Journey of a page

   This month on the Dragonfly Dreamers Exploration group page the theme is art journaling.  I have been playing in art journals for 6 or 7 years now. It is probably one of my favourite things to do. There are no rules and it doesn't have to be perfect because it's just for me. I use them to experiment and try new techniques and mediums. I use them to do online class work in. I use them for doodling, drawing...well for just about anything. I have quite a few I'm working in at any given time and I often work in more than one at a time. The sizes vary from small 5"x5" handmade journals to larger 8"x12".  Mostly I like to use ones with heavy watercolour paper but a few have different paper and one is all black.

   

   Often when there is left over paint from other projects or students work, I slap it into a journal page without any thought as to what I will do with it. So my journals have quite a few pages in this ugly stage. Last week I asked people on my social media to choose a page for me to finish. This is the page they chose and it's journey.

This page was probably the nicer of the three to chose from. At this stage it's just left over paint that's been slopped on and a bit added with a stencil. I often don't have an idea when I start a page but for this one I did. I knew I wanted a kind of jungle leafy look and a face peaking out. But first I needed layers.

Since it already had some stenciling started it only seemed natural to keep going with more layers of stencils. This is all done with acrylic paints. It's amazing how fast doing some layers of stencils can bring the page together.

After the stenciling I was drawn to the circles so I accentuated them a bit with pastels and graphite.

At this point I did something that I almost regretted. I took some paint and scraped it across the page here and there. I did not like this as soon as I got it on and this stuff dries fast. I quickly took a paper towel and took some off. It didn't take it all but the effect worked after all. This is the light coloured splotches(technical term) you can see. I could live with it now.

Then it was time for mark making. For this I used pastels, Marabu Art crayons and some graphite. 

And then there are all the details. I spent quite a while, over a few days playing with the rest. For the leaves I used mostly acrylic paint and some Posca paint pens. I used Caran D'ache Neocolor II to do some shading and blending of the background. More marks were added in spaces that needed them.  It was a very fun page to do. 

I hope you enjoyed hearing a bit about the process of a journal page. Are you an art journaler?

Keep Creating!
Wendy

Variations of Acrylic Pours

Dirty pour and balloons.

  
 A few years ago a friend convinced me to try acrylic pouring. It took a little convincing because I didn't think it was something I wanted to do. It was just too trendy...everyone was doing it. I usually prefer to try things that no-one has seen before and try to do my own take on it. I didn't think acrylic pouring was something I could experiment and make into my own style.
   As you can guess she talked me into it. Our first attempt was fun but not what I would call successful. After doing some more research and some help from a fellow artist we were off and runner. And I have to say somewhat addicted. If you've done some acrylic pours you already know, you can't do just one.

Rings and balloons.

   After doing a multitude of dirty pours and teaching a number of workshops with it, I started to try some other techniques. First was the Swipe and with it the wave and layers. This became my second Acrylic Pours workshop. 

Rings with cloud effect.

   This past month I gave myself a few days to do some more experimenting with a variety of pour methods. All the images here are from those 3 playful, experimenting days.

Tree rings.

   Some of the methods that I tried and had success with were tree rings, cloud effect and balloons.

Swipes and balloons.

   I have a little more experimenting to do and then I will be sharing these methods in a new upcoming workshop. If you've done some pouring or are a newbie, this workshop promises to be a fun one.

   I will keep you posted when the date is set for it.

Keep creating!
Wendy