Alice Hendon, Artangleology

  This page in my art journal was a lot of fun to build! It incorporates watercolor, scrap paper, an old book page, gesso, fabric flowers, stamps, sticker sentiment, permanent pens and Posca paint pens. Grab one of everything and hang on tight! Because here we go!  A couple years ago while we still lived in Maine, I was into making what we called Pretty Painted Papers. Robin Mead got me started with them. The thought was to get some pretty paint on a page that might be used later as collage or even as the main focus of your page. I always loved this piece but never had any way to repurpose it . . . until now. I cut the paper to fit my journal page, which was roughly in half. So I have another half of this pretty painted page I can use another time. Win/win! When I made this paper I used watercolors, a permanent black pen and white Posca Paint Pens . The main feature I wanted to use on this page was the flower you see in the middle. I made this for a prompt in the group Express...

  Just a quick post today while I am feeling good. Eek! Some days are better than others concentration wise and today is good. You may have seen me post this postcard on Instagram or on my FB page. Looks really cool, doesn't it? And hard even? But it was so easy and I'm going to quickly walk you through it. And by 'quickly' I mean I forgot to take most of the photos. But we got this anyway!  I began with a Nostalgie watercolor postcard from Hahnemühle and used a wet onto dry technique. By that I mean I left the postcard dry, I didn't spray it with water first. I used my Schmincke watercolors and just painted splotches onto the card. I didn't fuss too much about the edges and just let the color work the way it wanted to. Looks like I used my four go-to colors.  Next I used a really cool stamp from Studio Light to add some background texture by way of flowers and insects. Just one long stamp used twice on the postcard. Then I used some of those same watercolors...

  Hahnemühle has a new watercolor book available and you are going to need to get one for yourself! Or maybe two! I love mine and have had a fun time trying out various art methods in it. Not just watercolor. Let me show you.  The 95 lb. pages are roughly 5.5" square and come in either beige or grey shades. The book I have is beige. I did not know how the color of the page would affect my art, so I just got right to work. I could figure it out along the way. The pages lay flat when the hard cover book is open. There are sixty pages total, that comes out to 120 work surfaces. The page surface is smooth with very little texture. I began with some painter's tape along the edges on one page. After wetting down the entire page I added Schmincke watercolors in bands of color, then let them sit to dry.  After spritzing some water on the dry page, I brought in some extra lines of color with my Schminckes.  Remember I said I didn't know how the beige paper would affect my ...

  Did you know every year on October 1st we celebrate World Postcard Day? Yep! We do! It happens each year since 2019 when we celebrated the 150th anniversary of the postcard. Need to shoot off a message to Grandma but too tired to write a full blown letter? Maybe time is an issue? Perhaps you want to pen a short message to brighten someone's day? The postcard can be your go-to for birthdays, holidays, retirements, catching up or to just say "hello, I was thinking about you." And where do you start? Well, you really should start with Hahnemühle . I did. I grabbed a tin of their cold pressed watercolor postcards and a pad of their Nostalgie sketch postcards and got started.  Since the tin postcards are advertised as 'watercolor' I began by pulling out my set of Schmincke watercolors and painted a nice wet on wet background. I love the bright colors you get with Schmincke and this paper loved the color. I was able to stick with just one layer of paint for this par...

In my last post I showed you a brand new product from Hahnemühle . So brand new that it is just now hitting stores in the United States. The Watercolor Bookmark Pad is already available in Europe . In this photo you can see the very first piece of art I created with one of these bookmarks.  Made of 100% cotton cold pressed watercolor paper, the glued pad has fifteen bookmarks waiting for you to add your art to. I tried several different projects with a load of different products. I wanted to see what these bookmarks could handle, and they handled everything I threw at them very well.  The bookmarks are approximately 2" x 8", cold pressed surface on one side and a little smoother on the reverse. For this first piece I went with the straight up cold pressed side. Ranger's Distress Oxide and Distress Inks are some of my favorite tools lately. I used that little blending tool and started swirling color onto my paper.  And I added color till the whole side was covered. I di...