The Struggle is Real: Inequality
Many of us have been struggling with the issue of inequality in light of the events of the past few weeks. For me, it’s been hard to wrap my head around the fact that the issue is clearly a bigger one than I realized. Watching the news and the protests, I felt my heart hurting.
It’s hard to close your eyes to fact that inequality, whether it takes the form of racism, sexism or homophobia does exist in our society. And that it’s a problem that has been virtually ignored for far too long. I certainly don’t have any answers to all the questions surrounding inequality that the past weeks have raised. But I’ve been feeling like I needed to express my frustration in some way.
Amber, of Crafty Button Designs, reached out to me last week about finally following through on a collaborative digital scrapbooking/art journal project we’d been promising each other we’d do — for the past two years! Amber’s series ” The Struggle is Real” provided the opportunity to zero on on inequality. Once we started working, the kit almost put itself together and quickly grew much larger than we had originally envisioned. So, that is how “The Struggle is Real: Inequality” mega collection was born.
Amber and I both love “mixed media” art — meaning we use various types of paint, paper ephemera and other materials to create our pieces. When we can incorporate that physical art into our digital art journaling and scrapbooking products, we’re in seventh heaven! This collection is jammed packed with digitized versions of handpainted papers and mixed media elements and markings. The “art doll” is one of Amber’s hand painted masterpieces, as always reflecting her personal somewhat quirky and appealing style.
Someday, with the right encouragement, I’ll reveal how I created my “crowd” images – those black and white figures you see in my page to the left. You’ll shake your head when you realize how the mind of a mixed media artist works as she decides what “stuff” around the house goes into the garbage and what ends up in the studio!
While neither Amber nor I can fix the problems of the world, we can help you express the emotions you may be feeling about those feelings. We hope you enjoy working with “The Struggle is Real: Inequality” as much as we loved creating it.
If you create a page with “The Struggle is Real: Inequality” I’d love for you to post it in my Designer Gallery at Oscraps! AND if you’re so inclined, why not join my Art Journaling Group on FB?
The Struggle is Real: Inequality
On Sale for a Limited Time
Collection: 50% off
Individual Packs: 30% off
Creative Team Inspiration Pages
Hi Radha! Good to see hear from you again! It’s a little hard to explain. I use black paint and a scraper of some sort to create shapes on paper — being sure to have different thicknesses of the paint so that some areas are lighter and some are darker — to make “masks”. I scan them and turn them in to brushes in photoshop. Then I either clip the photo to the mask or I use the mask as a shape from which to cut the photo out. Does that make sense?
I have a question for you.
When you transfer mix media or some pictures on to Photoshop to use how do they become transparent . So when u layer them one on top of the other all other pictures are visible in the top picture. I tried so many ways. LIke when you play with opacity it reduces the visibility of the main picture. When I saw your videos I see them transparent so you can see other features of backside is visible thru.
Thank you