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: Aging

Posted on 15th March 2016 by perfectly4med

I wanted to get some practice with some crackle medium, so I got out the DecoArt Americana Weathered Wood and applied it over a black gesso ground. Once that had dried, I added acrylic paint and gesso over the top, dry brushing one into another. Once the cracking had finished, I blended the colours a little more using some of the pink on a wet wipe and moving it up into the white. I dried that and then sealed the crackle with DecoArt Ultra Matte Varnish. Then out came the Pitt Artist Pens for the knots, board joins and the text, all of which were sanded back slightly to age. The quote, by the way, was chosen once I’d done the cracked paint – I thought it was quite apt 🙂

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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: 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: Impossible

Posted on 21st January 2016 by perfectly4med

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.

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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: 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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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: