Another art journal

 I've been working on another little journal as a spin-off from one of the lessons from the art journal course.  It's something I work on every now and again.  

The cover is a 'ghost print' from a gel plate printing session.

This page started as a pastel watercolour background which was decorated with drawn flowers.  The rest of the background was painted with dark blue acrylic paint.

On the right hand page I cut some flaps and added a stamped image.

This page started as a gel print, which was stencilled over, adding paint pen marks and gold squiggles. 

On these pages, there is a collage and a page with a pocket.

Here is the pocket page without the folded paper.  I really enjoyed drawing all the different lines within the circles as it is a very meditative activity.

New gel printing techniques and other projects

For my sister's birthday card, I took inspiration from the new collage book I bought.  There is a post about it here.  I used some of my painted papers, cut the shapes out and decorated them.  I hope she liked it!

I have also been enjoying Clare Cosens Designs on Youtube. Her videos are clear and easy to follow and she is a great teacher.  I watched her video on layering using stencils and had a go myself.  My paints beaded up a little on the gel plate, rather than being a flat layer, but I like the end result. The secret with this technique is to let each layer dry thoroughly, before adding the next.

Here is my other experiment with this technique.  It is one I will use a lot, I think, although waiting for the paint to dry takes patience, especially when you want to add the next layer!

I really enjoyed the Gel Printers Summit where every day, a different gel printer presented a different technique.  Some really appealed to me, especially one by Sarah Jane Gordon.  She used seaweed,  stencils and fossils to create a layered print, and by using printing inks, which stay wet for a long time, you could work directly on the plate.   I had some printing inks which I use for lino printing, but I hadn't used them on the gel plate. They wash out with water so are much better than the inks I had to use at school and college, which could only be cleaned using white spirit.   

Here are some of my first attempts, using stencils and stamps. 

I do like the layering effect and I wasn't waiting for layers to dry, so it was a less time-consuming process.  Again, I am sure I will get better with practise.

The ghost prints were still rather nice too.  Gel Printers Summit gave me a lot of information and I shall revisit some of the videos as they were packed full of tips and techniques along with the projects. While gel plates are very forgiving and a beginner printer can make some amazing images, I hope that as I improve, I will make more considered decisions and end up with some lovely prints.

Wanderlust 2022 - Weeks nine to fourteen - Image transfer and Texture paste

I am really enjoying this year's mixed media art journaling course.  Each block of seven weeks focuses on different media.  This block was about image transfer and texture paste/modelling paste.  The page above has image transfer using gel medium, image transfer using acetone and texture paste through a stencil.  The image transfer using gel medium was a new technique and one which worked well.  The big photo is of my granny's family, the small one is my Dad when he was little and the rather ghostly bride and groom are my Mum and Dad (that transfer was using acetone).

Week ten was all about texture paste.  We made marks in it and then added a tag and images around it.

I loved making this page, which was based around a gel plate transfer using a magazine image and words from a magazine.  Using the monotone colour scheme was not something I would normally choose but I loved it! I also added some mark making tissue paper pieces and stencilled letters in gold, and printed back to front to the collage.

Week eleven involved making our own flower and leaf stamps and using watercolour to stamp into the texture paste - something I had never done before.  The image has ended up with lots of texture, which isn't obvious from the picture.  We also stamped the leaf and flower shapes onto separate papers and used these to create the vase.

Week twelve was all about layers around an image transfer.  I didn't have a family photo big enough for this and as you need a laserprint image for this to work, I ended up choosing a magazine image to transfer using the gel medium technique.  I based the page on some of my Granny's interests which were nature and the countryside.  She knew all about wild flowers and trees and so I have incorporated these into the page.  I also used the leaf and flower stamps I had made from the previous week.

Week thirteen was based about texture paste through stencils onto tissue paper.  I also incorporated collage papers I had made on my gel plate.  this stencil is one of my favourites - It is Klimt Spiral pattern by Stamperia.  I have used it quite a lot since I bought it!  I hadn't intended using my Mum's two favourite colours, turquoise and orange (well, cadmium red acrylic paint actually with a bit of Spiced Marmalade Distress crayon for good measure).

Last week was based around a napkin which was applied around the edge of a page.  The texture paste was used to hold a pressed flower on the central cluster element.  However, my flower is still being pressed!  (I will add it in when it is dried and pressed and if it looks OK).  It's a very happy page.

The next material we'll be exploring is artists' acrylic paints.
 

Wanderlust 2021 - weeks thirty-seven to forty - Haven

Wanderlust 2021 continue to inspire and I continue to enjoy the lesons each week, giving me a creative focus.  The theme was Haven - it turned out to include different kinds of havens, whether places or specisl items.  Week thirty-seven was about an outside space as a haven for me.  We had to sit in the outside space we had chosen and listen to the sounds around us, trying to transfer these into marks and colours.  These pieces were used as the collage in the background.  For the first time, I used leaves and flowers on the gel plate and was delighted by the prints I got.  A fern leaf, some hydrangea flowers and a japanese anemone flower all featured on this page.

Week thirty-eight was about special things around us which can inspire us or which we enjoyed using.  Mine included my paints (and I do love a colour swatch),  a chunky crayon, a paintbrush, a stencil, a fossil stone, my water jar and a foxglove I had been growing indoors before going out in the garden.

Week thirty-nine was all about home, or a place in which we felt secure.  This was all about the layers and stencilling, stamping and doodling.  It took a while to complete, as the layers had to dry.  I do like the end result though.

Week forty was about a mediterranean seascape viewed out of a window.  The teacher is based in Greece, hence all the beautiful blues.  I absolutely loved creating the collage papers and the seascape with a minimum of materials - acrylic paint, an old credit card/hotel card/membership card, a piece of cardboard for printing and a material for printing on the windowsill (I used bubble wrap).  Oh, and some scissors for cutting the shapes.  I think I may well do other versions of this in other colours - perhaps a more muted UK version?

On to the next theme - Movement.

Wanderlust 2021 - weeks thirteen to sixteen - Silhouettes

I am so pleased I signed up to Wanderlust this year as it is bringing me a lot of joy.  I am loving using different techniques and media and learning a lot.  Week thirteen was about using a gel plate to manipulate a print and image, adding colour to it to look a bit like an Andy Warhol silk screen print.  The second technique was tracing over the image and then blotting it carefully on another piece of paper, then painting it in. Both of these techniques were new to me, so it was a learning experience.  I think the end result on the right is more Matisse than Andy Warhol though!

Week fourteen was one where I needed to take my time.  We had to choose an image of a tree.  I did look through my photos, but none appealed so I went on a free images site (unsplash) and found the one above.

We created a watercolour background and then added the tree in white gel pen.  It was a very calming activity.

The words were found in a book - I looked in Dickens and a book on forestry, thinking either of them would be perfect, but no luck.  I then looked in a Hammond Innes thriller (The Trojan Horse) and these words just jumped out at me. Serendipity was certainly working for me!

Week fifteen was about alcohol inks on a gel plate, or a brayered background which then had a silhouette placed on top.  I used some die cuts as my silhouettes.  The alcohol ink background is on the left, the brayered one on the right.  The alcohol ink background has a stencilled tree hiding behind the die cut and the  brayered background has stencilling and stamping added to it, with a bit of doodling for good measure.

I enjoyed using the alcohol inks on the gel plate so much, I made a couple more prints.  I should have worn my gloves though, as I manged to get very inky fingers and they are only just clean again (despite copious amounts of hand washing!)

I made myself choose warm colours for week sixteen.  I really enjoyed this class.  We used a baby wipe to apply the background colours, then stencilling and stamping, and added doodling.  Stencils and masks were the focal points.  

Recycling is the theme for the next four weeks.  I'm so looking forward to it!

14 Day Art Journal

 A couple of weeks ago, I saw some information about a free two week art journal course run by Julie Fei Fan Balzer, a designer and maker in America.  I signed up for it.  A new video is available every day with a different journaling technique.  I had all the resources and equipment I needed already, but that would be a consideration if you didn't have everything to hand.  The media needed were watercolours, acrylics, oil pastels, an old hotel card (for the diy comb), distress crayons (or similar), black and white pens, magazine image, matte medium, stencils, stamps, brushes, watercolour paper/card.  A gel plate was useful and a carving tool for making the eraser stamps. 
The first day was making the journal.  Julie showed how she decorated her journal but I decided to try a new to me gel plate technique (from Youtube, I think) - soft pastels applied through stencils and then acrylic paint on top to pull the print.  I used one of Julie's stencil designs - the flower in the top left and bottom right of the photo below - and several other flower/foliage/shape stencils.  I really enjoyed this technique and managed to achieve some quite delicate blends.

 Some of the darker pastels stained the gel plate a bit, but did come off using baby oil.

Day 2 was oil pastel resist.

 Days 3 and 4 were Sgraffito and rainbow arches.

 Doodle collage was Day 5.

 Hand made stamps for Day 6. This was one of my favourites and I used erasers to carve the stamps.

 Rainbow roll for Day 7 and Layered stencilling on Day 8.

 An extra layered stencil page.  Day 9 was a DIY gelli comb.

 Day 10 brought a layered gel print, again using the diy combs.  Day 11 was an abstract.

 Day 12 was black and white doodles using a black marker, white gel pen and black biro, which I really enjoyed and am going to use again in my art journal proper.  Day 13 was mixing media.

Finally, day 14 was monoprint and sketch.  The colours I used made me think of rhubarb!
This was such an enjoyable project and I have lots of techniques which I can use in my art journaling.  I also have a  lovely little journal full of colour and pattern to enjoy.
Edited to add:  Julie posted photos of other people's journals and it was so interesting to see all the interpretations.  The link to that post is here.

Following the creative muse

 I decided that I was going to work on my second art journal today, so in readiness, last night I prepared two pages with brown paper.  I was going to paint them and then stick paper circles on them, although I decided to add another layer by sticking some torn text on top.  I was telling Chris about University Challenge on Monday night where one of the questions was to identify which books were used for some blacked out poetry.  (The only one I knew was the Pride and Prejudice one).  I thought it was a really interesting idea.

I was looking at a page and these words just jumped out at me.  So my original idea was postponed and I ran with this one.  The words made me think of darker colours and images, so off I went with the gel plate to make the background using black, copper and gold.  I then added some stamps (trying to find some suitably grungy or gothic or just 'dark' images.  (I realised I didn't have all that many, so made do with what I found).  I then printed the words using a stamp set and placed them so that the original inspiration words could still be seen. 

It wasn't what I had planned to make at all, but somehow, it came together quite easily and I am pleased with the end result.  It's quite a change from my usual colours and style, but I do like it.  Chris really liked it too. 
Sometimes, you just have to follow where things lead you...