Strength and Flowers, an Art Journal Portrait

 with Nicole Austin

I love to use collage sheets for quick and easy backgrounds in my art journal.  The vintage wallpaper patterns are my favorite and I love it when little bits of the paper peek through the final portrait!  I really believe you can’t go wrong with flowers, either, they are just so fun and bright!  Portraits can be as simple as sketching over a background and coloring it in with oil paint sticks.  I use white and yellow ochre and blend the two together to create very basic skin colors, highlights and shadows.  The more you practice, the easier it gets!  And I just love painting with my fingers so I’ll just dip them right into the paint or smudge wet paint pen marks to add quick patches of color.  I hope you enjoy this project and that you are inspired to create something in your art journal!

Enjoy the video

 Products Used:

Stencils: “Words, words, words,” “Lace 8×10,” “Flower Drawing 1”

Collage Papers: Vintage Wallpaper (Green Floral), Collage Pak 10-30-16, and Collage Pak Sunday Inspiration 7-17-16

Paint: Dina Wakley acrylic paint (“Night”), Homemade Modern acrylic paint (“Robin’s Egg)

Paint pens: Sharpie waterbased paint pen (white extra fine tip, red extra bold), Liquitex (15mm neon pink, neon red, neon orange, bright green gold, and 2mm bright aqua), Montana (15mm navy blue)

Other: Shiva oil paintsticks (white and yellow ochre), Stabilo marks-all pencil (black), Stabilo 3-in-1 woody pencil (black), waterbrush, Hero Arts neon paint daubers (purple, yellow), collage paper scraps (patterned tissue paper, junk mail, etc)