birds

Created from vintage wallpaper, these bird wall decorations are fantastic. And great inspiration. Find some colorful paper, a bird template (find any vintage bird image and trace it) and cut. Wouldn't this be a cool collage sheet?

Inspiration File - Christmas Time

I love this time of year. When I was a child, December was the longest month, but one of sweet sweet anticipation. From December 1st, it seemed as if Christmas would never arrive. But the days would slowly creep by and then school would be out and then painful days of waiting (but filled with cookies as my mother would break out the cookies by then) and then it was Christmas!!  As an adult, December seems to fly by and Christmas is over before I even really get to savor the anticipation. I hope my sweet Kavya will enjoy the holidays as much as I do. This year she'll be too young - I suspect like Thanksgiving she'll just get over-stimulated by all the strange people in the house and her schedule will get all thrown off. But maybe by then it will be a bit better - she'll be over that 3 month mark. She's almost there and starting to sleep better at night.

I've started this inspiration file category on this blog and I'll be posting more interesting things to inspire your creativity and art (and mine). My time for art is so restricted now so I don't have much art to post. But I want to post something to keep this blog alive.

I love the old charming photo above. I also love the color palette it has - something like this:

Inspiration File - 1950's Children's Illustrations

kiddie_record_120, originally uploaded by Al Q.

A wonderful set of vintage children's illustrations from the 1950's. Use these to inspire your own cute doodles!

Some girls need shoes

Today I messed around in photoshop (between feedings, diaper changes, and baby comforting). This was the result. The shoe I drew several years ago for a board book project that I submitted to Somerset Studios (which they did not publish). I have always loved the shoe illustrations I drew for that and so I thought I'd play around with them.

I also figured out how to do the cool starburst technique. Here's link to a quick tutorial.

Ironically, I rarely wear heels. My husband doesn't like them because they make me taller than him. I do have a thing for shoes, but I rarely indulge it.

I have painted shoes tho.

Digital Art

1. Un collage, 2. 66, 3. Octophant remix, 4. Mariana without text, 5. spilling over, 6. Holding Pattern, 7. Saint Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds., 8. Java Estate, 9. Stelzengängerin, 10. babylon 122, 11. Mme Egret, 12. "pOwERfuL", 13. Hummingbird, 14. Σoφíα, 15. Sueños Imperiales III, 16. client work

 

I've been intrigued with digital collages lately as I have some time in front of the computer, but not much time in the studio. I hope to play around with some digital art in the near future.

Art Journaling while the Baby sleeps

I've managed to find time lately to do a little art journaling in my spare time when the baby is asleep. I am not going upstairs to my studio because I won't hear her cry and it just feels too far away right now. So I've moved some art supplies downstairs to work and I store it in a tote and have a plastic laminate sheet to work on. It's interesting working without paint and pen and ink. I used so much pen and ink while pregnant. Now I'm afraid to use it downstairs as I'm pretty sure I'll knock it off the couch arm and spill it all over.

So my basic supplies are:
- several pens
- zip lock bags of ephemera
- scissors
-glue stick

I also used a rubber stamp (Why She Sings) on this page - one of the rubber stamps I designed for Alpha Stamps. Leslie (owner of Alpha Stamps) has put up all of the rubber stamps that I designed on one page on at Alpha Stamps. This includes several new designs and a few of the best of my older ones.

Here is the full page. I came to a realization the other day that I can use ephemera with questionable copyright issues in my art journal. After all, it's my art journal - not something that I intend to publish.  Plus I think it will help preserve some modern day stuff when I look back. I used some basic grey scrapbooking papers and some 7gypsies rub ons as well. I know this isn't a huge realization, but it has freed me up to play with whatever I find - which I need right now as I am just finding a few moments here and there to do art.