partner journal

I am involved in a partner journal with Wendy in Australia. These are the eighth set of layouts that I have done. These layouts are in Wendy's journal.

The theme for these pages was hopes, dreams or aspirations for 2010 or beyond.

They both have gesso backgrounds with water-soluble crayon colour over the top. Both have collage elements. Hand lettering has been done with white Signo Uni-ball pen and Sakura sparkle gelly roll pen in the roses page, and black Pitt artist pen and coloured pencils in the wings page. The wings and flourishes in the second page are stamped with black ink.

I think I will try something a little more vivid in my next two partner journal spreads. Mmmmmmmm! Have to think about that!

foil print fun

This is an artwork on cartridge paper, using black gesso, watersoluble crayons, black ink and black Pitt Artist pen. I completed the artwork, but it is actually a failed attempt at a new technique. My friend (Helen) and I decided to try a technique from Mary Todd Beam's book "The Creative Edge"... but we made a booboo and it didn't turn out the way it was meant to. But if you are making any art at all, it is not a failure, so we carried on and had fun with what we had anyway!!

The first stage was to brayer black gesso onto aluminium foil.

It needed to be a fairly thick layer. Then you needed to wait for it to partly dry.

This was where the booboo happened! You had to wait for the shine to dull to know when it was ready. But we waited too long and it dried too much.

Then we turned the foil over onto our cartridge paper and using a pencil, and shapes, and sticks, and the side of a ruler, we drew loose shapes and patterns onto the back of the foil.

You can see that we ended up with lots of tears in the foil because we had to scratch the heck out of it to get anything to transfer over to the paper!

When I peeled off the foil it looked like this... it was meant to be covered in heavy and light black lines and shapes all over the page. So my result is very sparse. But like I said, bad art is still making art, so we made the most of what we had.

Nervous that I would lose what black gesso I did have on the page, I sprayed with fixative first to preserve all I could. Then I leapt in with watersoluble crayons and coloured and washed to my heart's content. The finishing touches were stamping the word "icarus" and then the feathers, and decorating more with black Pitt Artist pen.

partner journal

I am involved in a partner journal with Wendy in New Zealand. These are the fifth set of layouts that I have done. These layouts are in my journal.

The theme for these pages was self portraits with commentaries.

In the self-portrait as Venus page I painted the background first with acrylic paint (for you people who like detail... the colour was "Derivan Matisse Ultramarine Blue", gorgeous colour!) The image of Venus and Cupid was found on the internet. The painting is "Venus and Cupid at Vulcan's Forge" by Palma Giovane. I added my face to Venus' body (bless her!) using Photoshop Elements and cut out section I wanted and glued it to the page with Gel Medium. I continued on the curtain at the top and the sheets at the bottom using watersoluble crayons. I stamped flourishes with white ink (sorry all you artists that don't like flourishes!!), then printed my commentary with a white Uniball Signo pen (the colour is called Angelic Colour!). This pen is FANTASTIC on the dark background, the white comes out even more solid than my souffle pens and there was no trouble using it over acrylic paint.

The next page started with torn and collaged scrapbooking and magazine and pamphlet papers. Then I drew the drawing on the right hand side. Then I attacked it with gesso and watersoluble crayons and coloured metallic pencil for the glasses. It was cool too wet the watersoluble crayons with gesso rather than just water! You get a more milky effect. On the left I used watersoluble crayons on the edges and gesso in the centre. The text is done on the computer and printed on transparency sheet. The writing didn't show up too well when I sat it over the page to test it, so I glued a layer of white serviette with gel medium to the centre of the page before I glued the transparency on. You will notice that I managed to smudge the bottom of the text in the process, but I let it go, because it is OK to make bad art!!!!!

I am loving doing this journal swap, it always manages to kick start me again from the doldrums!!

partner journal

These pages are from the partner journals that I am doing with Wendy from http://wendypslittlecorneroftheworld.blogspot.com/

The theme for these pages was where we lived, grew up, came from, etc.

The 'provenance' page is a vintage book page, printed photos, gesso, watersoluble crayons, rubber stamps and black inkpad, pencil, sharpie, and written with Faber Castell Pitt Artist pen.

The 'bakery' page started with scrapbooking paper, then I built up the background with gesso and watersoluble crayons. Then I added the brochure images of bread and buns and the printed photos. The 'bakery' letters are stickers. I then decorated with punchinella and flourish stencils using liquid pencil, white ink, black ink, brown ink and orange souffle pen. The writing was done with Faber Castell Pitt Artist pen.

To anyone interested in the layers beneath, below is a scan of the 'provenance' page before I added the elements and decorations.

tattoo

This is a mixed media collage on a journal page. The prompt was "tattoo" and it came from the Yahoo Group I belong to "Blissfully Art Journaling"

Of course if I ever was to get angel's wings tattooed on me, they would be much, much smaller than this, but I like to dream of a different me sometimes.

The method was scrapbooking papers painted over with black and white gesso. Computer printed image and title. Roses are magazine images. Stamped with black ink and white gesso. Decorated and written with white souffle pen.

lamplight

This is a drawing/painting done on canvas primed with black gesso. I drew the image first with white pencil. Then I painted in the metallic colours with my fingers using acrylic paints (gold, silver, copper). I then added defintion with pastel pencils and coloured graphite pencils.

This was just a quick fun piece of artwork that I did from a photo of a lamp at an experimental art workshop. I LOVED using my fingers to paint the metallic paint. It felt more expressive than using a brush!

Kenya

This is a page from an art journal. It is layered collage with vintage book pages, serviettes and postage stamps. I coloured with gesso and watersoluble crayons. Added a hand drawn image of a tree and painted it. Added the hand drawn word "Kenya" and the writing around the orange picture with souffle pen. Embellished with watersoluble crayon, souffle pen, gesso, coloured pencil and black sharpie. This took a few layers that I wasn't sure that I liked before it all came together and I was happy!

The story behind the images is that the 26 year old Princess Royal, Elizabeth, was in Kenya when her father, King George, died. But because the news took a while to get to them, noone there, including herself, realised that she had become the Queen of England.

My Little Book of Love

Well, decided to add a post while I am waiting for gel to dry on an artwork. This is a tiny wee art journal I have started, almost in jest, just to get me collaging and journalling. The book measures a magnificent 7cm x 7cm. That makes a double page layout of 14cm x 7cm. I picked up a pile of these little books from "The $2 Shop" (that is NZ $2). They are cheaply made with corrugated cardboard wrapped with fabric for the covers and cheap handmade paper inside. But with a little gesso magic they are ready for art. I named this one "My Little Book of Love" and am filling it with little spreads showing things that I love. So far there is Angels, Coffee and Art. Definately 3 of my top faves! I will post extra pages as I manage to complete them.

Blooms

I haven't managed to get any Illustration Friday art done last week nor this week. Had ideas but not the time to do anything with the ideas. Been thinking a lot though of fibre craft things. I have been sewing beads on a felt bag that I made at a beginners class a few weeks ago. I love the felting look but I feel I need to stitch and bead it to give it some definition. I will post the final result when it is completed.

This post is to put on an artwork I did in a similar way to the bird I posted recently. It was a dyed paper that I drew on with gesso from a squeezee tube. I left this to dry for over a day, then coloured with oil pastels that I blended in with an old brush. I then added coloured pencil over that.

The idea came from a photo called "An armful of wildflowers" from "Bloom" magazine.

This is the paper after the dye and the gesso before I added the oil pastel or the coloured pencil. See you next blog!