Escaping into my Art Journal

 

In my last post I wrote that I have gone back to art journaling in order to escape at least for a short time the dreadfulness of the current times. However, the page spread above I did a year ago, but I never showed it here on my blog.

The following page I also started about a year ago. I had stencilled the forest and the purple women, but then got stuck and couldn't decide how to proceed. In cases like that I usually take a break and step away.

I stepped away for quite a while. But just a couple weeks ago I pulled it up again and suddenly knew how to go on. I simply added the white human shapes, some purple textures in the upper corners, whitish dots and finally the stars - done. 

The following page is for Nicole's Friday Face Off.

The nosegay stencil was my inspiration here. This was a very quick page, I didn't have to think very long what to do (and usually I'm very slow with my artwork). I worked this one on an existing page that I had started and didn't like. So I gessoed over it, glued down some book pages and tissue paper, covered with gesso and rubbed away some of the gesso in places. Then I stencilled with raw sienna and payne's grey and rubbed the remaining color around the page. Added some dots and text - done. 

For quite some time I had played with the idea of making a page about hollyhocks. I love these old fashioned flowers. Under these layers there also is a lot of journaling about my "love affair" with hollyhocks. This page also came together smoothly without any longer breaks. One technique I enjoy doing is painting with watercolor over acrylic paint or gesso - the effects are so beautiful and the watercolor does whatever it wants. The pink scrolls were done that way.

And here's a page I'm stuck with.

I started this one out with gluing down torn sheet music on the gessoed pages, then spread fluid acrylic in titanium buff on top of it and then watercolor. I messed up some of the birds of the stencil (that's beneath those circles), but now I have no clue how to proceed. I guess I have to put it to the side for a while, knowing that eventually I will come up with something.

I hope everyone has a lovely weekend. We're going to have the first warm and sunny weekend this spring.