Wanderlust 2025 - part two

I've completed the second part of the online art journaling course that is Wanderlust and the themes this time were Personality, Feelings, Senses.  I have picked my favourite pages or the pages I most enjoyed making to show you.  Above is a linocut printed face from my imagination (we could choose our own face, but I decided that wasn't something I wanted to include) together with some resist watercolour patterns, some stamping and some stitching.  I really liked the stitching and have used it in other pages.  I also would like to use it in some other mixed media pieces which are going round my head at the moment.

For this one, the teacher was focusing on the colours of lakes and streams, but as it was allium time in the garden, I focused on the colours I could see there.  The watercolour circles with different techniques - wet on wet, wet on dry etc. are strung together and make a hanging decoration, should you want to do that.

I enjoyed using the bright colours in this page which was fun to make.

You'll see more of the stitching here. The background technique was messy but really fun as it was all about adding different media to tissue paper, including gesso, watercolour, acrylic ink, colour burst/pixie powder/infusions (water soluble dye powders some with added mica or walnut ink), alcohol ink. They were left to dry and then scrunched up, smoothed out then wrinkled as pieces were glued down to provide some texture.  It was very freeing.  The pocket on the left includes a tag covered with the tissue paper really smoothed out and a colour swatch piece that was hanging about.

This page was made in the teacher's style (Dyan Reaveley).  Bold colours, big shapes.  It is quite a textured page as the strips on the trees are collaged on, the trunks are embossed, the flower centre is sticking up and has a button in the middle, and the blue heart is card embossed with ultra high embossing powder (several times) and then stamped into while still warm.  The two hearts in the trees are covered with 'Glossy Accents' which is a product that dries to a resin-like finish.

Finally, here is a portrait of someone.  In the lesson, she was described as a 'forager'.  We had to make leaves from gel printed tissue paper or tracing paper, or copy paper.  Before I collaged the leaves on, I showed Chris the watercoloured face and he said she had a look of a 'Svetlana', someone from Eastern Europe.  The face is created using layers of watercolour in a single shade, then a bit of coloured pencil. I turned 'Svetlana' into a forest goddess, with her leaf costume.  

I wonder what the next twelve weeks will bring.