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ISSUE 1

ONCE UPON A TIME...

FRACTURED FAIRY TALES BY RIET POCH

FINDING CALM IN THE CHAOS BY ASHLEY RODGERS

THE ART OF PLAY BY LAUREN BLOOD

FREE DOWNLOADS FROM KATIE SMITH AND ALICIA SCHULTZ

WHEN ART & FAMILY COLLIDE BY LAUREN HOOPER

MAKING THE EPHEMERAL LAST BY ALICIA SCHULTZ

PLUS READER GALLERIES & MUCH MORE

PUBLISHED IN COLLABORATION WITH:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS PUBLISHER / EDITOR / DESIGNER Tanyalee Kahler (hello@brushmag.com)

EDITORS Caylee Grey (caylee@getmessyartjournal.com) Lauren Hooper (lauren@getmessyartjournal.com)

ADVERTISING Zinia Amoiridou

LOGO SCRIPT Sue Ko (www.sueko.com.au) Instagram:@hello.sueko ------

ISSUE 1 ONCE UPON A TIME FEATURE WRITERS Alicia Schultz, Ashley Rodgers, Julia Cusworth, Katie Smith, Lauren Blood, Lauren Hooper, Misty Granade, Riet Poch, Sasha Zinevych, Tanyalee Kahler.

PHOTOGRAPHY Artists own photography

ILLUSTRATIONS Popmarleo Shop on Creative Market ------

SUBMISSIONS www.brushmag.com/submissions ------

Brush Magazine is an independent magazine published bimonthly in collaboration with Get Messy Art Journal by: Brush Magazine c/o SANDFORD TAS 7020 Distributed by: BlurbÂ® http://au.blurb.com/ ------

FOR MORE INFORMATION visit www.brushmag.com Facebook: @brushmag Instagram: @brush_magazine Twitter: @brushmag Pinterest: brushmagazine

CONTENTS p

2 5 6

by Ashley Rodgers

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS FROM THE EDITORS MAKING THE EPHEMERAL LAST by Alicia Schultz

WHEN ART & FAMILY COLLIDE by Lauren Hooper

14 THE ART OF PLAY by Lauren Blood

HOW I STARTED AN ART DIARY AND WHY YOU SHOULD TOO! by Julia Cusworth

27 FRACTURED FAIRY TALES by Riet Poch

ARTWORK 30 DOWNLOADABLE FANTASY ELF by Katie Smith

42 FINDING CALM IN THE CHAOS by Ashley Rodgers

YOUR FIRST STEPS INTO 44 TAKING ART JOURNALING by Sasha Zinevych

GIVING by Misty Granade

59 STORYBOOK COLLABORATION by Riet Poch and Katie Smith

63 64 MESSY PAGES RECIPE

WHERE TO FROM HERE?

COVER ARTWORK

Katie Smith

Website www.punkprojects.com Instagram www.instagram.com/studio.katie Facebook www.facebook.com/punkprojects Read More on Page 30

by Tanyalee Kahler

EXPLODING STARS SUPPLIES: Washi tape, Watercolour paint, White and black pen.

ELEANOR MCCOMB Elly is an artist living in Sydney. Her life is loosely organised chaos, which is largely reflected by her art.

BACKGROUND: I made this based on a tutorial by Get Messy artist Katie. It was so much fun to just paint without having to think too much about the outcome, and without having to come up with the idea. I love galaxies, they are a huge part of my illustration work, but this was a lot looser and more fun than that.

FIND ELLY: www.ellymack.com www.instagram.com/ellymack_

PROUDLY A

MEMBER

READER'S WATERCOLOUR MAGIC

TAKING YOUR FIRST STEPS INTO ART JOURNALING BY SASHA ZINEVYCH

YOU’VE ONLY BEEN ART JOURNALING A RELATIVELY SHORT TIME, TELL US HOW LONG IT HAS BEEN AND HOW YOU DISCOVERED THE CRAFT? I started art journaling in April 2016. I always loved drawing and painting as a kid. I could spend hours and hours drawing princesses, my family and nature. However, I didn’t consider myself particularly talented in this area. I got good grades for drawing lessons at middle school and that was it. Despite not having a habit for drawing in my daily life, I have always craved more creativity. This is when I discovered the world of decorated planners. It seemed reasonable to me – I was combining practical use of planning with creative embellishments. I bought a ring planner and decorated some inserts for a month. Still, something was off, so I kept looking.

INTRODUCING SASHA ZINEVYCH Sasha is a twenty-something freelancer. She works from home, so is free to choose where she lives. She is from Ukraine, but has been living in Poland for a year now. Sasha is inspired by European architecture on a daily basis. Her first hobby was photography and she still adores it. Fun fact: her full name is Aleksandra and nobody from non-Ukrainian and non-Russian speaking world can understand – why and how! But that’s really how you shorten her full name in her native language.

YOU CAN FIND SASHA: PROUDLY A

Website www.alek-z.com Instagram www.instagram.com/sasha_zeen

MEMBER

One day, browsing Pinterest, like you normally do, I stumbled upon a beautiful mixed media page. I followed the link to the source to see the author of this beauty and ended up on Get Messy Art Journal Instagram page. To cut a long story short, I re-purposed my regular notebook to be my art journal and made my first art journal page that same day. And the rest, as they say, is history.

TELL US WHY YOU ART JOURNAL. DO YOU CREATE BECAUSE YOU LIKE ART, OR DO YOU LIKE TO TELL STORIES, OR EXPRESS YOURSELF? I don’t think I have one clear answer to this question. I create because I feel the need to. It’s like there are all these ideas, and inspiration, and images boiling inside me and I just need to give them life outside of my head. I would say I am still struggling with going deep in my art journal. For now, it’s just a visual and creative release. Although, I am striving to be more expressive and conscious with what I create. There are some great art journalers, such as Vanessa Oliver-Lloyd (@dansmoncrane) and Molly Anthony (@mkranthony) whom I admire for the stories and feelings they bottle up in their art.

EXPLAIN YOUR ART JOURNALING PROCESS, INCLUDING TECHNIQUES AND THE MATERIALS YOU LIKE TO USE. I don’t have a set procedure for my art journaling. Usually I either have a certain idea or a certain technique I want to try. My pages often start with inspiration – a film, a photo, music, a book/quote, an Instagram photo from my fellow art journalers or other awesome creatives I follow on this platform. I am not very good at thinking strategically in terms of the placement of art elements, or developing the page concept beforehand. I usually create as I go. I slap some acrylic or watercolour paint on the page and I cover it with collage (or vice versa). I add marks with markers, gel or brush pens. I love finishing off with some gold, white or black ink splatters. This all happens in one continuous process. I just let the inspiration flow through me and onto my art journal page. More often than not, I add words that are inspired by what the finished piece looks like. Although I am not particularly in love with my handwriting, I love writing my quotes with a brush pen. It adds softness and personality to the page. Another favorite is writing the quote on a piece of paper and then cutting each word separately and gluing it to the page. It always adds some character and structure to the spread.

TELL US ABOUT YOUR FAVOURITE ART JOURNALING SUPPLIES. WHAT DID YOU START OUT USING? Funnily enough, I started art journaling pretty much not having any supplies for art journaling. I had a Honey watercolours set I used to paint with in middle school and a few cheap brushes. No special journal, no acrylics, no ephemera and, no inks. If you asked me about gesso at that time, I would have stared at you blankly. This goes to prove that you absolutely don’t need to have many supplies to create. For the first half of a year I was creating in a school notebook with regular thin paper. I bought myself a set of 12 small acrylic tubes a few months into art journaling. I made use of some hair chalks I had laying around and some awful thick gooey old gesso I managed to find in a Ukrainian store. I definitely have more art supplies now, but I still try to avoid buying things I am not sure I would use. I love my White Nights watercolours, budget friendly acrylics, a few water-based inks, and old magazines I use for ephemera. I recently tried gouache and I love the matte look it has. Oh, and I am a big lover of gesso now since I tried the proper, soft and smooth one! It lets me not fuss too much about the journal choice (I still cannot find the perfect one). I just buy the best journal I can find in an art store and then coat its pages with gesso for more durability.

WHERE TO FROM HERE? BY TANYALEE KAHLER

A LITTLE BIT OF BACKGROUND

I’m writing this article as a kind of welcome to Brush Magazine, but also as an introduction of what else I have planned. And I’m going to throw in some publishing tips along the way.

Now on to a slightly more serious topic, and I don’t want to spoil the enthusiasm for this little venture, but we need to talk about copyright. Copyright is a tricky subject when it comes to publishing art. Particularly when we are talking about a worldwide magazine being published by an Australian.

Many of you won’t know this, but I have been a Graphic Designer for ten or more years and throughout my whole career it has been a dream of mine to publish a magazine. I have been involved in many large publications, but nothing with the time frames and content collection such as a magazine. As I mentioned in my Editor’s note, I was sitting on my couch one day pondering where my art career, and my design career, were headed, and the thought that had been in the back of my head forever surfaced. I realised I could merge the two together and design a magazine about art journaling. I raised the subject with the Get Messy Art Journal creative geniuses Caylee and Lauren and things have moved like a freight train ever since (completely of my own doing of course).

THE VISION The plan for the magazine will be for it to be aligned with the Get Messy seasons. So soon after the new season is announced, so will the submission call out be announced for Brush Magazine. But that does not mean that the content will only be about Get Messy. My vision is for the magazine to bring together ALL the art journaling communities and provide amazing artists all over the world with a place to share their work, and get the recognition that they deserve.

Brush Magazine will never be an exclusive publication. If you take the time to submit your work, then I will do my very best to publish it (disclaimer: read the information about copyright below). It may not be in the actual magazine: it might be through social media, or even on the blog, but I am all about building communities, building confidence, and celebrating all artists.

Most people would be aware of the basic copyright rules that are simple enough in that you cannot use someone else’s work and call it your own. You can’t create a direct replica of an artwork and claim it as your own – that is common courtesy. But did you know this also extends to using magazine clippings in your artwork? Now this is not something I had considered myself as I was under the impression that because the clippings were being treated differently to their original purpose, then it would be okay. But unfortunately, according to Australian Copyright Law (which is what I need to abide by), I am unable to publish artworks containing magazine clippings unless direct approval from the original publisher is obtained (i.e. the magazine you cut them from). Unfortunately, this meant that several artists’ works were not published this issue and I had to disappoint people. So, if you are considering submitting your work in any future issues of Brush Magazine, please keep in mind the use of magazine clippings, and perhaps contact the publishers of magazines you frequently use to see what their thoughts are on the issue, and whether they would consider granting permission to publish.

LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK With all that said, I hope that you have enjoyed this issue of Brush Magazine, and that you will continue to support us in the future. If you enjoyed what you have seen, please send me an email (hello@brushmag.com), I’d like to include a mailbag section in the next issue in celebration of all that has been achieved. Stay tuned for an announcement about the next issue and its theme for galleries and feature articles. I look forward to my inbox once again filling up with your inspiring art.