Art Journal Thursdays: The Tension of Spring

I am in the minority; I really like winter. It is quiet and peaceful. The trees are bare and the winter sun’s light is diffused (see my earlier "winter art" post here). Winter is books and coffee by the fire, long Sunday afternoons with football games and stew and seeing your breath as you walk through the snow. But this particular winter has seemed long.

So, I am starting to be anxious for spring. I can glimpse that the season of renewal is coming. There is a smattering of days where the fireplace is empty, the sky is blue and the bulbs are pushing through the ground. The transition between the quiet, bleak beauty of winter and the emergence of color is the inspiration for this week’s art journal page.

The ephemera in the background is a torn piece of scrapbooking paper with gesso and think acrylic paint over it.

You can see the words of the ephemera through the image transfer.

For me texture is critical to any piece of art. So I laid down a layer of ephemera in varying shades of off-white. To unify the background I applied a generous layer of gesso. I didn’t want to cover up the ephemera so I took a great deal of it off with a baby wipe. I found the landscape and flower images in my stack of laser copies and glued the landscape to the page while I transferred the flower image onto the page.

I added a wash of ivory to this laser copy to cut down the black and white contrast.

I randomly applied a wash of a grayish-buff color to the page. Then, using a thin wash of a spruce color, I panted the hills in the window image and extended that onto the page to really incorporate it into the overall piece. Green was then applied around the flower to encourage the eye to move down.

I created the lettering using a set of script stickers as a guide.

I used a thinned dark teal paint to write the quote. Thinning the teal a little more, I added it around the page in order to create a balance of color.

This is the time of the year is when the stark, monochromatic nature of winter begins to give way to the lush colors of renewed nature. I hope that this page captured that tension of the season and the tension of anticipation in my heart.