Documented Life Project - Cry Me a River

Documented Life Project

April Theme
Color Safari (Exploring Inks and Paints)
April 11
Art Challenge:  Acrylics
Journal Prompt:  Cry Me a River

I have fallen behind in my posts for this project because I have had some trouble connecting with the themes.  For this post, I am not a crier.  With the benefit of age and experience, I have seen loss, but I can see every experience has been a learning opportunity.  My email tag is a quotation from Nietzsche..."That which does not kill us makes us stronger"  Although I can be a "negative Nellie" seeing the pitfalls in pathways, but I also tend to look for the positive spin in the bad situations.  Got this journal entry I looked for quotations to fit and found "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened".  That's the Pollyanna view.  For the other page, I chose words to the effect that crying is ok, but you still have to take charge and make your choices.  I searched for images of women crying and found the snippet about melodrama and the vintage ads.  Here is my result...

My steps involved swiping colors over the page with a credit card, adding texture paste which I could write into, collaging my images.

Mixed Media Mayhem - Tomorrow

I was inspired to do this journal page by the challenge posted on Art Journal Journey for favorite quotations and the Butterflies prompt at Moo Mania.  Among my favorite quotations is the ever optimistic perspective of Scarlett Ohara in Gone with the Wind, "After all, tomorrow is another day."  Thinking about how tomorrow can bring a change to make what seems to be a grim prospect into a bright adventure brought to mind the caterpillar vs butterfly image.  The caterpillar wages on grinding leaves to eat and spinning her cocoon and the butterfly just seems to flit away with her past behind.

I began this page by using the ever essential tool, the credit card, to swipe on orange and yellow paint.  I used Martha Stewart's pearlized craft paint because I just love that finish. I had some beautiful scrap deli paper that I had used to clean my Gelli plate so I stenciled and stamped images of butterflies to cut out.  I used a script stamp, a cheese cloth stamp, and a filmstrip stamp to add more to the background.  (I got up in the middle of the night and worked so I totally forgot to make my step outs.) A close up shows some of this texture.  Lastly, I added a small image of the caterpillar to convey my message.

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.

Mixed Media Mayhem - The Documented Life - March 28

The Documented Life Project

March Theme   Making Your Mark (Doodles & Mark Making)

March 28    Art Challenge:  Make a Custom Element

Journal Prompt:  "Ride the energy of your own unique spirit." - Gabrielle Roth

For this challenge I made several custom element having my usual problem of sticking to one thing.

First I created a drawing borrowed from a t-shirt from Bali where I went for both my 50th and my 60th birthdays.  I put her on a watercolored and stamped background.

I used a variety of gelli printed heavy papers to cut the shapes to correspond to the parts of the image.

I made a second kind of element using one of my ez screens...making a lotus on gelli printed paper. Hard to choose between the positive and negative images.

I put the lotus on her hand to represent her spirit so I needed another element on the right side.  I rubber stamped several parts of lotus blossoms on printed paper, cut them out, and pasted them to the page and made another screened image of a spiritual bird to place on her knee.

For my journal entry, I stamped the letters on tissue paper and glued them to the page.  This is my go to technique to avoid those awful lettering mistakes in the final moment.

Mixed Media Mayhem - Joy of Reading... in Bed

This layout began with the accidental collusion of a pack of flash cards delivered from Key Lime Supplies on Etsy, some old paint strips, and some interesting scraps from a quilting magazine.

It celebrates the joy of reading, but not just any reading...reading in bed. Since a cold winter in Wellesley drove me to the third floor to escape the black chill of nighttime, I have gravitated to the bed.  I eat breakfast there, I sew there, I draw there, I play with the dogs there, I take my online there, I even eat there.  This is a confession or a justification.

To begin, I had gessoed the pages some time ago and used them as mopping up.  I added some magazine cutouts to start a flow. In my stash I had piles of paint charts from which I had cut circles for a first grade project at the museum,  I played with placement.

I decided try weaving the French flash cards and the paint chips.  I found three that worked with my theme.  Also stenciled some iridescent turquoise squares around the pages and a page of dictionary text to balance on the right page.

To go with my theme I wanted some old postcards I had stored somewhere that pictured women reading, but, alas, I could not find them.  So I substituted a clip art image of a pretty serious looking gal.  I added some cut out letters which looked boring until I traced around theme with some pearly dimensional paints.  

I added my journaling to commemorate the rationale for my page.  This whole exercise was really fun, and I did not do it in bed.

Mixed Media Mayhem - Documented Life - Coming into Focus

March Theme   Making Your Mark (Doodles & Mark Making)

March 21   Art Challenge:  As a Focal Point         Journal Prompt:  Coming into Focus

One of the things I love about using art journal prompts is the problem solving.  I love the challenge of a puzzle, finding the answer to a problem.  This week's Documented Life Project became fascinating as I sought to bring this together.  I started with the idea of my focal point.  So many possibilities.  I wanted to use a stamp I carved or a silkscreen I had made.  Going through my little suitcase of screens I came across a set of Wonder Woman images that I made from a postage stamp. I had used Photoshop to manipulate the pop comic image to give it the appearance of a rubber stamp. I used EZ Screen to convert a transparency of the image to a silk screen. First I had to have a background which I put together from the graphic liners to envelopes.  I had so many of these that I prepared two spreads...stayed tuned.

Next I looked at the comic book image of WonderWoman, observing the colors and patterns.

Using a Prima Stencil I added blue dots to the whole page.

Next I needed to add some marks that would convey the energy in the comics and I needed to use the vibrant colors, red, yellow,blue, and black. BAM. SLAP, CRASH. I saw a video (forget source) where a puddle of ink was flicked with the fingers to randomly color the page.  I used my black Dylusions ink for this.  With a series of stencils from Crafters Workshop, I added graphics in the primary colors to emulate the comic book feel.  I practiced the skills taught in Dina Wakeley's ART JOURNAL FREEDOM to balance colors and to show movement...I used Faber Castell Pens and Liquitex Basics  to fill in the stencils adding the red one last to pull page 1 and 2 together.

 Next came the focal element which I screened in Golden carbon black and embossed with black.

 Almost done.  But my lettering doesn't show intensively enough and my focal image is a little lost.

I changed the lettering to make it bolder, added a little arrow made out of printed deli paper to integrate the page, used gesso to bring out her face.

 Finally as I was cleaning up I found an old horoscope in the pile of papers on the worktable.  A perfect find...Seredipity.

 "Focus on whatever will bring out the greatest returns.  Use your insight and experience to guide you."

Mixed Media Mayhem - Birds of a Feather

People tend to think of Florida as an environment with no major seasons, but  living here for fifteen years I have observed subtle changes or natural events that mark the year into pieces.  For example, the live oak trees that shade my yard have a cycle starting in January when they lose about one third of their leaves which I rake day after day, followed by flowering and dropping pollen that coats the windows, cars, and patio. Then by March the blossoms have died and fall in brown masses that fill the pool, stain the deck, and and block up the bromeliads.  Finally the new green leaves come out and a new season is here. This Spring like season is enhanced by the return or conspicuous presence of a variety of birds.  Walking back from the mail box, I saw that I have a woodpecker nest in a hollow place in one of the oak branches.  Washing dishes, I watched several cardinals frolicking in the viburnum.  Reading on the the pool deck, I was distracted by the loud exclamations of black birds that swooped from limb to limb.  All of this bird watching reminded me of the joy I experienced when I lived in New England, and after a lengthy snow season I spotted a blue jay in the forsythia bush...an image that still seems vivd after more than twenty five years.  To commemorate this happiness of impeding spring, I made this journal entry, Birds of a Feather, joining other mixed media artists on Mixed Media Monthly Challenge - Birds of a Feather.

Part of the fun of journaling is searching or creating the images to focus the page.  I love antique postcards and combed Graphics Fairy until I came upon this sweet image of the Tufted Titmouse.  I found the nest in my Dover files.  To make a background I covered the pages the birds' egg blue tissue paper followed by a heavy layer of Golden crackle paste.  As it dried the crackle paste chipped like broken eggs shells.  Some blue Japanese paper, a postal stamp and my Haiku-like poem writtne with Faber Castell big pen marker on white tissue paper completed this page for me.  It makes me happy.