Hello friends,
Happy Monday! Here’s to a fabulous arty week. I am having some health issues at the moment but nothing too serious and they will hopefully be better soon, just having some trouble getting around and getting things done, but since I have to be less vertical it means I can get more art time in so it’s not all bad.
today’s journal page . . .
Today’s spread is inspired by a Life Book 2022 Taster Session lesson by Holly McLaughlin. I did this class a week ago but I am only now getting the post written and the photos edited. At first I felt a bit disappointed that the lesson was not how to make the painting that was shown on the taster session page as that was the reason I decided to pick this lesson to do, but that serves me right for not watching the video first before getting stuck in and not reading the handout beforehand! The lesson was all about the mindful exercises to follow which resulted in a starter page which you could then use in other ways or turn into something else. After that, she showed a sped-up video of how she finished her page, adding more layers and painting on top which turned into the painting from the Taster Session promo. I might have another go at this but at the time I was following along, it left me a bit stuck as to where to go next. Also I was working in my journal and not a loose sheet of paper like she was so I wanted to finish my page.
This was how it was after doing some of the mindful exercises. Then there was more mark making and then we were to start adding colours based on how we were feeling/emotions. Quite a lot of mine turned out to be black, since it was not a good day for me, and then I thought I should lighten it up a bit before the whole page turned out black so I added turquoise and magenta, though this magenta is very reddish.
While I was colouring in sections of my page background, I thought I could see a black bird emerging on the right side and then on the left, a woman, so I decide to work with that and see what happened, rather than covering everything up. Then I added a lot of black and white marks and doodling to the background.
I pulled out some gel prints that I thought I could use to enhance the background and found this one with the Emily Dickinson quote on it. I think it was done with a knitting needle, writing backwards on the gel plate so it would be printed the right way round.
Since I already had a bird on my page, i thought that it would go nicely.
And we’re done! Believe it or not I quite like where this ended up, it had no planning at all in the beginning, and the fact that a bird appeared in the middle of it was a complete fluke!
So I should have watched the video to the end before starting but I didn’t, lesson learned lol. I didn’t use the same supplies as I didn’t have them, so I improvised and used what I had.
Let me know what you think in the comments. As always, thanks for reading!
Ingredients
my handmade journal, watercolour paper, neocolors, fluid acrylic, woodies, pencil, paint pens, gel prints for collage, gel medium,
Challenges
Art Journal Journey – The Colours of October – October Challenge
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Sorry to hear you aren’t well – hope you feel better soon. This may not have been what you thought at first but it’s turned out to be so beautiful. Thanks so much for sharing this at Art Journal Journey, hugs, Chrisx
Regardless of the start, it turned out great. I like the bird you chose, too. I would not have enjoyed that taster lesson, because I’m not fond of touchy-feely kinds of art. You did a great job, though. Thanks for sharing this with us at AJJ, too.
That’s too bad about the video. It’s always nice to learn all the steps as you go through. But your page came out great anyhow, and now it is really an Elle page. Thanks for sharing this fun piece of art with us. Happy Monday-hope you are better soon and gets lots of arty time too. Hugs-Erika