Beautiful Monsters

The Ugly Stage 7/14/16

Art Journal Spread, Step-by-Step 

The Prompt

This was a prompt my art journaling group chose. Cut and paste http://daisyyellowart.com/vividlife/prompt60-13.html

 

First Layer

I started with a color scheme of the secondary colors, green, orange and purple. On the right page I had used up some leftover acrylic paint and messed around with it.

 

Composition Plan

I penciled a grid that divided the entire spread into thirds horizontally and vertically as a composition guide. I cut random stuff from a magazine that fit the color scheme and pasted.

On the right side of (2) you can see most clearly where I followed my composition gridline.

 

Working the Collage with Gesso

(3) The lower left green area was too dark and saturated so I gessoed to push it back. One the lower right, I extended the collage with a piece that suggested a fish tail and drew a purple fish with watercolor pencils.

I still did not like the pumpkin and green vegetables in the lower left so I gessoed heavily over that area.

(4) I used gesso to suggest a mermaid shape in the bottom left area. I drew some small purple citrus fruits in watercolor pencil above the mermaids head to echo the blood orange enclosed in her form and the lemon slices in the upper right.  Also added some ink around all pages' edges to frame the spread.

 

Decision Point with Watercolor Pencil

It was late in the evening. I had not done the big fish yet, so the upper half still looked like it does in image (3). I stared at it. Color scheme: check, composition grid: check. But I did not like the randomness of the objects there. What does it mean? Plastic bottles polluting the ocean? I did not want to go there. I made the decision to enclose that area in a large fish and drew an outline in watercolor pencils. I tore myself away to go to bed.

In the morning I refined the front of the purple fish and removed the collage pieces from its end. Better. I did the scale pattern on the orange fish in watercolor pencil and activated it with water. It was pretty ragged over all the collage and gesso (4).

(5) Went over the scales with more watercolor pencil, drawing the pigment in wide sweeps hoping to soften the ragged edges. A hot orange mess.

Also tore out the blood orange that was showing on the back of the mermaid. I knew it had to go sooner or later. 

 

I think I saved it!

(6) Clarified the scale pattern with yellow tinted gesso stroked on with a paint brush. With the yellow strokes on the scale pattern now so prominent, some places where the pattern went too random jar the eye.

(7) Removed some of the yellow strokes that messed up the scale pattern. Darkened the little purple citrus fruits.

 

Self Discovery

Here is the text that I journaled in the space between the mermaid and the orange fish:

What lies below the fine line between water and air, the fine line between beauty and the grotesque monster? What is eerily becoming something else and you catch it in transition and wish you hadn't seen it. The ill defined mess, the ugly stage but I am willing to look.

I did not like the spread. I thought, well, I did the assignment, I had fun, I learned great stuff. I worked on other pages for a couple of days and then looked at this spread again. I like it now. More complex, more meaningful, more surprising. Going in the right direction.