Monday, August 12, 2013

Art Journal Page

It's been a while since I did anything in my Art Journal so I did a very quick page that I really love.
It's simple.
It's bright... you may need sunglasses!!
It was inspired by two of my favourite Mixed Media Artists who's blogs I follow religiously... the ever charming Donna Downey who I have told you before I love and the totally off-the-wall but who thinks like me which is quite scary Aaron from Imperfect Impulses. I have been watching their respective channels a lot lately and both have almost a take it or leave it, it is what it is, I'm no perfectionist style of Art Journalling which I love and which encourages me to give it a go, because Lord knows I am far from perfect especially with my art journaling!!

I started with a gessoed page as my blank canvas.
I had been playing with my Faber Castell Gelatos earlier in the weekend to colour my flowers and they were still on my desk, so I picked out a few colours and just proceeded to completely cover my page. For this I used - Lime which I blended with Green Tea and Red Cherry which I blended with Bubble Gum.
I coloured the two green first, then repeated the exercise with the red and pink.
When the page was entirely covered, I spritzed water over the page and using a paint brush blended the two pairs of colours together, starting with the greens.
When all the gelatos were blended I sprinkled water using my hands over the page. The green had almost dried naturally by then, so the water did not have much effect on it, but on the red/pink, the water pulled up the colour so when I dried it with a roll of paper towels, the colour lifted allowing the white gesso to show through giving like a bleached out look in spots across the red and pink.
As I rolled the paper towels over the entire page, some of the red and pink came off the paper towels onto the green in the texture of the paper towels. The transference of colour, while not planned, looks really good... so I must remember to try that again (on purpose).
I dried the page with my heat tool, before drawing some lines with black Indian Ink which I allowed to drip down over the green.
I then left the page to dry naturally.
 The completed page... though I should add a date somewhere to be really completed, not that I've done that on any of my other pages, but I guess I need to start somewhere...
I really like the "bleached" look from sprinkling water on the still wet gelatos, letting it sit for ten seconds or so then drying the page with the paper towels to lift off the colour where the water was dripped. You can also achieve something similar by misting water over a stencil or template. 
Some of my drippage. Alas I don't have a dropper, so I had to improvise (as we Kiwis do) and I made do with the refillable ink well of a Parker Calligraphy Pen from back in the day when I was teaching myself calligraphy. It was a bit awkward and not the easiest thing to control, but it did the trick. It'll have to do until I can afford to go and splurge on a dropper!!
Just a little close up of the transference of ink and the texture from using the paper towels. Unexpected... but good.
I know it's a really simple page, but I like it and that's all that matters. I tried some new products, some new techniques and improvised where I didn't have the tools to do the trick... but isn't that what art is all about!

No comments: