Hi crafty friends, here’s something I’ve been working on recently and finished it today. Last year (?!?) I made a bunch of these Distress Oxide backgrounds in one of my notebook journals and then left it alone for ages, but that’s not really unusual lol. I made them as I was testing out colour combos and what better way to do this than in an art journal, so it wouldn’t be wasted and I knew it was there if I needed it one day – like today!
In the beginning…
This notebook is roughly A4 sized and it’s not a “proper” art journal, it’s just an old notebook I had in my stash and I really liked the paper, but it is *not* mixed media paper so I do have to be careful with it – so of course I applied a lot of very wet media and sprayed water on it before closing it up and leaving it on a shelf for a year lol. But you know what, it was totally fine so sometimes you don’t really need a fancy new art journal, just use what you have.
So this came about because I was stuck in a waiting room with only a sketchbook and a phone for three hours and so I did a bit of sketching. I really liked this girl, but she is in a sketchbook and I didn’t want to start painting in it, so I decided to transfer it by tracing it onto some collage paper firstly, and then used it on my gelli plate which resulted on the pink version on the left. But for now, we are using the tracing I made.
After I traced three of the girls I had sketched, I decided to use the one on the bottom, and pasted her into this Distress Oxide background in the old notebook, because I really liked the colours and thought it could make a great underwater spread.
The middle…
After she was safely ensconced on the left page, I started some stamping using some of my favourite Rubber Dance art stamps. I love these little seahorses! I don’t have any seaweed type stamps from them so I used some of their plant and flower stamps which I have used before as underwater plants and I like the result.
I did all the colouring in using Polychromos pencils and paint pens and then used Inktense pencils for her gorgeous hair.
I decided to leave her face unpainted and just let the background colours shine through – who says that Mermaids are not turquoise? Or maybe they have the type of skin that blends in with their backgrounds like a chameleon!
The end…
The inspiration…
I am entering this mixed media canvas in the following challenges/prompts:
Country View Challenge September – Under the Sea
PROJECT RECIPE:
Art Journal/notebook
Sketch and collage paper to transfer,
Collage Medium
Distress Oxides
Rubber Dance Stamps – Textured Sea Creatures stamp set, sentiments, weeds, flowers
Faber-Castell Polychromos
Derwent Inktense pencils
Posca Paint Pens – various colours
Wow this is fabulous, well done you on drawing the face – something I could never do. Thank you so much for joining in with our challenge at Country View Crafts and have a very happy week, Sue xx
stunning make – I love your journal pages! Thanks for joining my challenge at Countryview challenges and good luck! Hugs rachel xx