Saturday, February 1, 2014

Inspiration and Painting Circles Tutorial

Here it is, my first tutorial!

In my last post I wrote about the creative inspiration I get from seeing through creative eyes. Another way I get inspiration is through other artists ~ through their blogs and through taking classes.

Last week I followed a link on Pinterest to the blog of Connie at http://artfulplay.blogspot.com/. Connie's post was about the circles she painted that were inspired by the art of Roben-Marie Smith at www.robenmarie.com. I've taken some of Roben-Marie's classes and I love her use of circles on her art journal pages. Other artists I follow who use circles a lot are Julie Fei-Fan Balzer http://balzerdesigns.typepad.com/balzer_designs/ and Ronda Palazzari  http://rondapalazzari.typepad.com/helpmeronda/.

I love circles! I Stencil them, I use punched out ones, and I paint them. A sampling of a few of my past pages with circles:



So, after reading Connie's post I got in the mood to paint circles. I have found over time that I enjoy the results best when I paint circles with my fingers. Below are pages I made from last weeks "playing".
These circles were painted directly in my art journal.



Then I painted more and used them for my Documented Life Project challenge and pages.






After posting my pages in the Document Life Project Facebook group there was some interest in how I made my painted circles. So, giving credit where credit is due, inspired by Roben-Marie Smith and Connie at Artful Play and the many other artists I follow who love to use circles, I made a tutorial on my process for painting circles. Due to the length of it I made the tutorial on a separate page. You will find it in the links at the top of the blog.

I would love to see what you do with painted circles so I've attached a link-up below. Please share a link to your blog, Flickr page or Pinterest page and share what you have made using painted circles.







3 comments:

  1. Love the circle art! Gonna try it today!! Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  2. what a great tutorial. thanks for sharing it with us. i love how all the colors make up these funky, cool circles. gonna try it soon.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Mary, you posted a photo on Pinterest of an orange envelope painted with one of your famous circles. on the envelope you wrote "was rough" and then had a label, blue and white border, long and skinny, where you wrote, "thoughts about my week". I am looking for those border labels, doesn't matter what color. Can you please tell me the brand and where I might find them...thanks, Cindy Arrington
    P.S. took your circle tutorial...love it and them.

    ReplyDelete