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.

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.

Art Journal Thursday: Uncertainty

A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I made the decision to move back home. It was a difficult decision because there are so many unanswered questions.

So there has been a lot of stuff swirling around my head. Is this the right thing to do? Should we stay here and stick it out? Is this the path that God wants us to take? There aren't any quick or bright, shining answers. There is just hope, faith, and inspiration for this week’s journal page.

I found this number and decided to use it since it was my age. I had other numbers in the collage, but they didn't make the cut.

I gessoed the underlying page and then added some dress pattern tissue to add texture. I started an image transfer but too much of the toner came off, so I added a thin layer of gesso. I decided to keep it because it felt like the hidden piece of me that is actively living with the uncertainty. I added another, smaller version of the transfer in the lower corner. This is the “me” that is on the outside.

Using my own portrait feels like a big risk, but makes the page so much more personal. 

I thinned midnight blue and black acrylic paint and applied them around the page randomly. When I took a step back, I realized that there were compartments. (Maybe this is the state of my thoughts…Am I compartmentalizing?)

The tissue paper create crooks and crannies for the thinned paint to pool in.

I layered the thin paint over and over; sometimes on top of the same color, sometimes overlapping. I then applied a thin layer of gesso to incorporate the layers. I created writing space by applying full strength gesso on the page.

I used a Pitt brush pen to write; if you make a mistake, just take a little rubbing alcohol to remove it and let it dry.

The writing forced me to stop the swirling and really focus on the questions and fears I have. It yielded no answers, but the swirling has slowed down from gale force to a gentle breeze.

How has art journaling helped you articulate your thoughts and fears?

Art Journal Thursday: Exploring Shame

This week’s art journal page is about shame. A prevalent human experience, shame can seep into every aspect of our lives—thoughts, interactions, behaviors—everything. The pain of feeling “less than,” “unworthy” or “unloveable” detracts from one’s ability to enjoy life and love. It is a deeply felt pain that separates us from others and our true selves.

I used pages and images from an old book that luckily had a section on eyes.

“Shame is an experience of the eyes,” says Dr. Dan Allender, author of the book, “The Wounded Heart.” It is a real or perceived defect that others can see. He goes on to explain, “Shame is an interpersonal affect; it requires the presence of another, in fact or in imagination, for its blow to be felt.” In other words, I am so defective and it is so easily seen by everyone that I cannot be loved by someone else.

I journaled on this a slip of paper and put it in the envelope. It's there but can remain private.

It is painful. It is muddy. It is destructive. We don’t have to stay in the pain of shame, but it takes a lot of work and help to leave it behind. There are a lot of resources out there to navigate away from this damaging emotion and one of them is art journaling. It can be so very relieving to express emotions, fears, and even joys within the covers of one’s art journal.

A quote from Dr. Dan Allender's book, "The Wounded Heart."

My process for this journal page was to take bits of various ephemera, ranging in color from ecru to very tea-stained, and weave them together. I glued them to the page using matte medium. I laid down a coat of gesso and removed it with baby wipes, especially in areas that I wanted to draw the eye to. I then combined a very thin mixture of black acrylic paint and water and applied all over the composition.

An old library catalog card, book pages and a sewing pattern size chart applied to the journal page.

I then dry brushed more gesso over the piece to enhance the contrast. I added the words and drew a box around them to pull the eye to them and give context to the piece.

Several applications of the black paint to give the piece an anchor.

Art journaling can be a very therapeutic and introspective process. If you haven't started an art journal yet, I suggest you do. It doesn't have to be this dark or personal when you first get started. Just start and go where your heart tells you to. You'll be surprised at what comes out.

Art Journal Thursday: A Place to Wait

This week I have been thinking about how life changes; how our stories are told, wiped clean and retold. The distance of time brings with it new perspectives. The things we thought we understood at the time, we now see in a different light. Years from now, we will see them differently still. So this week's mixed media art journal page is about texture and layering.

I cut my first stencil for this page. Using some old epoxy stickers as a template, I drew around the unusual shapes with a sharpie.

Make sure that you have a new blade. A sharp blade and going slowly will help you avoid cutting too much.

Got out my handy X acto knife and cut out the squares. I then used the stencil to apply light modeling paste.

Once the modeling paste was dry, I glued some toile tissue paper onto the squares and a piece of dress pattern to the page. I let that dry and applied white gesso and a light wash of a sunflower acrylic paint over the whole piece. I then took a baby wipe and removed the layers.

Be careful when applying the glue to the squares so that the tissue paper sticks only to that.
If you need a little clean-up, grab your X acto knife and cut the excess.

I added some additional texture by randomly stamping some words around the page. Then added another light coat of gesso. I drew a sparse "curtain" of leaves to add another layer. Then I added the words of the things I was feeling.

I wanted another texture so I stamped these locked hearts on a scrap piece of muslin.

The older I get, the more I see my past differently--the benefit of experience and introspection. I would love to think that I will use that experience to live a better future, but who knows. I am a human living in an imperfect world. I will continue to make mistakes, overcome hardships, and have moments of joy. So we'll have to wait and see how it all works out.

Art Journal Thursday: More Room in a Broken Heart

Most mornings I wake up with a song in my head. A few days ago, I couldn't get Carly Simon’s “Coming Around Again” out of my mind, particularly the lyric, “…there’s more room in a broken heart.” Like an itch that I had to scratch (for this can be quite maddening) I knew I wasn't going to get any peace until I worked on what that lyric meant to me. So off to the art journal.

Using a torn coffee sleeve with gesso and undiluted acrylic paint spread over it adds great texture.

It made me think about loss and how we soldier on afterwards. My grandmother, Jessie (or Nanny as I called her), suffered the loss of a husband and a few miscarriages, but she kept on with a broken but open love. Pragmatic and tough, she was still filled with love that she showered on me and the rest of her family.

Taken before they left for Guam.

She married my biological grandfather, Michael, and moved with him to Guam. A career Navy name, he was stationed there before WWII began so she came with him. There are photos of her in the jungle, the mess hall, and hanging out with friends. My uncle was born there but he and Nanny had to flee as tensions with the Japanese began to intensify. She returned home to North Carolina to find that Guam had been invaded by the Japanese. She waited for 18 months wondering what had happened to her husband, giving birth to my father and caring for my uncle. She learned that Michael had stayed behind to blow up munitions and had been captured and killed.

Applied gesso to the burlap with a dry brush, let dry and used a palette knife for the red. 

She could have given up but there were children to raise and a life to live. She met the man I knew as my grandfather and they moved to Kansas. They tried several times to have children of their own, but sadly it was not to be. Again, she had the opportunity to give up and make a stone of her heart. But that just wasn't her. She kept herself open. I am sure that she had her days, dark and full of the weight that these tremendous losses caused. But they did not over take her.

Layers of paper and ephemera with gesso, rubber stamp ink and thinned acrylic paint applied over them.

Her heart may have been broken many times, but there was still room left to fill.

Art Journal Thursday: From the Journal to the Wall

Last week I shared my goals for 2014. And then I filed them away in my art journal file. (I was starting an art journal that would have loose pages that I would bind together later.) A few days after my post, it occurred to me that the goals wouldn't do me any good if I weren't reminded of them all the time. So I decided to make them into framed art.

Now I can see the goals and align my activities to them.

My first step was to find a frame. I went to my stash and found a lovely 10 x 10 frame. But my art journal page was the wrong size. So back to the stash. I found some black art board that I rescued from the trash many years ago and cut it to size. I then mounted the page giving it a quarter of an inch border on three sides. I decided to mount it off center so that I would only have one edge to embellish.

Raided the stash for the embellishments.

The embellishment is from Prima. The flowers are cut from a Tim Holtz Sizzix Bigz die. The black swirl is cut from a Quikutz Adornment die. (A little secret--I love this Adornment die a lot. I mean tons. It's a wonder to me that it isn't in more of my projects, but it just doesn't do to repeat one's self too much.)

Seeing the goals all the time will help me align my activities to them. This is an important aspect to achieving these goals. For example, this turning the art journal into wall art included two of my goals: "Spend less" and "do more me"!

If you  have a favorite art journal page, try turning it into art that you can see all the time. I'd love to hear about your projects so please drop me a line to tell me about them!