Art Journal Pages & Tangles

Posted on 11th March 2016 by Neil

I’m prepping for a presentation on Tuesday (hopefully more news on this later) and have been working on a couple of art journal layouts. I thought I’d play a little more with polystyrene printing and zentangling/Florabunda (above) and elements of stencil and pen work stippling (below). Pretty pleased with the colour choices and how each page turned out.

As well as the journal pages, I’ve also spent some time doing some tangles to fit my lokta paper wallet. I remember how therapeutic tangling can be! Each tile can be done in around 20 minutes (they’re 2 inches square), and quicker if I use a thicker pen 😉

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Art Journal Page: An Open Book [Wanderlust 2016]

Posted on 1st March 2016 by Neil

There’s various things keeping me from my ‘me time’ in the studio, and consequently, I’m playing catch up with the Wanderlust 2016 course. The fourth prompt for our dedicated art journal is ‘the bravest moment of my life…’. The theme for the layout came fairly quickly, and the page came together just as I’d hoped – it’s the first time I have done word decoupage in a layout. In fact it took longer to retrieve accidentally deleted movie files from my iPad than it did to create the layout! Happily, with those undeleted, I’ve been able to piece together another of my time lapse videos:

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Art Journal Page: Wonder

Posted on 21st February 2016 by Neil

Next month’s Art Journal Session is going to look at printing on a budget. With nothing more than a biro, some stick glue and a polystyrene plate to make printing plates we’ll then use acrylic paints to decorate our page. I’ve embellished this spread with Posca paint pens. I used Dylusions paints for the printing.

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Art Journal Page: Take Time To Smell The Roses [Wanderlust]

Posted on 23rd January 2016 by Neil

In the Wanderlust class this week, we were introduced to still life painting. The lesson was done on a canvas, and the artist was seriously unimpressed with those who included words in their painting, preferring the image to do all the work. Well, you know what they say – you have to know the rules to be able to break them. So I did. Here’s my homage to still life painting, done in my art journal, and complete with words. Enjoy.

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Art Journal: Travel Journal – update

Posted on 22nd January 2016 by Neil

A couple of weeks ago, I showed images of a travel art journal I made in response to one of the Wanderlust 2016 classes #wanderlustclass. Earlier this week I took a day out to Liverpool, and have been filling in the journal. Some was done in a Costa Coffee at Albert Dock, some on a tilting Pendolino train on the way from Leicester (that was fun!) and some since I have got back. In the various pockets, I’ve got descriptive tags of the places I visited, receipts and tickets and even the wrapping from my mid-morning flapjack – in short anything I handled that would fit in was included. The map segments are from a free city map. Panoramic views of the journal should follow depending on your your viewing platform.

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Art Journal Page: Impossible

Posted on 21st January 2016 by Neil

For February’s Art Journal Session, we’ll be playing with emboss resist. It’s one of those techniques that is counter-intuitive, but is just planning layers to build up the effect using the embossing powder as the mask. I have to admit the way the text developed and fitted on the page was complete chance – but I like the way it isn’t obvious what the text is at first glance, reinforcing the sense of the quote.

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Art Journal Page: To See The Light [Wanderlust]

Posted on 17th January 2016 by Neil

Every other Saturday on the Wanderlust 2016 art journaling journey, we are given a prompt for a page in our ‘Wanderlust Book’. This week the prompt was ‘What I really want is…’, and this is my response to it. I thought it would be fun to do a time lapse video of me creating the page, showing the layers and techniques I have used. It’s been a while since I have painted the lettering on a page, and the DecoArt Fluid Acrylic Primary Yellow was a doddle to use, flowing well off the brush and absolutely opaque on application. I think I may have mentioned before how I won’t be working in a wire-o journal again… I need to replan pages to avoid my focal point being in the centre.

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Art Journal: Travel Journal [Wanderlust]

Posted on 12th January 2016 by Neil

This week’s class on Wanderlust (a year long course encouraging art journalers), we’ve been shown how one artist, Kate Crane, creates her own journal to fill in as she travels. Here’s my take on the project. Using two sheets of 12×16″ watercolour paper, I created the concertina pages, incorporating pockets into the overlaps. I’ve chosen to create faux leather straps to hold it together, rather than ribbon, and have made these from Grungeboard. Lots of layered DecoArt Media paints and interference paints over some embossing paste create the cover decoration, and the pages are covered in Distress Paints, DecoArt Media Titan Buff and Quinacridone Gold fluid acrylics and gesso applied through a couple of stencils. Now it’s ready for filling with travel goodness 🙂

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Art Journal Page: One Word [Wanderlust]

Posted on 4th January 2016 by Neil

In the first Wanderlust class of the year, we were prompted to use just one word on our pages – and yesterday, I was so tired. Poor sleep, recovering from a cold and a wet grey day all got poured into this art journal spread. Building on the learning gleaned from the first pick a stick challenge, I layered and layered, and am actually rather pleased with the result, as grey and drab as it is!

It’s the first time I’m working in a spiral bound art journal – this one is a Daler-Rowney Cachet Artist’s Mixed Media, A5 sized, 30 page, 250g/m². The paper is wonderful to work on, didn’t buckle under the wet media or bend with dry acrylic and basically took everything I threw at it. There’s just one issue – the spiral bound spine: those pesky wires. I’m sticking with the book for the Wanderlust classes, but will be looking for stitch bound journals in the future.

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Art Journal Page: Pick A Stick Challenge [January]

Posted on 3rd January 2016 by Neil

Gah! It’s so frustrating when you write a blog post and then there’s a glitch and it’s gone and even the saved drafts don’t seem to exist any more… so for the second time of writing:

During the week I was invited by an online friend I got to know through the Creative Chemistry 101 classes a few years ago to join a new art journaling challenge group she was organising. The Pick A Stick Challenge Group on Facebook is open to anyone who would like to join in and is an active art journaler. The premise is simple: each month, ten sticks are drawn at random from a pot of prompts covering media, styles and techniques. The only other stipulation is that you layer your page in the order the sticks are drawn. That is where the process becomes a little more tricky!

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