Mixed Media Mayhem - The Beginning is Always Today / The Documented Life - Week 2

I was happy to see that the technique challenge for week 2 in The Documented Life  was "gesso" because I had begun something that I needed to cover up.

After watching several videos featuring Dylusions spray ink I tried them over gesso and over stenciled wax.

Ummmm...so gesso to the rescue covering up and adding texture.

Now I could add more dye spray and watch the images suggest themselves. Like finding faces in the clouds, I thought I saw two faces.  I used a Derwent charcoal pencils to bring them out.

Still struggling I decided to go with my philosophical reaction to the news of the terrorist murders in Paris.  I had just received a travel ad featuring the Eiffel Tower so I worked on the colors to make it blend in with my page.

 For lettering I embossed cut out letters from a pack I bought at TJ Maxx for $2.00. The letters had a nice metallic look but my work space was a mess.

Still not happy with my result, I decided to add back in some white space, painting my circles with gesso. Gesso over Dylusions always gives bleed through so it took several coats to get a surface to write on.

One of my friends on Facebook had posted about being satisfied with "good enough" not "perfect"...but my final result did not give me joy.  What did I learn?  Reserve white space/negative space. Think about the interaction of media.  Find a good journaling pen.  When I wrote the quotation from Mary Shelley that was the prompt for this week, my Pitt pen smeared.

Mixed Media Mayhem - Fish Out of Water

Mixed Media Mayhem - Fish Out of Water

What's more fun than random Gelli printing?  Using a range of blues and violets, old wall paper scraps for stamps, and circle stencils and sequin waste, I made a a two page spread that, while stimulating the tactile sense (doesn't that Gelli plate feel great when you use your hands as a barren?), left me uninspired.  But this is an art journal.  It doesn't matter. It's just for fun.  Maybe I see bubbles, maybe a reef, so I drew a fish on it.  To give the fish presence, I colored him in with gesso and gave him stripes with yellow gelatos.  Since my drawing skills are minimal, the fish was ill proportioned.  To cover his distortion, I cut shapes from my scrap deli paper where I had cleaned off the Gelli plate to make some kind of reefy things.  I was really proud when my grandson, Brody, popped over my shoulder and recognized it saying, "Oh you drew a clown fish."  See...fourth graders and I have an understanding.