Art Journal Page: Pick A Stick Challenge #PASC1017

Posted on 25th October 2017 by perfectly4med

I know I haven’t done the Pick A Stick Challenge for a little while but didn’t realise quite how long ago it was… 2015! I’ve decided to try and do at least one ‘me-project’ each month, and this month was the Pick A Stick art journal challenge. For those that have forgotten the format, ten sticks are chosen at random, each with an instruction as to what to put in or a technique to use. The challenge Facebook group can be found here.

The page ended up darker in tone and emotion that I normally do – the quote was inspired by the raven stencil I used. There are many different things that I would call from the poem, but this is perhaps the darkest. As I was writing it onto the page all I could think of was my road with depression, my ‘black dog’.

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Art Journal Page: Eat Dessert

Posted on 28th March 2016 by perfectly4med

Today’s page marks a landmark in my art journaling – it’s the final spread in my very first complete journal. I have at least four journals on the go at any time, but this is the first to be filled since I started journaling back in 2011. I wanted to play with different layers, working on making the text stand out and the background to support, but not over power it. Choosing media by its opacity helped me achieve this outcome: transparent Cobalt Blue Hue allowed some of the paper white to show through the underpainting, whilst the semi-transparent Phthalo Blue provided the background to the text, printed in opaque white gesso. Spritzing with the mister and adding visual texture with stamps brought everything together.

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Art Journal Page: The Course of Civilisation

Posted on 14th March 2016 by perfectly4med

More art journaling! This layout started out with a pale watercolour effect, which I suspect (though don’t remember) is actually bleed through from spray inks I’d used on either side. I decided to keep it as it was, so to stabilise it, I did a quick layer of DecoArt Media Matte Medium to seal it. Over the top went some napkin decoupage to maintain the water colour effect, added and sealed with the same matte medium. A bit of Distress Ink around the sides to tone down the edges, and then I drew the text on with ProMarkers. This seemed a good idea at the time, as I could colour match the ink to the roses – but of course acrylic based paints/mediums break down with alcohol. I solved the nib clogging issue as a result of this by running it out on scrap paper between words, and going over each letter twice to get the colour. Next time I’m going to try out my Pitt pens instead. I sealed everything with some DecoArt Media Ultra Matte Varnish, being careful to not over-brush where the distress ink was added.

I’d like to have planned the text justification a little more – but then that’s what art journals are for: to experiment in, and learn from the experimentation.

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Art Journal Page: An Open Book [Wanderlust 2016]

Posted on 1st March 2016 by perfectly4med

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: To See The Light [Wanderlust]

Posted on 17th January 2016 by perfectly4med

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 Page: One Word [Wanderlust]

Posted on 4th January 2016 by perfectly4med

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 perfectly4med

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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Art Journal Page: Do or Do Not

Posted on 19th December 2015 by perfectly4med

I watched ‘Empire Strikes Back’ last night amongst the Star Wars furore that seems to have broken out this week. As Yoda is training the young Luke Skywalker, he comes out with this often quoted adage: ‘Do or do not, there is no try’.

Well, that tied in so nicely with my plans for next month’s art journal session: we’re going to ~~try~~ do some colour theory in a lesson I’m going to call ‘3 + 1’. There are several regulars at my art journaling sessions that say they ‘can’t do colour’, so I will be encouraging them to use a colour wheel to pick two complementary colours and then add the colours either side of one of them to make up the ‘3’. As an added bonus, we’ll also be mixing the colours using the three primary colours of paint by DecoArt.

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Rusting An MDF Chalkboard

Posted on 15th November 2015 by perfectly4med

I’m still beavering away in the studio making items to sell at the church Christmas Fayre. Yesterday I used what I had learnt at Andy Skinner’s workshop I attended last weekend to create a faux rusted enamel frame and stand for this MDF chalkboard. As it happens, I actually prefer the back – some of the paint had seeped under and the ‘chips’ appear much more organic against the gesso undercoat: