Our next Bible journaling session has ‘rubber stamping’ as its theme. It will be a departure from my normal style, and it took some time to find suitable stamps to match some verses and themes. When creating, I also chose to break my ‘rule’ of not working over the text areas of the page. I made sure, however, the work I did was transparent and the text still readable:
It seems that for the last few days my corner of blog land has been out of service due to a duff plugin. Apologies! Here’s another art journal spread to make up for the absence (not that anyone noticed and let me know!). I experimented with collaging papers for the background and unifying the whole layout with a blanket stencil design. Masking off the area intended for the stamp and covering with gesso helped take the busyness away behind the ‘mum. It’s the first outing for my new Dusty Concord Distress Oxide ink pad. I’m not sure if it’s all a bit much, but experimentation is the name of the game in my journal.
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In my last art journaling post, I wrote about knowing when a page is finished. This time around I went a step too far and completely spoiled the layout. See the staining through the gesso middle left and bottom right? That’s archival ink soaking through several layers of gesso. I thought once the butterflies were on, and the gesso painted around them that I would stamp more butterflies over the top. What a mistake to make…
At today’s bas relief cards workshop, I did the unthinkable (for me at least) – worked on a technique and a sample alongside a workshop guest, without trying it first weeks before. And despite the gung-ho attitude, we both ended up with, even if we do say so ourselves, a cracking outcome. There was something rather pleasing about making a 2D stamped image a little more 3D, smudging and smoothing paper clay into place before letting the stains and paint do their thing.
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.
More sneak peeks of pages to be featured on my Hochanda shows on Thursday at 11am & 3pm. Don’t forget to tune in to, or catch up with, the shows which will be introducing art journals and art journaling.
These pages were an exercise in complementary colours. Using the Distress palette, I chose a colour and then the closest colour to its inverse – a different way to find a complementary colour than using a colour wheel. Above, Stormy Sky meets Gathered Twigs, whilst below, Crushed Olive zings against Shaded Lilac and Dusty Concord. Oh yes, one more thing – buckled pages do not make an easy surface to be stamping paint onto…
I decided yesterday that I would catch up with some of the Wanderlust 2016 class activities, and watched Birgit Koopsen’s class as she demonstrated her signature style. This is my response to the fifth journal prompt from the beginning of March (‘what I see in the mirror’) using her techniques, albeit in a slightly different order! And it’s probably more of a reminder of what I should be seeing in the mirror rather than what I do… Anyhow, I wanted the background to show through the white layer (given I’d spent so long working on it!), so used I used thinned gesso for its translucency. I think the colours certainly zing against the white mask.
I’ve jumped a few weeks in my Wanderlust 2016 course – I do aim to go back and catch up, but Andy Skinner was the tutor for this week’s activity, and I just had to get grungy! I transformed the front cover of my latest (A5) journal using his techniques and I’m delighted with the results. I think it looks like embossed leather, and with the soft touch varnish from DecoArt, it even feels like leather. The trickiest thing I found was getting a uniform thickness of modelling paste, so I’ll be working on that the next time I try it.
