It's About the Journey

This has turned out to be one of my favorite journal pages. It was also one of the most challenging. I started again with a base of collage, this time including elements of old sheet music covers that I'd copied, as well as textural text elements from embossed cardstock. I covered the collage with liquid acrylic colors- mainly titanium buff, but also using some color to bring out the texture. But then I just didn't know what to do.

I tried a lot of different approaches with paint over several months, never finding any of them satisfying, so I'd leave it, and come back later to try again. This is where you see lots of depth in the color- not what I quite intended, but it's what happened, and now I really like it.

One of the things I tried with my layering was some pink ink on a rose stamp. This turned into a happy accident or "make it work moment". As I applied titanium buff over the stamp to make it less prominent, I found that it kept bleeding into any paint. I realized that my ink was not waterproof, so it just would not disappear. Yes indeed, I've learned from this! However, the pink is now one of my favorite elements in this composition. .

One day I realized that I needed more texture, and so I added stenciled trees with molding paste. Ah Ha!. That is what I needed. I painted the trees, and realized that I'd probably color the molding paste before stenciling next time. I then added leafiness to the trees with a natural sponge and acrylics, and added some water soluble oil crayon for more colors of green and definition here. I also wanted to continue the pink in the background, so added some pink here and there in the trees to represent flowers, reminding me of redbud or hawthorne trees in bloom.

Finally, I figured it out. And realized, that the composition, and so much of what is important in my life, is about the Journey. Which gave me my message, painted in metallic copper liquid acrylic. I just needed to convey that message in my text. I found a stamp of birds in flight, added that- this time in waterproof brown ink, and highlighted the lead bird in red acrylic paint, which became the tiny but important focal point of this piece.

It seems like the best art is organic: developing, growing and changing over time, based on what feels like the right way to go when we get to each point, rather than based on course we've mapped at the outset. Along the way, we grow, learn, correct our course, and keep on going, sometimes just plugging away because we know we need to. At some point, it finally becomes clear. Suddenly we realize where we are going, and we can quickly finish, turning our long and sometimes arduous process into something wonderful.

Yes, it's about the journey.

Sunshine and Moonlight II

These pages in my art journal are a continuation of my series exploring scenes in day and night. Similar to the previous pictures, I started with a base of collaged papers, added gesso and liquid acrylic coloring to the pages. While the blue was still damp, I dropped on rubbing alcohol from a dropper, and used paper toweling to remove a bit of the color, creating the variations in coloring.

This time, I also wanted to experiment with colored and painted modeling paste and stencils. As a final touch on the moonlight scene I decided that I needed some shadows, which I added very lightly with black on the bottom.

Sunshine and Moonlight

These pages from my art journal were created early in 2013. After finding success with Healing a Broken Heart, working similar pictures in two different colors, I wanted to experiment with similar scenes in night and day.

I chose to start these with a base of text collaged with gesso:  Eat Pray Love, which I'd gotten for free, so I didn't feel bad cutting it up. I find myself choosing a text on my collage base that has some significance to me or to my piece, even if it doesn't show up at all.  I did a light base with gesso on each, then went with liquid acrylics in yellows and greens for the day scene with stenciled butterflies and hand painted leaves and touches of pink here and there.

On the moonlight side, I created a blue background, rubbing the liquid acrylic in with paper towel, then using a reductive technique with alcohol on paper towel to rub off areas of the blue, revealing the white underneath, which seemed to add to the moonlit effect. The bird was stenciled in titanium buff and I added some features, branch, leaves and additional highlighting in acrylics.

Healing a Broken Heart

This is a page from my art journal from early January 2013. I was just learning about different media, drippage, layering and was experimenting with different techniques. This was one of my first compositions in the art journal that I really felt was an artistic expression of where I was at emotionally, going through several losses at that time. For me, that emotional component and finding meaning in a piece seems to be what separates my art from my craft and my experimentation.

Originally there were two pictures on facing pages. The other page had a green background with a silver heart, which I gave to a dear friend.

Tattered Hearts Book

This is a project I did earlier this year, inspired by a book my sister-in-law had made in a class a number of years ago. I've admired her book, and found it a good learning process to copy what she had done.

Making The Tattered Heart Book, I learned a number of great techniques including tearing hearts, freestyle wire & bead decorations, using corrugated paper accents, making paper beads, creating spirals out of wire. This project also used stamping in white ink on a black background, which later inspired a notebook I made.

One of the greatest challenges for me in this is that I had to essentially deconstruct her book in my mind measuring each piece, then use those measurements to cut the pieces for my own book, which required great precision. While I've done plenty of sewing projects during my life, most of my work lately has been much more organic, intuitive and forgiving. The discipline required for this project was a good challenge. It also helped me realize that when I'm creating, I enjoy it more if I have the freedom to do my own thing, an important lesson for me.

As I develop as an artist, I find myself moving away from precision and copying things, and more toward making my own choices that reflect my artistic expression, and what I like or what feels right to me. I guess that's why I enjoy abstract art and mixed media, and why I keep avoiding learning to draw!!

Thank you April for making this project possible, and for your constant inspiration and assistance!