Wanderlust 2022: Weeks 1-7

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.

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Creative Jumpstart 2021: The first week

I signed up to do Creative Jumpstart 2021 back in November. What with Covid and no studio groups to prep for, my creativity has had a minor slump and I’ve not even had the mojo to create for the fun of it. Creative Jumpstart has a daily 10-15 minute tutorial or inspiration video to watch and so far it has included monoprinting, art journaling, illustration, watercolour and collage as part of the ‘storyteller’ theme. I’ve had a go at all but one so far and it’s been great to challenge my prejudices against some media (watercolour!) and to try out new media. Here are my attempts at the first week of projects:

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Art Journal Page: Quiet Spirit

I recently took delivery of the latest Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous mini-stencils, along with a Crafter’s Workshop 6×6″ stencil. Along with those came some DecoArt Americana acrylic paints. I decided that I would have a play since I haven’t done much art journaling during COVID lockdown. The text was an image transfer, put together in Adobe Illustrator before printing in reverse ready for sticking down. The woman’s head mask is by That’s Crafty!.

Review: Digital Art Journaling

Well, it’s a strange world at the moment. I’m not in self-isolation, but I, like many other self-employed freelance workers, am finding things a wee bit quiet at the moment. So, I’ve been flicking through some art journaling magazines and came across a course I thought looked great. It’s ‘Digital Art Journaling’ from Jessica Sprague and despite it being published a couple of years ago, is still available. Here is a flick through of the finished journal and after, a quick review which I hope you find useful.

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Trimcraft Maker: Modern Marks art journal page

I’m on a roll! Today’s make is an art journal page featuring the new First Edition Deco Maché decoupage paper in the Modern Marks design. I decided to augment the marks and colour matched the marks to Distress Paint colours (listed below). The paper behaved itself today – I used less of the glue and the wrinkles were kept to a minimum as a result. It’s certainly a lot harder to work with a sheet rather than pieces, so bear this in mind. Time-lapse video below.

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Art Journal Pages: Butterflies

Next week’s Art Journal Session has the theme ‘butterflies’. I’ve three new pages to share, but there are several in my past library that you can find using the search facility.

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Brusho Art Journal Page

Tonight’s art journal session features Brusho colour crystals. Last time I had the Brushos out, some of the highly concentrated watercolour crystals fell into my stack of distress inks. Inappropriate streaks of colour appeared in carefully blended ink for months and months, despite fastidious wiping down of every single ink pad. This time I’m wiser, and the inks have a full cover over them!

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Art Journal Page: Black and White

art journal page - black and whiteJuly’s theme for my art journaling session (spaces are available) is ‘black and white’. This is my example art journal page… I photocopied a magazine page and used it for an image transfer on the left side with an inked vignette effect using blended archival ink. The text is stamped in white picket fence distress ink using with the ‘colour’ cut from the original magazine page. There’s not much contrast between the coloured word and the black – I’m still not sure what to do about that as I’m not keen on outlining it and distracting from the colour itself.

Used in this layout

  • Daler Rowney A5 Graduate Sketchbook

Art Journal Page: #PASC0219

It’s time to share my submission to the February Pick-A-Stick Challenge #PASC0219. I’m working in my very first art journal started in 2011. There are lots of spreads where I was playing with backgrounds and which had never been ‘finished’.

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