Happy Saturday everyone, hope you are finding some time to do something fun! Me, well I decided to lock myself in my studio and do some catching up before the end of the year and preferably before the end of the month! But we’ll see how that goes lol. So back in the Spring I enrolled in a course all about using art for self-care, a subject I am really interested in. It ran from beginning of May till halfway through August. I started late and then tried to play catch-up for a while but a bunch of stuff got in the way and I only got about halfway finished. I planned to finish all the art journalling pages and then stitch my book together but of course I haven’t done that because I haven’t finished all the pages yet! Here’s my book cover if you are curious. All the pages I’ve done so far are still loose inside it.
So today I decided to tackle the lesson by Alexa Doebler, which was all about playing, letting go and making a mess… so I made a mess!
I’m working with watercolour paper, loose watercolour paper, because my book won’t be stitched together till I’ve completed everything. These are A4 sheets of 200gsm paper from Clairefontaine, and it’s my favourite paper. Even though it’s only 200gsm, it’s awesome paper. For the US folks, A4 is roughly Letter size, and 200gsm is about 90lb paper. It’s actually not a bad way to work, having it loose like this instead of already in a book, but I do miss my book too.
I started by randomly scribbling all over the paper with some water soluble crayons
Then since I was playing, I decided to add some acrylic ink by just splattering it down on the paper using the dropper. It started to look a bit like blood splatter though.
Then I sprayed the whole thing with water and watched it go crazy. This was the Quin Magenta.
Then I added some Turquoise ink because that is my favourite and then used a second page to soak up some of the water and ink, and look, now I have two gorgeous backgrounds to use! These are my favourite colours together, they just make my eyes happy to look at them, and since I was supposed to be playing, why not use my favourite colours!
In the video they used sprays through a stencil but I’m not keen on that, too messy and my laptop was in danger so I did my own thing. Then added some journalling and some random scribbles in black and silver paint pens. I can’t decide if it’s pretty or a hot mess haha, the colours are still making me happy though so I vote for pretty!
Then to finish off the page, you could either draw a face if you like drawing faces (I do) or draw something else if you didn’t like drawing faces. Here’s mine. I painted some white acrylic over her face and on the other side of the page so I could write on it. I watered it down on her face so that some of the background colours would still show through.
That big crease down the middle is of course where I folded the paper (why did I do that!) It’s funny that some of my journalling that I did before I did the face, now looks like it was intentional – see on the left where it says “me”. I didn’t plan that but it now looks like it is pointing at the face. I do not have fluorescent pink hair btw lol. That paint pen is awesome though – look at that glow even on a dull day with bad light!
I wrote a little reminder to myself not to forget to play because I do forget, all the time, and this was so much fun and very quickly done!
I have my eye on you!
So that was one page down, and one step closer to finishing my book. I have my other handmade book that I also want to finish by the end of this year so I have my work/play cut out for me don’t I lol. I did get another page started after this one but then I had to stop and do essential things like cook dinner and play with the kitties!
As always, thanks for reading! Let me know what you think in the comments.
Challenges
Art Every Day Month – Day 21
PROJECT RECIPE:
My art journal
Watercolour paper
crayons, stabilo all, acrylic ink, paint pens, gesso, stencil, black pen, silver pen
From stash: everything!
Wow, this turned out GREAT. It sure looked like a hot mess for awhile, but it’s great in the end,.