4 Battles in the Foreground-Background Tug-of-War:

 

Adding Richness with Collage

Getting towards the end of this journal I wanted to use up my stash of collage fodder that was getting 'stale' and so start the next journal with 'fresher' materials.

Falling in Love with the Background

The challenge I find over and over is how to integrate the images from magazine/catalog pictures into the expressiveness of the page. I want the process to be playful and the image to be richly layered without it sinking into hot mess chaos.

I tend to make the collage the first layer so I can do the meaningful 'art' on top of it. My inner split is that I like the idea of collage but I want the piece to be original, to be my own creation. At least that is my thinking before I start but once I get the collage down I feel reluctant to 'lose' it by covering it up.

For me, (1) worked the best. I used flower pictures from a bulb catalog but with all the layering and tinkering the flower images mostly lost their definition but do add color and richness.

With (2) I fell in love with the magazine picture. As I wrote this blog entry I had flash of what I could do differently the next time with a large magazine picture like this. I could  outline some geometrical shapes with gesso on top of the picture to create little windows on tree branch areas. I learned this extremely useful technique from Nika In Wonderland. Thanks, Nika!

I did like the stenciling with modeling paste over this picture. I was starting to get how use limited areas of the stencil to create stronger compositions.

In (3) the images from the bulb catalog are more visible but don't clash with the final composition.

In (4) I was really torn. I loved the colors of the feathers but I couldn't bring myself to tear up or cover over the birds. I couldn't tear their sweet little faces up. I went with using the whole images. I ended up having their little eyes peaking through the stenciling but for me it doesn't quite work as a composition. I learned from this series that it is best to give the viewer a clear delineation between background and foreground so the brain does not have to struggle in vain to resolve what's what.

True Colors Video Tutorial

Heart Flip

Watercolor, stamp pad ink, gesso

The Plan:

The prompt was "flip". Also, the week before, the gals in my art journaling group, were talking about how we each have such a distinctive style. I said, "I bet we could each do an index card and put them in a pile and we would all know who did which card". Someone said, "Lets do it!", so we did. I didn't want them to instantly know it was my card, so to turn up the heat with the game I avoided doing things I always do. It was a good stretch. 

When it came time to guess, we mostly got them right, except for two. It made me look more closely and think about how each artist in our group creates. 

For the flip I had the idea to do circles and reverse color/texturing for the foreground and the background. It was a neat design challenge to have the composition and the heart stencil work with both the flip open and closed.

The Surprises: Painting with black watercolor over the gessoed card gave some beautiful accidental blossoms, similar to using salt. I then went over those areas with some silver stamp pad ink.  I loved how it came out. I liked composing with clouds of gesso applied with a fingertip and making grass with watercolor applied with  piece of cardboard.

Floating in the Pigment

Stenciling with Watercolor

I love watercolors and I love stencils but using them together is challenging as the watercolor easily leaks under the stencil and mushes together.

Here is a fun experiment to find a work-around, knowing that watercolor paint can be confined by where the water is on the page.
 
I misted plain water through the stencil. I got water puddles with nice clean edges from the stencil openings. So far so good!











Then I floated some watercolor paint in from the center of each water puddle with a small brush taking care to not to disturb the edge of the puddle. In some of the puddles I floated in more than one color and watched with delight as the pigments blossomed and blended out into the puddle.














Here it is after it dried. Got nice shapes from the stencil and still got the magic of how watercolor blends and interacts with the paper. Sweet!

Stencils designed by me are available at Etsy

Combed Elephant

Integrating Watercolor and Modelling Paste

The Plan:

(From a prompt to do a page with a neutral color palette: gray and tan.) Draw an elephant in pencil from a source photo. Add modelling paste in trunk, legs and ears and comb in wrinkles and then paint elephant in Payne's Grey watercolor. Add modeling paste through drywall tape in background. Use shredded jute twine mixed in gesso for "grass" the elephant is standing on.

The surprise: they integrated amazingly well. 

Music Head

Art Journal Page, Step-by-Step

The plan:  

A page on the theme of music. Use my chunky bracelet and drag some curves in violet watercolor on top of a watercolor over gesso background. (1)

Make a piano keyboard at one end of the curvy marks and have the other end burst into movement. (2)

Developing Texture and Interest

More bracelet marks in blue. (3) Added some marks coming out of the original paint puddles from the background to give it more interest and motion. Added title and words. Added dotted lines before and after each word to organize and guide the eye to read them (4).

Watercolor over Gesso 

Too chaotic and hard to read the words. Pulled up some paint and gessoed to simplify. It needs a focal point and there is an eye shaped space between the words "emotion" and "soul". I tried to do an eye with a sound wave (6) but adding the other eye and a nose to complete the face did not work, so I made a face profile which turns the eye Egyptian, but that's ok.

The surprises: The head, which I did not plan and the richness of the image. I'm loving the way it all came together and the ease of revising when the watercolor is over gesso.

Lost and Found

Lost and Found 7/22/16

Art Journal Page, Step-by-Step

Art Journal Prompt

 M.J. had brought a large poster of a vintage map to our art journal group to tear up and distribute. She couldn't bring herself to tear it (we also have a little inhibition to tear pages out of books) but I was willing to be the first. We decided to use our pieces as our group prompt.

Elements preparation

I burned my map pieces with a wood burning tool, spattered them with watercolor and tore them into strips with the intention of making a basket weave. In (1) you can see the before and after of edging them with cocoa brown  ink. Because, well, France Papillon would have edged each piece and this page is very much inspired by her work.

(2) A friend had some drywall tape he didn't need and I was eager to play. I suspended it over a box and applied gesso with a plastic card. After it dried, I daubed it with watercolor to match the colors I used on the map.

(3) For a focal point, I decided to design my own compass rose.  I penciled the points with compass and ruler and looked at some Zentangle patterns for how to ornament. Found a perfect pattern to adapt. I cut my compass rose out with a pair of decorative edge scissors and painted it to integrate with the map. When edging it with the cocoa ink, I accidentally smeared some right in the center. I patched over that booboo with a circle cut from the map (you can see the patch in the final image below).

Layering

(4) Background is watercolor on a gessoed page. I wanted dark colors to peak through the space between the strips in the weave.

(5) Background seemed too rough and not integrated enough so I lifted some of the watercolor off with a sponge through a stencil (6).  Needed to integrate with color, so I spattered the background with the same mustard yellow that I used on the map. After gluing down all the pieces, I darkened the right and lower edge to balance the focal point.

The surprise: the compass rose came together with very little struggle once I found the zentangle pattern to help me. It is a great tool to have in my artsy toolbox.