Mixed Media Mayhem - the Documented Life Project - April 4 - Water Under the Bridge

Documented Life Project - April Theme

Color Safari (Exploring Inks and Paints)

April 4

Art Challenge:  Watercolors

Journal Prompt:  It's Water Under the Bridge

The journal prompt for this week was "timely."  I had just finished watching the season finale of "Army of the Red Monkeys" and I was obsessed with the idea of the nature of time.  Does time go by so that the past is water under the bridge or does time have a cycle.  Can you let the past go since everything you are is a composite of what has come before?  Or if you could alter something in the past, would you,  and change your outcome?  Making a simple metaphor complex, I began my entry.

I began with my usual step of coating the pages with gesso and scribbling the prompt to remind me. Thinking of watercolors, I wanted to reserve some white space so I used tape to mask areas.  I splashed liquid watercolors around the page, and when that wasn't intense enough, I sprayed randomly with the Dylusion Inks.  I love the vibrance of these inks, but they are so responsive to liquid that I had to set them, first with Workable Fix, then MatteClearCoat, then matte medium.

After I peeled off the tape strips, I had to find a collection of metaphors about time.  During my internet research, my little dog, Opie, slept on my knee.

I used pencil to write the quotations, scribbled my journal title on the side of the page, and stenciled images of clocks from a Crafter's Workshop stencil.

In my collection of old books, I found an entry by J.C.C. Smart, "The River of Time," that spoke to my pondering on the meaning of "water under the bridge."  I scanned it and colored in Photoshop to go with the warm colors in the background. I think this entry is finished, but I might go back to adhere some 3d clock elements.