Wanderlust 2026 - weeks seven to thirteen - roots and wings

As promised, here are the other pages of my Art Journal course which I particularly enjoyed, from the first theme of Roots and Wings.  Above is a nameless photograph of a member of my Dad's side of the family.  We have a lovely Victorian album but absolutely no idea who any of these people were, which is really sad.  The photos were taken in studios in Scotland.  We had to look into our ancestry and choose some art work to turn into stamps.  I chose ancient Celtic symbols carved into rocks.  We also incorporated some weaving which was fiddly, but the end result is very pleasing.  

Using vibrant watercolour inks was the next media to use to create a sort of map of challenges and happy things in our practice. 

This week was all about creating a Polish style of hanging decoration.  As I am keeping everything in my journal, I  translated this to a 'washing line' style of decoration.

Creating our own inks was the next challenge and I used walnut ink and tea for the backgrounds and stamping, with the bright yellow turmeric ink for highlights.

Probably my favourite week was the one by Alison Bomber who I follow on Youtube.  We used a multitude of media for this triptych and I used crackle paste for the first time.  It was very satisfying (once I had got the lid off - and Chris had to help me with that!)  I added pressed leaves and flowers from the garden, which I had collected last year.

Finally, this week was a gentle journey into collage and thinking about a safe and happy place.  

So, on to the next theme which is Paper Alchemy (should be right up my street!)

Wanderlust 2026 - First seven weeks - roots and wings

The art journal course I have been doing for several years is well underway and the theme was 'roots and wings'.  It has moved to intermediate skills and slightly away form always being pages in a journal.  However, I am keeping my work in a journal because I don't have space for 'things' to be on display.  It will be a challenge for some weeks, transferring 3D to 2D, but that will be fun in itself.  As last year, I won't show every week, just the weeks I particularly enjoyed.  Above was week one, where we were encouraged to use a big sheet of paper and be free, then cut it down.  I enjoyed making all the swooping brush marks.

This week was about someone who inspired us, so I made a tribute to my Granny. There are scanned watercolour paintings from when she was at school as well as a watercolour from when she was in Australia.  I have inherited a love of art and nature from her as well as enjoying sewing.  

Creating natural dyes was the focus of this week. I used walnut ink, tea and the bright yellow is turmeric. 

I so enjoy making books and journals too, so this week was really right up my street.  My little book has a pocket to live in.  We were encouraged to think about our dreams and what we hope for ourselves in the future.

This is the front with a handmade bird stamp, texture paste and a little fabric collage. The binding thread is decorated with beads.

Inside the book are pages including stamps, material, cut outs, tracing paper pages and quotes.

Found poetry on the left and a material flap on the right...

...which shows the word dream through a cut out page.

More stamps.

A final quote.  More to come in another post...

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.

Wanderlust 2025

I am well into Wanderlust 2025, the year-long mixed media art journaling course which I have been doing since 2021.  This year, they have changed the format to 12 week blocks.  I have decide to choose my highlights to share, rather than each and every week, so here they are. Above was a lovely watercolour week, creating a sunset.  I really enjoyed using the big flat brushes to try to get a smooth gradation of colours.

This one took a while as we had to go through our stash finding all the collage pieces to add to the circles.  I love the happy colour-filled result though.

The final few weeks of this first section was all about books.  We had to make a journal ready to fill with whatever we wanted.  I wanted to have my journal in a pocket on the page, so made a smaller and thinner one.  As Kate Crane was the teacher for this lesson, I made my journal using my Kate Crane designed stamps and stencils and using some of the skills I have got from her other lessons and courses.

The left page was revisiting a previous Wanderlust lesson of hers. The page on the right was a repeated stamp of hers with dots of colour.

Her stamps and stencils also feature on these pages.

The mandala design on the left was inspired from one of her courses, while on the right is a gel print using her stencils and then one of her stamps.

The penultimate week of this first block was making an accordion journal and then doing some contour sketches.  I really enjoyed doing both of these and the journal I made above is again small enough to sit in a pocket inside my main journal.

The final week was making an altered book journal, which I have done, but it won't fit into the main journal, so I created a page about books instead.  I found some great quotes and again, this is a happy page.

Wanderlust 2024 - weeks forty-one to forty-nine - Alternatives

The last theme of the art journal course this year was Alternatives.  For the first page of the theme, we could create different substrates to work on.  I used gesso mixed with Plaster of Paris to give me a textured background and then had fun using inktense pencils and mark making with acrylic pens on the top.

We used collage and pressed flower petals for the next page and added extra colour to the petals with acrylic paint.

I really enjoyed creating the elements for week forty-three.  We had to go for a walk or go into the garden and notice what colours we were drawn to.  We then made little numbered swatches of the colours and a description of what provided that colour.  On the right, we used window envelopes to display pressed leaves. The vibrant pink was from Salvia Cerro Potosi.

Rust dyeing was used in the collage background here.  The photos are of my Dad, aged about four on the left, my Granny in her twenties towards the top and my Mum aged fifteen just below her. I also did some journaling about some of my memories of them.

The page took a long time, but was enjoyable to do.  We created interesting stamps using string wrapped round cardboard and lids from bottles.  these were then stamped onto various papers and cotton material.  We made a patchwork from all these papers and hand sewed them together.  The photo which is 'trapped' behind tracing paper is of my Granny, Mum (at the front on the right) and her brothers, David and Robert. 

Another enjoyable week, making 'zines' from one sheet of paper, collaged onto, painted and illustrated with stamps, images or whatever you wanted to add, to make these little books.  I chose two of my favourite songs, 'What a wonderful world' and 'What a difference a day makes' for my zines.  I then made the envelopes and decorated them using watercolour swatches.

Dyeing material with plants and flowers was the next lesson.  I didn't have enough of anything to be able to use flowers or onion skins etc. However, I did have some walnut granules, so I used them as a dye and then attached some of the material to journal cards.

The artist's musings week was using stabilo all pencil (which is water soluble) and watercolours.  The teacher had incorporated collage in her page, but I was happy with my simple version. 

The final week was a round up and a bit of reflection, thinking of what we enjoyed, creative breakthroughs, what we would like to do more of next year.  I used a patchwork of gel printed pieces and made a tag flap on the page.  I carved a small birds in flight stamp which is on the tag.  I would like to do more printing (lino and gel), collage and loose watercolour and ink drawing, all activities I really enjoyed this year. 

On to Wanderlust 2025, which starts in January. 

Wanderlust 2024 - weeks thirty-three to forty - Drawing

 The Drawing theme has been an interesting one, with some weeks I enjoyed much more than others.  

This first week in the theme was about choosing a painting and then removing parts of it to add our own mark, tracing over the shapes.  I chose this Waterhouse girl and kept her head, hands and feet but then added to her sleeves and dress.

Week thirty-four found us drawing with different pencils - H through to 6B in my case, although I used 2B most. We looked at the work of Francoise Gilot, who was a muse to Picasso as well as his partner for ten years.  A blending stump (which I hadn't really used that much before) was used to create the shadows and shading and I was pleased with my results.

I loved using photographs and drawing with a waterproof pen in a loose style, before adding watercolours.  Haddon Hall on the left, my front door on the right.  This was a lesson from Kate Crane, who I am a fan of.

We had to draw a self-portrait in pencil crayon for the following week and I did not enjoy that at all. I don't like seeing myself in photos and then to have to draw myself too - ugh!  I wasn't happy with the end result, so covered it with gesso and then covered that with tracing paper and marks.  It is there on the left hand side, but you can't really see it anymore, which is a blessing!  It's my 'Branwell' portrait (the famous one Branwell Bronte painted of himself and his sisters and then painted himself out. You can see it here.)

Drawing a tree using inks and a bamboo pen and sticks and then adding in crayons was the next week.  Not one of my favourites.

Illustrating a list of things we could choose from various prompts was much more up my street.  We had two colours and could layer them up to add shadows as needed.  

We gathered leaves and flowers from our gardens, or went on a walk and then used repetition of shapes in different sizes to create these botanical-looking things. It was all about being loose and not over thinking.  I like the swirly background I made.

The final week was the 'Artful Musings' where an artist talks about their life and art.  They usually show a piece of their art which can be used as inspiration.  However, this was botanicals again, so I decided to keep with the drawing theme and try an exercise from Sketchbook Revival this year.  We used a viewfinder (2 x 2 inches) to locate interesting images and text from a magazine and these were cut out and stuck onto the journal page.  We then turned the page upside down and drew what we saw.  We could then add colour to the images. It was very freeing, as I was looking at shapes and lines in the images, so didn't get hung up on trying to make the drawing look like a coat or whatever it was.  

Here it is the right way up. 

We now move to the final theme this year, which is Alternatives.  We shall see what that brings...

Wanderlust 2024 - weeks twenty-five to thirty-two - Printmaking

I was looking forward to this theme of the Wanderlust 2024 course and I have enjoyed it. The first week included some rust dyeing which I had not done before, so that was an interesting start.  We incorporated the images into the page.  There was also making a printing block using crumpled packing tape and doing some gel printing.  The focal image was a print from a polystyrene tile which we incised.  I was pleased with how the page came together. 

Week twenty-six was all about carving our own stamps set and we had to create three squares which would be printed over each other.  The next thing was to print a repeat pattern which I found a bit of a challenge and I didn't get it quite right on the finished page, but I still like the end result and enjoyed carving the three stamps.  

I went full on grunge with my next page, using household objects to print on a gel plate.  I used a few lids and a plastic cover from a plug, as well as some bubble wrap.

Creating fern prints was the focus of the next week, using the fern leaves on a gel plate as well as using the leaf as a stamp too. We then had to cut the prints into strips and weave them. 

Making our own foam stamps was the next focus and I liked adding the bright neons to this page which is one of the most vibrant I have made this year.

Making transfer prints from photos and magazines was the technique here.  The photo which I transferred onto a book page (on the left) shows three of my great uncles, around the time of the First World War.

We had to find a photo of a person which appealed to us for the next week. I chose this girl as I like her attitude.  Once she was cut out of the background, we had to fill it in with descriptions of ourselves - Chris provided the words for mine.  We could then add colour to the image and other details as we wanted to. I really enjoyed this page and using old photographs.

For the 'artful musings' week, I chose to create a grid showing some of the techniques I have been using during the course this year.

Our next theme is 'Drawing' so it will be interesting to see what is featured and how I get on.