It’s another theme challenge at Less is More this week. We’d like to see your clean and simple cards based on ‘spring’. Now, because I know what’s coming up in the next challenge I didn’t want to do a similar image and decided for this theme to play around with some typography. Here’s what I came up with:
It’s a while since I posted anything art journally, partly as I was doing the Wanderlust course last year. That is still waiting for me to finish! I have still been holding monthly art journal sessions in The Studio and some of the themes have been taken from what I have learnt over the year. This month’s theme was ‘start with the same quote’ and I chose a spring quote from Robin Williams (the quintessential American comedian).
As I’ve previously mentioned, the August art journal session at The Studio is all about ‘tints, tones and shades’. Playing with light and shade on a page helps give depth and interest to the piece. Here, playing with the properties of distress ink and distress oxide provides the opportunity to get every shade of the same colour. The use of water also helps with the lighter tones.
Continue reading 
I started this page layout on Tuesday night as my teaching sample for my ‘Christmas Crackle’ art journal session on 7th November. Building up layers and techniques, I was very happy with the resulting background. I then spent just as many hours searching for the perfect ‘winter’ quote. Eventually I settled on this excerpt from ‘Do not stand at my grave and weep’ attributed to Mary Frye.
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.
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.
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.
For November’s art journaling class at The Studio, we’ll be playing with water-solubles. This page spread is a mix of Caran D’Ache Neocolor II water-soluble wax crayons, Derwent Inktense pencils and blocks and black pigment pen. It’s an experimental page, and I quite like the blending of the colours, the framing of the colour blocks and text, but if I were to do it again, I’d want to space things a bit better and perhaps play with the depth by intertwining the frames better and adding some drop shadows… I was also considering adding embossing paste squares – but I think that would just be overdoing it a little.
I’ve just taken delivery of a set of wooden fabric printing blocks, a commercial take on the carved versions typically seen in India/Indonesia. As well as printing onto fabric, of course they’re suited to printing onto paper as well, and what better way of using them than in an art journal? This page is in my Moleskine journal that has been somewhat unloved since starting art journaling in 2011. I already had a pink/purple background in place, and I augmented this with some dabs of Dylusions paint. The image transfer of some heuchera leaves was also already on the page, and I’ve blended the edges with some more paint as well as adding a smear of orange to colour. The block prints can be seen in purple and white at the borders. I was quite pleased with the right side especially, as the paint acted more as a glue, pulling off previous paint layers creating a serendipitous distress effect. The text is free-drawn in Signo white pigment pen and outlined with a fine black pigment pen, except for the final two words which I traced so that it was a little more ‘special’. For hand-drawn text, I found the book Hand Lettering: Simple, Creative Styles for Cards, Scrapbooks & More by Marci Donley and DeAnn Singh really useful as something to bounce off. We’ll be using the blocks in the Art Journaling Session on 3rd August, for which one place is still available to book here.
