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.
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.
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.
