Backgrounds for art journalling

One colour

Two colour with dry brush

3 colour

More art journalling

More art journal backgrounds.

My son has an old CraftROBO he used for vinyl cutting and the Silhouette templates are compatible so I have been playing with the machine for producing interesting backgrounds with the die-cuts I produced.

Emotionally Challenged Journal

 Back to my book of feelings... 

I did "Feel the Fear" and  "Anger" some time ago
and I made a page in my Journal of Prompts for more ideas for the "Emotionally Challenged" Journal

I had already made a background, using some left over acrylic wash, as I am trying to make sure I always have some journal backgrounds ready to go (as I explained in an earlier blog).

The background was shades of green but I felt it was about time I did a positive emotional spread in this journal as I get agitated when I look at the spreads I have already done! So I resisted going with Green-Eyed Monster and I wanted to make a page using the Calm prompt instead.

I found some quotes off the internet to get some good thoughts - as calmness is not one of my greatest attributes -

For collage images first I found a howling wolf so I thought that was what I should try to escape from,
and gave him a moon (taken from a pack of mirrors I am intending to use for Indian Shisha (mirror-work) embroidery - one day...).

I love horse imagery so I found a very free, galloping horse, He is charging off through some white gates I cut out and carrying on into the next page which has flowers, candles, a calm arch through into the green of the natural world, and Tim Holtz chipboard letters telling me what I should be trying to do.

I coloured all the lettering and quotes with tones which blend with the flowers and added some white lettering to summarise the feeling of the whole spread....

Now to calm down!!

More of Using Backgrounds for Art Journal Every Day

I am now onto a sketch book with ready to use watercolour wash backgrounds that I did some time ago.
I am doing a swap on ATCsforall.com on  Everybody Loves A Parade so I thought the wide format of this book was ideal for getting some ideas down. I like the idea of doing more of these to march across more of the pages.
This year's Britain's Got Talent  had a wonderful act called The Circus of Horrors - I love them! - so this was the starting point for my own Circus of Shudders...

I used the Inktense pencils.

I have now got to decide which ones to use to make articulated dolls to send off, or whether to make some more acts first.

Moleskin Journal - using backgrounds for Art Journal Every Day

This is a return to my moleskin journal of ambiguity (in an earlier post) using pre-prepared backgrounds...

I have used image transfers, collage and stamping for this page, which is an introduction to some pages about  mazes and labyrinths.
I am also interested in the "green man" - a figure of a head emerging from greenery which appears in churches and is suspected to hark back to the imagery of pre-Christian/pagan times

Art Journal Every Day - using my backgrounds

This is the second little journal using my backgrounds I prepared earlier - this journal is for recording mixed media art techniques, where I found them, and what I did with the idea... and also for keeping a record of instructions, paint colours etc. 

It should be a very useful reference book when it is full and it will encourage me to try out techniques I have not used before...

Art Journal Every Day - using my backgrounds

 I have been in London for a few days as it was our  grand-daughter's  7th birthday party - which involved a trip across from Dulwich to Islington to visit the Sylvanian's shop and then a party for 15 children at a leisure centre - hectic!!

And I have been making her a scrap book since we got back home with montage photos I put together of the shop trip and the party with backgrounds of wrapping paper and Sylvanian' catalogue pictures so I have been buried in glue and gift wrap...

However, I have started using my backgrounds for my month's challenge I set for myself in the last post.

I have used the Moleskin journal with the ready made background.

I was looking through a book catalogue and found a picture of an ambigram by John Langdon called ambiguity - they read the same either way up (and my daughter has one about sunshine  in her bathroom, so this is something I have been taken by for some time).

And this has given me the subject for this journal - ambiguity and opposites

I did a title page with some self adhesive lettering and a crimson wash

And for the first spread  I have used the ambigram of ambiguity, with a definition and some details about ambigrams.

Then I have drawn and tinted Janus, the god who looks both ways into the past and future, with some image transfers of his name and properties.

So...
I think this subject has lots of potential!!

Time-saving Art Journalling - Making Multiple Backgrounds

Are you full of ideas for your art journal but you somehow lose the plot by the time you have made and dried your background? Daunted by those plain white pages? Cannot find anything to inspire you?

Then here are 2 time saving tips to get you going...

1. use up your left over materials.

In Pam Carriker's great book, "Art At The Speed of Life", she suggests using any bits of left over paint to make background to journals in a kind of production line.


With the Moleskin Journal - a lovely but hitherto unused gift, I dabbed left over acrylics onto double page spreads so I no longer have an intimidating white space...

In the brown page on the right I used a baby wipe to  rub dilute acrylic onto the empty page 

and with the final one I used a baby wipe again to dab thicker acrylic all over the page.

 2. Watercolour washes

This involves making a series of wet water colour washes and literally letting them drip, spread and otherwise make their own way across damp watercolour pages.


You can hold the page up and let
the wash run down the pages...

and you can rotate the pages to get a horizontal or vertical effect

You can choose a colour palette for the whole journal or for each double page spread.


You can also drip paint  into the wet page so it makes a kind of ink blot pattern or a more "puddled" effect.


You can also use this on sheets of water colour paper or water colour blocks (better as they do not cockle) and you have ready made background for art projects like atcs, chunky pages, gothic arches and so on...

The resulting pages from both techniques give a great jumping off point for collaging, painting, adding effects and written journalling... and get over the twin deterrents of scary white pages and/or having great ideas but having to wait until you have made and dried a background.


And the randomness of the end results could also be quite inspirational too!!


So for my art journal every day in July,  I will show some of the ways these background pages evolve into journal pages...

A Journaling Garden

A GARDEN OF WORDS

I cannot take credit for this idea as this was for a great prompt in the Art Journal-ers Discussions, Tips and Prompts thread on atcsforall.com, by smokeysmom...


"Open your journal to a full spread (two blank pages facing you), now sweep any color blue along the first third of each page (for sky), then sweep a line of yellow across the pages-ok to blend the colors - next green paint across the horizon and last, brown paint (or ink) for the ground. If you're feeling adventurous, create a hill or two..now take a marker (any kind, any color) and make vertical lines from the brown and green painted areas - up. Cut out small circles from old text sheets or music sheets and glue the circles to the top of the vertical lines-the flower heads. Add leaves to the stems if you wish. If you have spaced the flowers out a bit across the double spread, journal around them; journal up one side, around the flower head and down the other side and keep on going. You've created a journaling garden!  "

I used acrylic paint washes for the background, then Marvy Uchida Liquid Applique pens, which are for fabric and paper. I used these for the stems and leaves. They work like an ordinary marker pen, but when you heat the lines they puff up into a 3D effect.


The journalling is in sepia pen; it is a poem I wrote years ago about my childhood neighbourhood  and looking back on it as an adult as I am keen to use more of my poetry in my journalling. The "flowers" are circles cut from old poems of mine in poetry books (like most poets I have a lot of copies of books I have been published in!).
 

Making Stepped Pages - Strathmore Workshop 2 - Start Where You Are. Instructor Linda Blinn

In Strathmore Workshop 2 “Start Where You Are”  the instructor  Linda Blinn showed how to make stepped journal pages:

“ go to the front of your journal and cut the first few pages vertically in varying widths to create stepped pages as an entry into your journal. Cover these pages with decorative paper as shown in the photo or art them up with collage and paint” 

I made these stepped pages ages ago but had not got around to doing anything with them, so first I added some edging borders.

Then using Pam Carriker’s “Art at the Speed of Life” ideas for acrylic washed backgrounds and the sequin waste (also known as punchinella  in the US I believe, when I took it for a character out of HarlequinJ ) suggested in her Strathmore Workshop 1 I made a set of backgrounds for future use.

Because the stepped pages reveal parts of other pages I have tried to use some complementary tones.

This  means that the interesting glimpses of the other pages edges adds to the effect and makes the pages more interactive.

I used the sequin waste strips to make a banded effect by stippling along the edges of the strip as well as through the perforations.

The last of these spreads also uses the back of the fold out page in my night and day spread, so I have  used the same tones to give me a panoramic background to decorate.

ART JOURNAL EVERY DAY - A Face A Day - 9th June 2011

INTERACTIVE ART!

I have been dying to try out some ideas from this wonderful book

"Interactive art workshop : set your mixed media in motion" by Kim Rae Nugent"

The idea for this face is to take a child's game, remove the back and replace it with an image of you own and you have a totally different piece of work.









I "channelled" Aubrey Beardsley again as it gives quite a contrasty image which works best behind the plastic - subtlety vanishes!


I have some different toys to try later -  like a little round maze and a miniature pinball machine - so they will  appear during the month.


I think I should draw some men now!

Some new backgrounds for the ART JOURNAL EVERY DAY project

2 layers of acrylic paint with a "sandwich filling" of crackle glaze

Peeling paper technique from instructions in the brilliant book "Collage Discovery Workshop" by Claudine Hellmuth