WOYWW #324

OH MY… did I mess up the canvas yesterday! The ‘lady’ was a cut out image from a magazine (I cut the face out too, so she had a blank ‘face’) I was in doubt if I should paint over it or leave it a photo and collage around it or something. Somehow, I decided to get my paint out… and I don’t like how it looks at all! I cannot go back to the former phase so I will have to work with this. I might even cover it all up.

Same happened on the ‘intuitive canvas’ (I showed you last week.)
It’s not as messed up as the ‘lady canvas’ but I’m not satisfied either…

This canvas may become a repeating object in my posts…

Luckily, I have two art journal pages to show you that I am happy with! Both made last Summer for “The Documented Life Project.”

May 16
May Theme: Touchy Feely (Texture)
Art Challenge: Modeling Paste
Journal Prompt: Rising to the Occasion

I don’t have modeling paste so I had to be inventive. I had a stencil ‘bricks’ and thought of the song “Brick by Brick” (by Racoon.) I mixed gesso, heavy gel medium and sand to create the ‘brick look’ and wowzah, it worked great! Here’s a detail photo.

The ‘intuitive way of painting’ inspired me to try something like it on my next art journal page… here’s the prompt

May 23
May Theme: Touchy Feely (Texture)
Art Challenge: Cheesecloth
Journal Prompt: Say Cheese

and here’s what I made with it.

I love this page. If only I could create something like this on canvas… what is it, that makes me fear the canvas so much? I HAVE to get over that one of these days… I’m working on it sweeties – to be continued.

P.S. Don’t forget about my GIVEAWAY – you have until Friday 10 a.m. CEST to enter.

WOYWW #304

An old newspaper (I use as an under layer to my work) sharpies and my reading glasses. Yep, I used all these colors on the ‘thingie’ I’m working on. It is a project that makes me smile… I will be able to show you photos of it somewhere in June.

When I looked around on my desks, I found more spots that I could photograph.
This is an unfinished art journal page that I am working on for The Documented Life Project Art Challenge #11:  As a Focal Point (“Coming into Focus.”) It needs journaling/lettering – I plan on journaling in white around the circle.

And finally, here’s the ‘folded paper strip’ that lay on my desk for so long… it will turn out into a tiny journal eventually… I started gluing some paper-scraps and doodling just a bit. It’s far from finished though. It’s probably one of those projects that takes months before I finish it.

Do you have projects like that? Pages that you work on for only a little while and then put to the side again – projects that for some reason take forever to finish?

Last but not least – if you visit my woyww-posts on a regular base you may remember the ‘to-do’ lists I have hanging on my window sill. In this post you can take a closer look at those notes and I explain all about my future (creative) plans. That’s if you’re interested…

If you’re not, and rather go on visiting other artists’ blog, that’s OK with me. I recommend you hit back to Julia’s then, as she hosts WOYWW and the list with links to more artists’ desk can be found on her blog.

February 28
February Theme: Layers You Will Love!
Art Challenge: Using at Least Five Layers
Journal Prompt: Give Me a High Five

Layer 1: The ‘blank’ page is not blank because I work on old book pages. I used machine stitching on the former page (DLP #8, see this post) and so my first layer is already there!

Layer 2: I used some bright colors of acrylic paint to fill in the stitched rectangles.

Layer 3: I glued rice paper on the page and scratched some of the paper away with a craft knife.

Layer 4: I grabbed my new stencil and sprayed with yellow, red and green (dylusions) spray ink. The absorbent rice paper made the ink run which resulted in blurred lines.

Layer 5: The stenciled images were just too much, so I covered part of it under a layer of gesso.

Layer 6: Next I glued some left over pieces from a gelatin mono-print to the page.

Layer 7: I smeared some white paint through a dotted stencil to add more texture. (The underneath ink made the paint turn a bit green, an effect I like.)

Layer 8: Then I stamped a border to the left and some spirals with my hand-carved stamps.

Nearly done… the page needed some contrast so I doodled some extra circles with a marker and outlined the stenciled images. Finally, I wrote text around the big circle. (part of a quote by Ellen DeGeneres “It’s our challenges and obstacles that give us layers of depth and make us interesting.”

So – how many layers are there on this page? Does the doodling and writing count as a layer? It’s 9 then! Here’s the finished page.

As I said, I finished more pages but I show you those some other time. Wednesday maybe? Stay tuned!

January 31
January Theme: The Blank Page and How to Face It!
Art Challenge: Under Paper (paper on your work table that gets all inky while you work)
Journal Prompt: What Lies Beneath?

At first I thought about tearing this page up, or gesso over it, and start anew ’cause I don’t like it very much… but I decided to leave it as is and turn the page for the next challenge. After all, not every page I create turns out to be “WOW” and that’s OK.

The blue part is created with old, inky tissue paper (I use it to wipe of my stencils.) I combined it with a torn photo from a picturebook and a (almost not readable) quote from Herman Melville (Moby Dick)

“There is one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath”

Last Saturday’s challenge was more up my alley, I started this page as soon as the challenge was published online and finished it in no time.

February 7
February Theme: Layers You Will Love!
Art Challenge: When Not To Stop
Journal Prompt: “Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough!” (Ooh)

I glued parts of mono prints to the background, there’s also torn and inked paperscraps from an old encyclopaedia. I stamped acrylic paint (with bubble wrap plastic and a toilet roll.) The small text (upper right corner) is stamped with a text stamp and Stazon ink. The dancer is cut out from yet another mono print. I outlined and added shadow using my watersoluble crayons. Last but not least, I handwrote a sentence from the lyrics “Wild Child” by the Doors (not very visible… it’s vertical, to the right on the page) “With hunger at her heels, freedom in her eyes, she dances.”

Last but not least…. I got featured on Arts Illustrated!

A while ago, Arts Illustrated interviewed me for their website and the interview is now online, so hop on over and READ THE INTERVIEW HERE

See you next Wednesday.

This year, however, there was again buzz about DLP, and again a lot of my blogfriends joined the project. So I went back to the DLP site to see if it would be something that I could submit to, if it was interesting and fun enough to create a weekly page besides my Chronicles with (I won’t give up my personal ‘Chronicles’ journaling.) I found out that each month, The DLP team comes up with a “theme” and each week they post an art related challenge as well as a creative journal prompt. I read the prompts that were already given, and I liked the freedom it provided. The prompts give you the opportunity to interpret freely and create to your own wish and style, so I decided to join. I think it will be nice for a change to create on the basis of a given prompt, a technique or a certain material, and not worry to get my ‘weekly text’ on the page. I feel already that DLP will be a nice addition to my Chronicles!

Now that I decided to join DLP, next step was to hunt for a book to work in. The DLP team advice one of Ranger Dylusions Dyan Reaveley’s Creative Journals but, stubborn as I am, I prefer my OWN journal and not a fabric-made one. (Why? Well, besides the size of the journal and the quality and color of the paper – which isn’t always to my like, although I have heard that Dyan’s journals contain nice, sturdy paper – the fabric-made books never have the amount of pages I want. A weekly journal should contain 52 page-sides as there are 52 prompts to work with – I find that important. And more: buying a blank journal is expensive!)

For years now, I bind my books for art journaling myself but I have some lovely, old books in my closet also. For DLP I decided to take one of those out and finally use it as planned: for art journaling! I carefully removed the pages from the spine. Then, I glued together two double pages (‘spreads’) together to make it more sturdy and gessoed the page. I plan on working on the loose pages and bind it together at the end of the year. I don’t know yet what I will do with the cover so I leave it as is for now.

I made all three weeks/prompts last week, so I’m up to date when the next prompt comes online tomorrow… here’s my first three pages.

I created the first two prompts on one spread so they flow into each other a bit… I like it!

January 1
January Theme: The Blank Page and How to Face It!
Art Challenge: Book Paper
Journal Prompt: Be Your Own Goal Keeper

January 10
January Theme: The Blank Page and How to Face It!
Art Challenge:  Gesso
Journal Prompt:  “The beginning is always today.”- Mary Shelley

The prompt to use bookpaper on the background was easy: I work in an old book so there was bookpaper in the background already! Still, I decided to glue on some more pages from a dictionary that spell out the words goal, ambition, intention and destination. I gessoed around the words. I coloured the page using watercolour paint, oil crayons (rubbed with my fingers) and a bit of spray ink and a dotted template. I kept it transparent so the toned-down bookpage shimmers through. I outlined the words with machine stitching but didn’t cut of the loose threads. Instead, I glued them to the page so they made ‘lines’, on which I wrote my journaling.

For the second prompt (page to the right) the page was already gessoed. The given quote did nothing for my imagination, so I searched for another quote with the word “begin.” When I found this one by Lewis Carol (“Alice in Wonderland”) I knew that was it: “Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end. Then stop.” Fabulous! I printed a photo of Alice (from the movie) and transfered it onto the page using mod podge. The colouring is done in the same way as the left page. I handwrote the quote using black and white markers.

January 17
January Theme: The Blank Page and How to Face It!
Art Challenge:  The Color Wheel
Journal Prompt:  “I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way …”    – Georgia O’Keeffe

For this prompt, I took a lesson about the color wheel from my own workshop “Let it Loose” – art journalers who took that online workshop will surely recognize this lesson/prompt… it’s about taking an excisting photo and coloring it in complementary (opposite) colors. Here’s the photo I worked with (taken from an tourist magazine about the city of Middelburg)

I used acrylic paint to paint over it.

I added (handwrote) a quote from Marc Chagall as the saying refers to the color wheel and to this piece: “All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites.”

Tomorrow, the fourth DLP prompt will be announced, and I’m already looking forward to it!

(If you are interested in joining “The Documented Life Project”, all information and prompts can be found on Art to the 5th