In between planting out onion sets, garlic and shallots at the allotment, teaching scrapbook layouts, supervising a learner crocheting and making tea for the landscape gardeners, I slipped in an art journal page! It just goes to show that if you aim to do a page a day – you can. Just! I wanted to try my inverse silhouette technique with something other than black ink, and I think it worked really well 🙂
Next month’s art journal session at The Studio (Mon 4th April, 7:30pm) is all about pattern development. We’ll be carving our own stamps from Speedball Speedy-Carve before stamping with paint or ink to create our personal and unique designs on our pages. I’ve taken three of my tangle pattern designs to make my stamps: Curly Braces Too, Flared and Circo. And in the process I discovered a new way of using tangle patterns: layering them. Something to explore further in drawn work I think!
After a successful screen test today, I have been asked to demonstrate art journaling on Hochanda – the Home of Craft, Hobbies and Art – available on Sky 663, Freeview 39 (6am-9pm) and Freest 817 or online at hochanda.com. I should be on a screen near you by the end of May.
It’s a very exciting opportunity, and I look forward to showing viewers how to make a blank page into a mixed media marvel, and how then to take those techniques back to card making and scrapbooking and forward to home decor and 3D pieces.
Now you know why I’ve been working so hard on my art journaling projects recently! Just a quick preview for those that haven’t yet seen my work…
I was cleaning out the tumble dryer filter this morning, and aside from popping some of the fluff outside for the birds feverishly making nests, I noticed a whole pile of tumble dryer sheets in the fluff collection above the washing machine. I’d heard that they make great inclusions in mixed media work (as do baby wipes btw), so I decided (as I do) to make an art journal from them. And a few hours later, a full mixed media journal is complete.
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 😉
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.