It’s been several years since I last did the Wanderlust online course (2016). It has gone from strength to strength, and this time it offers a year of weekly prompts, lessons and inspiration for mixed media art journaling. Unfortunately, it’s too late to enrol for this year’s course, but it is worth watching out for the early bird offers for next year which are usually 50% off the regular price.
The themed sections start with an introductory week, outlining the studio supplies and techniques that are coming up in the next six weeks. Then follows a weekly tutorial from guest tutors furthering exploration of the theme and showing off their individual styles during their tutorial. This can be anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour and a half of teaching!
These are my pages from the first section of the course: gesso and gel mediums.
So, there are several things to note that are new to my art journaling… The first is greater use of collage for the background elements of a page. The collage is often painted over but does add texture and, with translucent layers above, a sense of depth. It also helps ‘break the white page’ at the beginning of a layout.
Secondly, the word ‘intuitive’. It turns out that popping things where they look good is known as ‘intuitive journaling’. I guess it’s a posh ‘arty’ way of saying guesswork, trial and error or just plain ‘having an eye for detail’. I think I have a pretty good intuition in my art journaling. Oh, and there’s ‘auditioning’ – the process of laying on bits and pieces of collage to see how they work together before committing them to glue. I did that on the nature sketch layout, but generally, I go for the glue first… intuition and all…
Thirdly, it’s important to find a focal point for a page. I didn’t finish off the pink and yellow layout as I couldn’t think of anything that would make the page ‘pop’. Consequently, the page is a little flat for my taste. I will have to think some more about it.
It was nice to get out the charcoal again – I last drew a teasel for my graphics and illustration module at college ten (ten!) years ago. Mixing it with gesso and water made for some unexpected results.
Roll on the next theme: modelling paste and image transfer.