Since filling up my Moleskine months ago, I've been a bit adrift in terms of working in any sort of an art journal. A few weeks ago, armed with a 50% off coupon at ACM, I finally took the plunge and bought myself another book to play in.
The pages are much larger than my Moleskine, which is good and bad but mostly just different. With the goal of just getting something started, I looked to one of my favorite children's book illustrators for inspiration.
Oh, Melissa Sweet. I could look at your artwork all day long. She's only in Maine, I wonder if she gives studio tours?? I can only imagine: all the paint, writing instruments and ephemera...swoon!
This first page is pretty much a complete "scraplift" of the green and haiku page in Carmine, with a few of my own touches.
I replaced the text with an Anne Frank quote and substituted letters cut from books and magazines for most of the handwriting.
I used gouache (first time), watercolors, colored pencils and pens. Using the watercolors is particularly relaxing...
This next page is also heavily influenced by one of Sweet's illustrations, this time from the back cover of Carmine.
Again I added a few things to try to make it my own, at least a little bit. The ABC letters are cut from magazines, the ruler paper tape is from Cavallini & Co., and the rub-ons are from my stash (by Karen Russell for Creative Imaginations I believe).
I really enjoy looking through my shelves of old books for fun and quirky words and phrases to use. The sentence at the top about festooning a pig is from a book of letters from Theodore Roosevelt to his children☺.
This striped and dotted page I did on my own--notice the drop off in detail!
I used gouache to paint the stripes and then I was stumped. I ended up adding numbers from another roll of Cavallini paper tape and book text along with the circles cut from assorted scrapbooking papers.
I tried out an old fountain pen dipped in ink to write the words. I had some puddling of ink and then turned the page, forgetting it wasn't dry. Oops. Ink blobs add character, right?
Finally, this page that is actually the first one in this new book. This was quick and easy.
Again, I used gouache for the background and spattered brown acrylic paint with a toothbrush (hard to see). All of the words and the image are cut from magazines. The central image is from a TIME magazine (January 2009) issue about the brain. The words are from Woman's Day or a similar publication.
It seemed fitting.
So there you have it, my new art journal/play book. I'm underway and doing my best to experiment with some new materials & techniques and...enjoy the process!
Thanks for stopping by,
