Grid Journal Inspired Abstract Series – Part 3 of 3#abstractpainting #gardenart #mixedmedia #collage

Today I’m finishing up the last of this 3-part series on the seven, 12″x12″ abstract mixed media landscapes on cradled wood panels that were a birthday gift for my husband. The paintings are loosely based on a green, monochrome grid journal page that I made last week that gave me the idea for my color palette and the garden-inspiration.

If you haven’t seen the first 2 videos and want to watch them in order, you can find them here:
Part 1: https://youtu.be/26rES300hsg
Part 2: https://youtu.be/indpR_VVdY8

Comments, questions, and shares are always welcome and appreciated – Thank you for watching!

Materials used:
Acrylic paint (Nova Color Paint)
Collage paper – painted by me and from Magazines
Color shapers – https://amzn.to/3wfeAwi
Neocolor crayons – https://amzn.to/3wfeAwi
Stabilo Woody crayons – https://amzn.to/4bI0Fzm

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Hi everyone it’s Jackie shamberg minin this is part three the last part of a three-part series I did of a well it ended up being a six panel 12x 12 series I did for my husband for his birthday so this was inspired by our garden and it’s

One example of how this grid journal page really inspired me to work with green and it like instantly was Garden to me so I moved on and made it larger so that it is this size this is the one that I actually did not use so

This is the seventh one and I gave my husband the other six so two of them won’t change a whole lot in this video and the others will change fairly significantly all right let me know which one you ended up liking in the best I would love to hear

From you and thank you for following along if you have not yet watched part Parts one and two I’d recommend stopping now and watching one and two I will link to them here probably up here maybe up here and we’ll put the links also in the description all right thanks for

Watching and away we go I’m less sick than I was for the other voiceovers so hopefully my voice sounds more like normal although I do I can already hear the nas sound so apologies for that um I I’m so proud of these well really all seven panels I

Suppose um I’m realizing that this is the first time I’ve ever taken had a specific body of work that was inspired intentionally by something I.E my garden in this case and then done an abstracted you know this is my interpretation of the garden and what I love about our

Garden so clearly it’s not literal clearly it’s not realistic clearly it’s not any of these things but I felt so inspired by it and I trusted myself to let it be what it was there were a couple times I thought about making some sort of flower shape

And I quickly poo pooed that because whenever I make something that’s representative uh I tend I don’t know I don’t like it when I do it in my own work so I don’t know I want to keep things abstracted some of the things like the the maroon and pink stripes in the upper

Row second one from the left that to me feels floral I know it stripes I know it doesn’t make any logical sense but to me that feels floral so it could be rows of tiny flowers it could be one flower with different shades of pink um none of this is a literal interpretation

But I was going for the pops of color in our yard we have tons of thanks to my husband we have tons of greenery we’ve got some evergreen bushes we have some lots of hydrangeas which have tons of green with their FL flowers we have lots of daffodils and irises from my mom’s

Garden actually we transplanted those before she moved and there’s just a ton of green so for me the majority of the inspiration is really coming through in the greens there’s different shades of green right we have a big lawn in the front um a big

Yard and we have the two lots on either side of us have a wooded front yard basically so a portion of their front yard is is all natural little mini Forest patch from part of their yard to the street and we have a clear shot to the

Street we can we can see that there’s no wooded area but we get the benefit of having the Lush trees on either side to look at so all that to say I loved using all these different shades of green I loved mixing them together with each

Other I loved finding new Hues that I haven’t used before I loved glazing so that I had transparent uh areas of some of these transparent colors going over other sections so it really was created a lot of depth it created a lot of uh kind of like a glow I feel like

When you glaze a lot and you put in a layer of gloss medium and then you go back and glaze again and you put a layer of gloss medium if you change the color slightly with each glaze it really builds up nicely and gives you kind of this glow

From say from underneath I guess it’s from underneath it you can just it’s just there’s like a certain oomph that’s there that’s not there otherwise so there’s just some space in the layers and it feels ethereal is probably not the right word but it feels like rich and Alive

You know how the air feels different on a rainy day when you look out like in a night sky or a night you know look out at the road at night it looks different on a rainy night than it does on a clear dry night when it’s raining the colors

Are uh Lush and darker and really saturated and then on the sunny or at least dry days things are a little bit Dusty um and just not super Lush I don’t know long way to say that uh I liked the different transparent layers uh thus why

I kept glazing in Little Bits here and there and all glazing is is putting on a thin layer of paint and wiping almost all of it off and then putting on another thin layer and then wiping some off just like I’m doing right there so it looks like in some cases I’m wiping

All the color off but most of the time there’s color left over it’s just that it’s very thin layer so you go back over it again and again and again and again and you build up the layers slowly and that is what glazing is just thin layers over

Time see I’m adding another layer here apparently I skipped a section there filled that in a bunch and I didn’t like apparently how light those you know little u-shaped Scoops were so colored over the whole thing with a darker green and now I’m carving spaces out of there

You know I forget what I’ve done by the time I do these voiceovers and I myself was surprised by that when I painted over the whole thing I did not remember that but now I do now the upper right corner the one that’s directly above my my palette there that one

Doesn’t change much at all that one is basically done so the other others change a decent amount especially that upper left the upper left uh I was not loving at this date and this one that I’m working on now the second from the right on the top I

Really really liked and then everything I did to it I liked it less and less and less so I make some big changes a bit later with that one and the one that’s on the bottom row all the way to the right closest to my palette that one I thought was interesting wasn’t

Really loving the giant green shape at the bottom but it became my favorite painting by the end so don’t give up on me don’t give up on it it’s funny how sometimes you just find the exact right little bits of color to add and it changes everything now I did have to remind

Myself many times I spent about N9 or 10 hours on these panels thus why I have enough footage to make a three-part uh little series with these videos it the last two hours maybe 3 hours I very much felt the pressure of okay these are going a good

Direction you like where these are going your husband’s birthday is very soon people are coming into town people actually probably were in town already when I was working on this part for this whole video um so his parents came to town his two best friends from college

Came to town it was a really nice weekend that we all got to hang out and I kept darting into my art room with every spare half hour I had to try to finish these up and I felt kind of rude because we did have people uh staying with us and visiting

Us and I would just disappear sometimes when everyone else was doing something else so and I did have a whole night to myself uh when my husband and his friends were out at a a Bucks game in Milwaukee and my kids were asleep and then I just spent that whole chunk of Night

Painting and it was really fun to have these just to go back to it’s been such a long time that I’ve worked on a series of panels I’ve gotten so much into the grid journaling that it’s such a nice sweet short fix that I get to make teeny little art

Series in one or or two sittings but this reminded me this process of doing these seven panels reminded me how much fun it is to make bigger art as well and these are not huge they’re 12 x 12 but so much fun and now where I put the striped that

Striped section there on the bottom left the pink and maroon when I put it on that green stock again that feels very floral to me I don’t have the the pink and maroon stripes in every single panel I did have it in more than one because I wanted it

To tie to something else in the series I didn’t want it just to be out and not related to anything else because it’s so distinct and so obvious most things I didn’t I wasn’t too matchy matchy on if I put red in where the red was coming from is it

Tissue paper is it uh butcher paper is it just regular magazine collage but it something was very obvious like those pink and maroon lines I wanted to make sure they were somewhat grounded in the in the series so for me that meant just having it appear more than once so it appears

In those two places in a big Swatch and then right where I’m working right now on that second from the left on the bottom row on the far left Edge that’s a little bit of a maroon stripe and a pink stripe there as well much less obvious um portion of that paper for

Sure I don’t know if it seems weird that I’m so proud of being able to have a series that I wasn’t so inspired by my husband’s Garden I don’t that’s not how I typically work um and quite frankly when I started it I wasn’t sure I could pull

It off so the fact that I feel like I did pull it off um I am very proud of that cuz was a stretch and that’s one of the reasons that this feels like such a special collection to give my husband one obviously because it’s inspired by The Gardens that he has

Tended to and shaped in our yard and two because it was really a different way for me to work that turned out successful in this instance I continue to move the panels around just to keep the ones I’m working on front and center and I’ve carefully chosen to put

The ones I’m not working on actively at the moment up on that top row on the right side the one that I just brought forward now I this is one of those panels that it’s good that you’re working on more than one panel because this one felt like

Such a sinking ship and everything I added to it seemed to not give me any more help with a clear Direction so what I wish I had done is when it started going in a direction that I didn’t enjoy I wish I had made a bigger Bolder

Choice and just painted over a huge chunk of it and then started from there instead I was trying to do things a little piece meal and try to save more of the background thus using this Leaf you know masked Leaf tissue paper that I used and it just makes it look a little

Bit busier which was not my goal this I loved so on the bottom right side I’m using a very small color shaper to pull through that Celadon to show the other green behind it and make those stripes I’m using a wet wipe just to get

A bit more of the paint off in between the stripes it was so much fun to do very pleasing if you’re looking for a very pleasing um activity highly recommend paint a thin layer of paint and then pull it back with those color Shapers I decided to add some turquoise

Paint because I added some of the turquoise cray earlier again it just grounds it makes that color more of a uh what’s word I’m looking for I don’t know just like a building block of the series right many of them have lots and lots of green and

Then most of them have a little turquoise somewhere not all but most this is me adding a little bit of periwinkle near that red cleaning up the edges still trying to save that one on the top so because the majority of the foundation was set on these the bottom

Middle one is still a mess but the other ones are starting to take some shape I wanted to focus on the small details now so like what little pops of color do I want where do I want them what makes sense from a visual perspective are there other colors I

Want to bring in if so where and how much I knew that I wanted the green to stay the majority of the panel so I didn’t want to take anything away from that I spent some time adding different colors of green different colors mixing I I alternated between adding turquoise

To green gold or turquoise to Celadon and green gold I used payes gray and green gold green gold was basically my you know my yellow and this it helped make the darker Blues much more green and it kept the transparency so that I could see through the layers in most of these

Situations the Celadon is very opaque which led to more opaque layers each panel kind of has its own thing that’s its shining difference the upper left hand side has that big white patch that makes that different the red in the in the middle it’s almost like a bullseye in the

Middle there’s a big part of me that wishes that was over a few inches however that’s where it is so I went with it I didn’t think it was worth trying to redo it and move those because they just kind of fell there organically so even though typically from a

Compositional perspective you wouldn’t necessarily want to have your focal point right in the middle of the panel I decided this is one of those cases where you have to know the rules to break the rules so this is me knowing that I don’t want that but still doing

It and that’s a cool thing about being the artist you get to decide that someone else can come up and tell me like H that’s right in the middle of the panel why’d you do that and I can say h i don’t know that’s where I wanted to be took me a while

When I was you know still working on my corporate job and still you know painting as a hobby on the side is what I called it before I realized that I get to make the decisions which sounds obvious to me now but before I was also much younger so I was

10 15 years younger and I would ask people their thoughts on if something was finished or not is this panel finished is this painting finished do you think so I’m not sure do you think it is and now as I’m you know 10 15 years older and wiser and more experienced at

At painting and finding my style the only one that can decide if something’s done is me and the same goes for you in your art the only one who gets to decide if it’s done is you so that’s the the wonderful thing and sometimes the intimidating thing because of course we all want

People to like our art and we all want to like our art too sometimes it’s a little intimidating being the one to call the shots but it’s really a good thing does take some getting used to though if you’re not one to boldly stand up for yourself and say this is good

Enough as it is and it’s a hard thing to to learn to do as an artist so I’m not making light of what it is it took me so long to call myself an artist um yeah so I’m not at all saying it’s a minor blip it is it’s more of a mindset

Change I think going from calling yourself an artist um instead of someone who paints his hobby or draws or collages as a hobby to call yourself an artist is really stating your intention to the whole world around you right you don’t have to make different art to call yourself an

Artist you can don’t have to be an experienced artist with shows at the Met to call yourself an artist all you have to do is decide you’re an artist that’s it there’s no prerequisite don’t go to Art School don’t to to do anything special from a qualification standpoint so it’s really a mindset

Shift once I had that mindset shift it I got a lot more traction in what I was working on now I’m using some masking tape here I put a little bit of gloss medium at the edge of the tape to give myself a clean line otherwise it’ll

Bleed through sometimes but I there’s so many soft edges in these panels that I wanted there to be a couple crisp lines and that was one that I chose me trying to figure out how bold I want my green gold and I decided I wanted to have another straight line this little

Horizon line here underneath my white thing that looks to me like a little snake plant in a pot that’s probably because I have some snake plants in pots over here look at that crisp line it’s so satisfying because I had painted over a lot of the Celadon with green gold and

Tinted it and glazed it I’m bringing the Celadon back in in lots of areas or brought the Celadon back in because I was missing that neutral um I don’t know for some reason celadon’s very comforting to me I don’t know that just because it’s the quiet space um I don’t find gray necessarily

Comforting but I really find celladon comforting and it’s basically a gray green um it just makes me so happy it’s very light and honestly if I went to a forest preserve I don’t know if I’d see a lot of celladon anywhere maybe um maybe some like mosses

And things that are growing on the sides of oak trees I don’t know but for me it somehow ties things together for me it allows the shiny boldness of the green gold to really kind of be rocketed out into the front gives it a big push forward the celadon’s just hanging back

Supporting its friends not trying to take the spotlight but setting all the other aspects up for Success this process I allowed myself to be very free with my brush and with the collage and with all the things I wasn’t sure if I wanted to outline those red little tissue paper

Parts but I did anyway I tried to as I was thinking and making decisions I was trying to also be doing something so to kind of think through my brush if that makes any sense I wanted it to be very organic and natural I did not want it to feel forced

Or to try to resemble anything cuz it’s definitely does not and if if you think about where I started from that grid journal page with those tiny little 18 squares they were mostly green they were not nearly as detailed as this because they were very small and that was a totally different

Exercise but it’s the greens together that made me so happy and it feels so fresh and Lush and springy and you know it’s February in Chicago and it is gloomy so this is potentially just my escape to hey what’s going to come in March and April and May let me get some green

Here let’s remember that things are going to come back to life I don’t remember what I just used there to kind of carbon to that Celadon I can’t remember if it’s pencil or if I tried to carve into it now I’m bringing in some corrone gold just to warm things up a

Bit right this is kind of the opposite of green and you can see as I’m glazing I’m wiping it on and then wiping a lot of it off just adds a little more Dimension having more warm colors in there it’s not as bright and loud as the

Red so it doesn’t pull a lot of focus it just rounds things out a bit I’m so excited that I finally get to show you today what the seven panels looked like when I gave it to my husband and there’s one that I did not

Give to him I did hold one of them back and it’s the bottom left hand one that I held back and you’ll see I didn’t I didn’t tape everything from the transition from this point to the finished product but the first one that you’ll see pop up here in a minute is

The one I did not include in the series I could have kept working on it I may keep working on it but it wasn’t I wasn’t going to have a series of seven and it didn’t I liked the other ones so much more that I just stuck with

The other ones but I’ll still show you you’ve been so patient to watch all these videos of course I’ll show you this is me making a further mess out of of that that one and I’m adding some color just to get things to a different saturation Point bit more

Green thank you so much for watching this I’m going to be showing you the finished products very soon there will be some jumps and some of these have made a lot of progress this is the one I did not choose there are things I like about it but it’s very centered to

Me and I had so much fun making these thank you for watching thank you for inquiring about them if you’d like to see more of my videos please subscribe I would love to have you watching more often I post new videos every Sunday have a wonderful day and this one’s my favorite