Friday 22 January 2016

NUTURE. GROW.


I  was looking through my stack of Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazines and came across an interesting article called Visual Journaling by Melanie Testa (issue 24 May/June) . In it she shared a little of her process, one of which is using tracing paper in her journals.  When she is out and about she takes sketches of things of interest e.g. a bird or a flower, then she comes home does the research and draws it again, this time on tracing paper.  This allows her to be able to use that sketch again and again.

She uses tracing paper not only to sketch on but also to paint on.  Now this initially made me a little nervous.  Putting paint onto tracing paper will instantly cause the paper to distort. However Melanie suggests, "You can also play with the tracing paper's ability to stretch and expand while applying the tracing paper to your work."

Being a girl that uses what I have to hand I decided to try working on tissue paper.  I knew this would throw up more of a challenge but I was well and truly inspired and ready to go and here's the resulting page.

Within the page above I have created a background from left over wet ink and paint from other pages I had been working on so it was basically all ready to work on.  I sketched then painted my one year old jade tree onto the tissue paper then painted it using my Kuretake paints, I love their vibrancy.  Whilst waiting for the paint to dry I cut out some graph paper and outlined a couple of words to link to the plant.  I love my little jade plant, I found it on a cold December morning in 2015. I brought it home as a small branch.. Many people believe that the more these plants flourish the more affluent you will become or perhaps it's you won't be short of money.  Whatever the believe, I used to have one for coming on 40 years and then it just gave up the ghost.  No amount of water, sun, re-potting helped it.

I hope you enjoy the page.

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