Thursday, March 27, 2014

Art Journal Thursday: Page Tutorial


Art journaling is about trying techniques and expressing yourself. This tutorial will explain how I created this page. These are simple techniques that you can use in your own way to create pages that are distinctly you.


Process 


Randomly glue old book pages on to your journal page using matte medium. Let dry.

Add a thin layer of gesso with a foam brush and let dry for a few minutes. Take off the gesso with a baby wipe. Let dry.

Apply a layer of matte medium to the page and lay your laser photo copy face down on the medium.  Use a credit card or brayer to smooth out any air bubbles. Let fully dry (it should not be cool to the touch). Using a baby wipe wet the back of the paper and rub the paper away with your finger. Be careful to over wet the image. Repeat until all the paper has been removed.

Thin yellow ocher acrylic paint with water and using a round brush paint the page. Let dry so that you don’t make a muddy mix with your next color. Thin midnight blue acrylic paint and brush it onto your image. Let dry.


Take a charcoal pencil and highlight areas and lines of your image. Lightly smudge the lines.

Journaling can be anything you like; the more intimate the journaling the more honest the work will be. Remember no one but you has to see it.

Thin black paint and use a lettering brush to journal. This paint should be only slightly thinned to maintain the color but make it fluid enough to write. I start off with 1 part paint to a half part water. I also lightly drew pencil lines to make my journaling a little more uniform but this is not necessary. Make sure that you let the journaling completely dry before you erase the lines.

Old books are a great source of inspiration, from ephemera and great journal prompts.

Glue down ephemera using matte medium.


To add another layer of color, I swiped a Ranger Distressed Ink pad over the edges of the page. While the ink was still wet, I smudged the color with a paper towel. I repeated the process until I got the depth of color I was looking for.

I’d love to hear how you use these techniques to create your own pages so drop me a line or send your pics!

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Art Journal Thursday: Unfinished


The wonderful thing about art journaling is that pages don’t have to be finished in one sitting. There are times that you are inspired to work on something, to realize a certain vision but as you work you find that you have taken it as far as you can at that moment. This page was one of those times.

This image transfer is an image transfer of a photo of an angel statue that from my living room. 

I have been in the process of moving again which is why I have been silent for the last few weeks. I had started this page and took it as far as I could. I was sure that I could move it further, but I simply ran out of steam. There were boxes to pack and while I had left my art supplies out as long as possible, eventually they had to be packed away too.

I cut this out of a larger glittered pattern paper.

Now that I have landed and unpacked, I re-examined this page and decided that while it is unfinished I just couldn't move it forward right now. While there is a little part of me that thinks that I should be able to overcome a block, it’s just not so. Sometimes the artistic process works in its own way. Someday I will finish this page or maybe I won’t. Like life, we may have plans but we have to wait and see if they will come to fruition.

The root and small tree were from an old book.

My beloved Starbucks coffee sleeves with part of the paper torn off and gessoed.