Don't Worry

I just love that song by Bob Marley, Three Little Birds.  Here's my visual interpretation of it painted in watercolours and outlined with a micron pen.

Picture Perfect

This art journal page has actually evolved since I finished it.  I have been experimenting with bleach on paint and it's bled through to this page.  I quite like it actually.

I always have a starting point with a page it could be a word, a picture or something I see during the day.

In this instance I had an image of a Victorian woman using a trip-pod to take her photographs.  Then I created the doodled  wood.  Thin trees which would allow me to add something of interest. I decided on hot air balloons as they are slow and it perhaps would have been something an old camera would pick up.  I used some free images on line.  I then used one of my stencils and some hot shots acrylic paint to add a bright grid in the  background before applying the trees and hot air balloons.

I had intended to transfer the image directly onto the page but the colour didn't transfer as well as expected so I had to hand draw the details with a Gelliroll  glaze pen which ended up making the women look like a transfer.

Discover

The starting point for this page was the Taj Mahal, a travel advert which I layered it using different techniques.

Layering inks; the metallic reacts beautifully with the plain giving you little bubbles.

Drizzling ink: I drizzled some blue acrylic paint along the top edge and let it roll over the page.

Silhouetted: I looked up some free images of indian dancers, printed them off and traced them using carbon paper on the page then filled in with a black pen.

Luna lights: I dabbed some Luna lights in gold along the bottom to give the Taj Mahal a bit of a lift away from the dancers.

Doodles:  Last but not least I doodled a couple of paisley shapes.

Have you ever smoked?

I have say, this art journal page is not of my usual styling, but I really like the collaged image that i found in a computing magazine and it sparked me thinking.

The world has moved from smoking to vaping, and despite all the negativity surrounding the former we seem to have moved onto a cleaner version that, in my opinion, has been fully tested for the effects it may have on your health.

It's the simple things

A while ago I purchased Jane Davenport's book Drawing and Painting beautiful faces.  I'm trying to improve my painting and drawing skills and this book has been quite useful as she uses quite a lot of different mediums to produce the faces.

I used watercolour over a Gesso base then once it was dry I worked over it with soft coloured pencils from Specialist Crafts to add more detail; finishing off with a list of simple things that make me happy.

Hope you enjoy this art journal page

Tomato Rolls

Odd title for a journal page I know, but tomato rolls always give me happy thoughts.  Again, strange I hear you say.

It's a meandering story with lots of tendrils.  Tomatoes, make me think of my muvver whose time to leave me was in 2011.   She was a very strong but gentle women who was well respected and loved in the family and before she passed she saw and held a great grandchild and a great great grandchild.

She was first married at nineteen, she told me she was far to young.  Her husband, Osbourne (his surname) was in the services and was quite often posted away so my Mum was left with meagre means to live on.  So she decided to grow tomatoes, this she said helped her through the rough times when all she could afford was a loaf of bread.

At fifteen, she took me on a tour of the castles in Scotland.  No hotel, no place to stay, we would find somewhere when we got there.  At the time I was horrified, this unsettled me that there was no plan.  Remember this was in the days before the internet so you couldn't just do a search to see if there were places to stay.

We ended up staying in a lovely B & B and used that as our base.  Each day we would go out and visit a different castle or place of interest armed with tomato rolls, mushroom soup, some tunnock bars and a flask of tea.

These memories stay with me and even to this day, if I am out for the day I am more than happy taking with me some rolls, tomatoes and a fruit knife.

And how did I create the page?  Using, alcohol pens, tissue paper, water soluble crayons and a pen.

Star Gazer

Sometimes all you need is a hug

This journal page says it all really.

I used transparent Gesso to lay a foundation on the page before I applied grey, pink, turquoise and white acrylic paint with my fingers to create a background.  I then glued down a couple of collaged accents; the white bubbles on pink paper was a test piece I had used to test my moulding paste recipe and the image of the little girl with outstretched hands came from a free vintage image website.  Finally, the writing was a tracing of a free font called, Starry Night.

Indian Rug

A bit of a tie and dye effect for this page.   I used alcohol pens along with surgical spirit to achieve this lovely random colouring, then I worked over it by drawing an elephant and the border pattern to give it an indian rug feel.

The Artist

A collage of random images come together and layered over what I would call a scrap page.  A scrap page is where I smear left over paint and ink giving me a page almost good to go.

With this one I stencil a pattern using one of my masks and a blue distress ink pad applied with a make-up sponge.  To lift the colours on the background I used a pale yellow, mid purple and a touch of blue grey and smeared them with my finger tips around two of the corners before applying the cut out images.

California Dreamin

This is the third page I have created using my homemade molding paste and possibly the most successful.  As soon as I layered on the other pages the texture from using the masks (stencils) disappeared.

To get the stamped image and writing to sit right over the texture I used tissue paper then blended each in using a little acrylic paint.

I hope you like it.

Starry Night

The background for this page is made up of Distress and Spritzing inks. There was a reaction between the metallic and plain inks leaving dots which made me think of stars then the Van Gogh's painting, starry night.  I used acrylic paints to create the stars along with a thick white Posca pen and Gelly Roll pens to give the effect of the bright stars.

Beauty

Using my newly acquired Sakura glaze pens I created a doodle butterfly from book pages.  By the time I had finished my doodles there wasn't much left of the text showing through but I do like the paper colour and, to me, it had a real Japanese feel to it hence the title.

The background was achieved using Kuretake paints with lots of water to allow it to flow and bleed.

Beautiful Dreamer

I'm a little bit disappointed at how this journal page turned out although on the other hand I really like it.

If I explain, this is this the second page where I have used my homemade molding paste (recipe shared yesterday).  After thickening the paste I was really please with the effect and boldness of the result after using the stencil.   I painted over it with acrylic paints then touched it up with some distress inks and glimmer inks to give it a little sparkle.

Where the face is concerned, I don't always feel confident drawing faces so I quite often use copyright free line drawings as a starting point, then carry on to add my own touches to it.  I wanted to keep the image transparent as I didn't want it to detract from the writing.  I used the parlour song, "Beautiful Dreamer" by Stephen Foster which most people may remember was sung by Bing Crosby. Finally I coated the page with a layer of matt Modge Podge

I feel this page has a ethereal look about it which I am more than happy about, but I am a bit disappointed that the texture was lost.

Breast is best

The workings of the breast is complicated.  It's function is to provide us with a portion of our feminity.  It nutures our children, it forms a comfort blanket, it allures and attracts.

This page was the about exploring texture.  I've discovered a recipe for molding paste on Linda Donelly's blog and I'm always up for trying out different ways of doing crafts without spending a fortune on products.  The recipe (non edible) calls for 1 part acrylic paint, 1 part talcum powder and 1/2 glue (I used Modge Podge).  Mix it thoroughly and it's ready to use with your stencils or mark making tools.  I did find I needed to add a little bit more talc as it seemed a bit runny, if you look in the images some of the white bubble shapes have smudged, but otherwise I like the result.

Right on Time

The concept of time has always fascinated me.  When is the right time?  Time goes slowly when you're not enjoying yourself and really fast when you are.  I'm sure I am not the only one who feels that they can squeeze more things into a given time.

This page was an excuse to use some of the decoupage paper I had left over.  I bought it for £1.50 from my local The Works shop and added to my old hand crank Singer called "Jonesy" to make him a little more personalised.  He really is a lovely machine, solid and a great one to take out to workshops to allow people to experience sewing with a machine the gentle way.

So the cogs you see in this page are the decoupage paper, the rest of the page is covered with cream, brown and gold tissue paper, then I've used a pink highlighter to emphasise areas of the page.  handwritten letters and roman numerals complete the look.

LEMON: fruit. tree, colour (yellow)

It's interesting where ideas come from for the art journal pages.  I tend to allow my mind to drift to various places and build on those thoughts.  I had been thinking of the times I had travelled to Spain or Greece and how readily available citrus fruit is.

I journeyed back to one such holiday where I plucked a lemon from a tree whilst out bike riding.  How wonderfully fresh and tangy and full of life that lemon seemed to taste in my drink.

This is the first time I have used textile in a page and I quite like the 3D effect it has given the overall feel of the tree.  As per, I used what I had available to me, which was a left over bunting triangle which just happened to have a leaf print.  After painting them with acrylic paint I found I had to cut the leaves in half as they were twice the size of the lemons.  I then looked for words relating to lemons and lemon trees; poems and songs.

I used the poem "The Lemon Tree" by changers writer and a line from the folk song by Will Holt made famous by Peter, Paul and Mary plus the third verse of the poem "A Lemon" by Pablo Neruda

The background was created using acrylic paints and layer with gesso to add in the truck of the tree.  When make or create, things tend to happen organically, hence the small label that was sitting in my scrap box.... perfect.
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Welcome to my Garden, a cacophony of collaged flowers seen through a window drawn with alcohol pens.

I am grateful for......

How many things can you be grateful for?  Can you count them?  This was quite the challenge and I really had to put my thinking cap on but once I got started the ideas started to flow.

Mandala

This mandala was created using Kuretake paints and alcohol pens.  It's not evenly space but I think the imperfection works.