Welcome to another year of the Monthly Muse! The place to get your artspiration! We kickoff February with Basic Shapes as the primary design element. As I look through my online art gallery (aka Pinterest), I see lots of art that uses circles as the focal point or as repetitive elements. It is obvious circles are the heart of the design. For week one, your goal is to use CIRCLES as your primary design element. You are welcome to create any style of layout – from a traditional scrapbook page to abstract art. The one thing I ask is that circles must be the obvious design element. When we look at your completed layout, the first thoughts should be “circles!” There are many ways to incorporate circles into your art, including but not limited to: - a template - circle brushes or scribbles - polka dot papers (with LARGE dots) - stitches - elements such as buttons, clocks, full moon, planets - ink stains, coffee stains Be sure to think about negative spaces too – like punching holes in a square or rectangle. For this challenge, you may use wonky circles…as in not perfectly circular. Your circles can be ovoid and uneven (such as many designers’ scribbles). You may cut your circles into halves, quarters or more. Spirals are questionable as they are more like fractals rather than complete spheres. So, if you use spirals, be sure you also have spheres – circles on your layout. You are welcome to have other shapes in your artwork…BUT REMEMBER…upon first glance circles need to be the obvious design component. We should not be hunting for your circles. I went to TLP’s main gallery and input circle into the search engine. Here are few layouts that feature circle(s) as the main design element. MELT by Aerobigirl Maleah by AnneofAlamo (I sure do miss Anne as a Pollywog) Hello Five by our very own uber talented designer Lynn Grieveson Lemon Lime Love by RJMJ Please feel free to get creative and think outside the box. You may even want your entire design to be a circle rather than a square or rectangular layout. Here is a layout where I use circles, but they ARE NOT the major design feature. When I look at this layout, I feel squares and rectangles have as much weight as the circles. I would say circles are not the major design feature: But here is a layout where circles are for sure the major design feature: Here is a layout with a wreath design: So yes, wreaths are an acceptable circle (especially if a there are elements shaped liked circles within the wreath – planets, word art, flowers, brads etc.). So, I hope this comparison provides a bit of clarification in what I’m going for when I say “circles as the primary design element.” Monthly Muse Challenge Rules and Guidelines: 1. For the Monthly Muse, you must create a new layout for this challenge. You may create any style of layout (i.e., clean and simple, artsy, pocket style etc.), with or without a photo. Create any size page you wish. The Art Muse is for everyone. Have FUN! 2. Be sure to follow gallery guidelines when posting (at least 50% current TLP product). 3. Please post your layout to the Art Journaling Gallery HERE by Midnight 06 March 2023 (it’s a short month – we’ll be going into March). And post your layout in this thread by copying the "Share BB Code" to the right of your gallery image. Each post, regardless of the week posted in the month of February earns you one chance to win a $5 coupon to the TLP store. Thus, 1 Muse = 1 chance to win 2 Muses = 2 chances to win 3 Muses = 3 chances to win 4 Muses = 4 chances to win 4. February Week 1: Use Circles as THE PRIMARY design element in your artwork. Here is a new layout by me, collage style!
I play with circles a lot in my physical art journaling. Some of our board games came with the die cut counters still in the boards, and I keep the leftover part to use as stencils - lots of circles.
Oooo! Ha, ha....I find myself saving stuff all the time to use in organic/analog crafting. I bet those die cuts are fantastic!
Thanks for this challenge! I love circles and I'm happy to discover this section "Art journaling" as I would like to make more Art journaling.
Yay! It is great fun to create just for the sake of creating...or to explore new ideas or techniques. We do these challenges most months of the year. So I do hope you'll keep stoping by and creating with us.
Thanks for all the inspiration Lisa! I wanted to try not using a template (rare for me) so I picked a paper with circles on it and went from there:
The minute I read the word 'circle', a song recorded in 1969, "Going in Circles" by the Friends of Distinction, entered my head and would not leave me alone until I scrapped some of its lyrics...and it's still going around in my head.
Thank you for the Muse When I was exploring the muse concept Joy walked in and declared "Mum when the challenge says use circles, it doesn't mean the entire page has to be made up of circles." She promptly pulled up a chair and we created this together. It took a few sittings as she has homework etc, but we finished it this evening.
Sometimes I don't know what happens ... this is what I ended up with. Only about 250% different from what I first plan.