Mixed Media Mayhem - Layers You Will Love - High Five and the Documented Life Project

Documented Life Project

February Theme

Layers You Will Love!

February 28

Art Challenge:  Using at Least Five Layers

Journal Prompt:  Give Me a  High Five

The challenge for this week was to use at least five layers which is easy enough for me who can not keep from slathering on the stuff.  Harder was addressing "Give Me a High Five," the theme of the week so I decided to keep it simple.  

My first big decisions were choosing a color palette and selecting a tool/technique for applying the color to my page.  To start layering I wrote the prompts on my pages and gessoed over it.  Using a credit card, I spread acrylic green and yellow to give me some variations of bright grass green. 

For images on the pages I used a technique I learned in The Art Journal Workshop: Break Through, Explore, and Make it Your Own by Traci Bunkers and in the Youtube videos of Dyan Reaveley and Dina Wakley.  I placed my hand in several locations and used a baby wipe to remove the surrounding paint to leave my handprint.  I took this a step further by inking my hand with acrylic paint and stamping it on to the page.

To make my layers stand out I used a variety of pens and pencils to outline my hand images.

More layers included adding violet through the circle stencil, writing random related thoughts around my fingers, recording the steps or layers, and adding the "high five."

With the literal and figurative high fives on the page, I decided to stop and call it complete.

Mixed Media Mayhem-Documented Life Project - Two LuLu's

February Theme

Layers You Will Love!

February 21

Art Challenge:  Repeating Elements

Journal Prompt:  It's Worth Repeating

And now for the cognitive part..."worth repeating"  I began thinking about my name, LuLu which is a repeat.  I made three Gelli printed layers of repeating elements (alphabet) finishing with the luscious Pebeo purple/blue.  I made a effort to reserve some white space.  Now for the journal prompt.  I began calling myself lulu when I made a major life change and it stuck. My jewelry is made under the name of "It's a LuLu" and my students call me Ms. LuLu.  I hadn't put much thought into this change...my dear friend Jeanie Goddard had always called me Lindy Lou, a teacher in my department, Gail Vaccaro, always called me Lu, and a dear boyfriend used "LuLu" as an affectionate term. Years later when I was researching Ancestry.com I came across two old census reports in which my grandmother, Lucretia Gates Badgley, had been nicknamed LuLu. Gave me a chill.    So for "Worth Repeating" it was natural to think of two lulu's and the letters needed to spell that making for more repetitive elements. I went through family pictures to find photos of me and her at similar ages.

The bottom left is Lucretia in her twenties, the top two are me at close to the same age.I used the photos which I hand colored to establish our identity, added the painted, embossed letters to spell out our names, and wound a thread among the pieces to hold it together.  I painted the letters using the gelli plate.

I always write the challenge in the margin so that it shows through for that reminder-"Repeating Elements, It's worth repeating."

Mixed Media Mayhem - Documented Life Project -Undercover - Artist as Prospector

Week of February 14 for Documented Life Project posed the art challenge of covering up the good stuff, and for me, that is a real challenge.  I confess to hoarding art supplies.  This need to preserve especially applies to beautiful papers that I have purchased in my travels.  To bite the bullet, I began this journal entry with a piece of paper from Paper Source that depicts a favorite theme... maps... travel... geography.

Now the challenge was to cover this all up.  I first efforts were half-hearted.  Using Distress Ink to shade areas doesn't really count as covering up.  Sticking to my paper's theme, I applied a stencil of city streets.  

I just needed to let go.  I used the colors as my inspiration while going forward to really cover the page. I dug around in my stash for tissue paper in oranges and turquoise and some Gelli printed deli paper to lay out a general composition.

To cover more I used my beloved Gelatos to smear on color here and there.  The texture of the glued tissue paper picked up the colors to give more pattern.

I had met the art challenge of covering up the good stuff but I had not addressed the theme, "Undercover," except in the most abstruse way.  Considering all kinds of possibilities for the focal element I decided to go again to hoarded treasures and came across my collection of laminated leaves and butterflies that I bought from young girls in the garden at the Summer Palace, Beijing, China. This stash had all kinds of meaning hidden beneath...first this was a perfect December day of clear blue skies enabling us to see all the way to Beijing from the peak of Longevity Hill...and second the young girls passed me counterfeit yuan as change which I later innocently tried to use in my local grocery store in Xian resulting in lots of embarrassing attention.   

I used Goodreads to search for quotations that fit my thinking and found “Art is a kind of mining," he said. "The artist a variety of prospector searching for the sparkling silver of meaning in the earth.” 

― Jane Urquhart, The Underpainter.  How perfect...The artist as prospector.  To place the phrase on the page I stamped out the words on tissue pattern paper then glued them on with matte medium.  

Mixed Media Mayhem - Dollar Store Glitter Glam

When I was in the Dollar Store picking up objects my students could use in their work (3d collage inspired by Deborah Butterfield's horse sculptures), I remembered a blog post talking about materials for art journaling.  As I hunted up and down the aisles I found napkins, glitter, eyeshadow, pencils, craft paint inspiring my glitter-glam journal entry.

I used one layer of the napkin for the background giving me the black and white color palette.  I wanted to have a glamour girl and tried to draw a partial face with hair taking up the bulk of the space.  The texture left by the napkin on medium showed up in the face painting. I oriented the tilt of the face to catch the napkin pattern as her iris.

To add more layers I stenciled the paisley pattern in white and with glue to apply black, silver, and white glitter which came in a pack for ....$1.00.

I added detail with Inktense pencils and journaling on tissue paper and sparkle paper.

My personal art challenges included looking for balance and integrating the big white space making up her hair.

Mixed Media Mayhem - Live in the Layers - DLP - February 7

As usual I am behind by a couple of weeks in the Documented Life Project.    

February Theme

Layers You Will Love!

February 7

Art Challenge:  When Not To Stop

Journal Prompt:  "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough!" (Ooh)

I really enjoy their challenges and the opportunity to view hundreds of responses from people all over the world, but sometimes I work on my own impulses.  This particular challenge was especially appealing for its emphasis on layers.  I love layers - in art, in photoshop, in decor, in food... Also I have a poem,"The Layers," given to me by fellow artist and former student, Billye Miralgia written by 

Stanley Kunitz, Poet Laureate of the United States, 2000.  I kept the poem under glass on my desktop for years and this challenge represented an opportunity to use it in my work.

I began this challenge digging through all my scrap Gelli prints which in themselves represent the joys of spontaneous layers.  I choose one made with papyrus and other plants from my garden (which when viewed in any direction is a mystery of layers) and glued it into my journal.

Because the pages had a wide border I got out the Gelli plate (well one of them is always on my desktop) and printed some other foliage to fill in the gaps.

I printed directly on the pages and on some deli paper which i glued on top.  Is deli paper the most wonderful material for so little money?  If it is discovered as an art paper it will surely rise in price.  For the next layer (6) I added some previously printed deli paper that repeated the image of the papyrus.

I had a big decision on how to incorporate the poem...at first I thought of printing it on transparency sheets.  But to capture more personal meaning I hand wrote it on deli paper with a Faber Castel pen thus requiring a word by word relationship.  I hate my handwriting but went with recommendations of other artists to use it anyway.  Then I took the big plunge, handwriting my captions.

Just for translation, a photoshop rendering of what I wrote

For layers 9 and 10 I added stems of papyrus dried in my Microfleur and a coat of Golden Self-Leveling Gel to further preserve the fragility of the dried material.

Mixed Media Mayhem - What Lies Beneath- Documented Life Project

This journal entry was prompted by the January 31 challenge in the Documented Life Project which suggested using "under papers," those messy scraps from the desktop, as a starting point to work the theme, "What Lies Beneath."  

Getting started was easy because I always have papers to catch spills, clean brushes, to save my workspace from disaster.  I chose a favorite material, dyed paper towels.  Before I could go on to the next step I had to seal this mess.  First I tried a spray fix then went to a quick coat of matte medium to keep the dye from running.

 This happy, gaudy hodge podge sat on my workspace while I pondered and pondered the journal prompt, "what lies beneath."  When the news broke of the three college students murdered in North Carolina, I was saddened by the loss of young people full of promise, smart and beautiful.  Hearing their story begged the question, what's behind this, what lies beneath.  Online I found photos including one of Yusor Mohammed on her wedding day.  Another photo showed the signs carried by people at the vigil to honor the three.

I wrote the captions with my new gel pen and highlighted the text.  I was unhappy with the way the glue/matte medium blurred the bride's face.  I reprinted her image on a transparency for a top layer. There is nothing pretty about these pages, but that's how it should be.  I wanted to have a sense of beauty underneath, with a dark mood and obscure images to represent the mystery, the horror, and the sadness.

Mixed Media Mayhem - Words With Friends - DLP 2015

Having prompts for journaling provides inspiration, but I often steer off course into my own interpretation.  Each week I look at several web sites and google groups for a word, a concept, a medium, a technique, or a tool that will give me some parameters for journal pages.

In this journal page to respond to THE DOCUMENTED LIFE PROJECT/ FRIENDS WITH WORDS prompt I thought about words gathered with friends instead of words between friends. To face the blank page with words I dug through my boxes of Chinese newspapers gathered during my teaching stint in Xian.  As I traveled around China with my cohort in adventure, I saved paper of all sorts including some I scraped from walls.  My friend became especially adept at spotting a scrap of treasure from street litter to tissue thin receipts.  I used some of these papers to lay down beginning layers.  To add some color to the page I used my red good luck paper from Spring Holiday/Chinese New Year which I spent in Yunnan province.  This paper is infused with dye which has to be tamed with matte medium to keep it from running all over the place, but it is a deep transparent layer when dry. 

To add more words I turned to my collection of silkscreens.  These too were gathered with the help of friends, especially the teacher, Gwen Gibson.  I attended her workshop in the South of France where I learned to make and use EZ Screens.  At the end of the week each student picked screens to keep.  I chose several with Chinese calligraphy which I used on this paper.  Hence, words with friends.

I had another silkscreen that I made from a old Japanese book given to me by yet another friend. I love this image and I use it over and over again.  Each time I am reminded of my artist friend who has slowed down her creative process as she has become older.

I added more Chinese papers and silkscreened calligraphy to give her a costume.

The image had become a little muddled from the overlayering of Chinese tissue papers and appeared too flat.  I wanted to add more depth and bring out more focus.  I went to my aging collection of polymer clay to create stamped plaques. I used my rubber stamps and authentic chops I had carved to order to add more words.  I fiddled with the placement of the tiles then adhered them to the page with extra strong gel medium.