Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Yet another art journal page....are you all getting bored yet?.....


...because I'm afraid I'm not! Sorry :)

This one has taken 4 days, not because it was difficult, but because I had a busy busy busy weekend, so my ten minutes per day really was only ten minutes.  And also because the page had no idea where it was going and I needed to give it time to figure itself out.

This is so liberating for me, making stuff without a hint of a plan, I love it!

So, on day 1, Friday, I just prepped the page with black gesso (my son Darby's suggestion, he saw me getting the white gesso out as usual and said 'why don't you use black gesso instead because Bob Ross likes black gesso' - so I did :)  ).  And I also painted the blue/green and reddy pink papers which would go on to make those chevron strips, and stamped spots on them in copper ink.

On day 2, Saturday, I stamped the 5 journalling blocks with white ink, and painted them roughly inside with blue and purple interference paints.  I also added the scribbled oil pastel border.  And I punched out all the chevrons for the strips and stuck them on. 

The page now looked like this:

And then I drew a bit of a blank....

The plan was to journal inside those blocks, but I had no idea what about....

On day 3, Sunday, we went to London, to the Science Museum, where we saw this fantastic display of sculptural casts of the same face showing different emotions:

Amazing aren't they!

I took photos of the 6 faces, and said to my other half that I might use them in my journal....and then he pointed out something I had completely missed....the journalling blocks I had laid out, with their metallic/reflective interference paint, looked like mirrors!  And these fab faces would look brilliant staring out from these mirrors.

This is why I call him my creative director, he always has clever ideas like that.

We got home late that night and I was tired, but I still did my 10 minutes, I printed out the photos of the 6 faces, and cut them out.

Then today, I finished the page off by sticking the faces down on their mirrors, outlining them with white pen, and adding all the writing and a few doodles.

I really like how this one turned out, it's definititely a different challenge starting with a base of black instead of white, but it's a fun one!

And it gave me a chance to play with two new toys, the chevron punch, and the rest of my POSCA paint pens.  Both toys that I will definitely be playing with again very soon.

Can't believe I haven't missed a single day of this yet - doing something creative, however small, every single day, is such a great feeling.


AJED : 24/265

8 comments:

ally said...

fantastic pages, i wish i could find time each day. maybe once college is finished

Sarah said...

I thought the same Ally, but knowing I can legitimately stop after just 10 minutes helps me to fit it in, sometimes all I do in a day is lay a couple of coats of paint down or something if I'm really busy. Helps if you have a table where you can leave your stuff out ready to go.

forcryeye said...

Well hello CUZ! I was so smitten with London, that I really, really want to come back to England SOON!!! We will hook up then!!!

Sarah said...

that would be fab! :)

AngC said...

Good luck with your journal cover! LOL

I've been meaning to try black gesso for ages but never got around to it. Looks great!

Sid said...

Fab pages, the black does make everything 'pop' too !!

Michelle S said...

Brilliant! {as usual} lol

Seth said...

Tremendous pages. And thanks for showing us the step-by-step. It was fun to 'watch you' make the journal pages.