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: Take Time To Smell The Roses [Wanderlust]

Posted on 23rd January 2016 by perfectly4med

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 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: Travel Journal [Wanderlust]

Posted on 12th January 2016 by perfectly4med

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 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: Hope

Posted on 20th December 2015 by perfectly4med

I wasn’t at all happy with my finished page yesterday… so I tried again today using what I had learnt from my experimentation. Keeping with the ‘3+1’ theme, I switched the same complementary colours. I am so much happier with the outcome – a cleaner, fresher, more impactful page.

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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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As if that wasn’t enough… some typography & chalkboards

Posted on 26th November 2015 by perfectly4med

There’s just one day left before the Christmas Fayre (in case I hadn’t mentioned it recently). Though I have more items than I can fit on even a large table, the inspiration hasn’t stopped. I thought I would have a go at some mounted typography, so designed, cut out (ok, the Cameo did that bit), stuck together and mounted these two examples – which happened to be two verses from Sunday’s morning services (see the sermon sketchnote).

Meanwhile, on the other side of the table, I’m finishing off some MDF chalkboards – three down (one featured here), three almost done. The first is covered in old dictionary pages, and aged with a ‘dirty wash’ – a drop of DecoArt Media Raw Umber and a drop of Quinacridone Gold watered down, brushed over and splattered with water before drying and sealing with DecoArt Media Ultra Matte Varnish. The second started with squidged Distress Paints, sprayed with water, then dried and I used DecoArt Media Phthalo Blue as my dirty wash, before glazing with a watered down metallic blue acrylic paint. I then sealed with a gloss varnish with a bit of DecoArt Media Interference Blue mixed in. And the last – I’ve tangled it in Sakura Micron 08 black pigment ink over Dylusions Linen White paint (which when completely dry doesn’t clog the nib), sealed with DecoArt Media Ultra Matte Varnish.

[Disclaimer: as part of the DecoArts Helping Artists Program,
I have been provided with samples of their products to use for projects]

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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: