Art journal page.

Hey, 

So we had the idea to do a blog post after a while. I wasn't sure what... Cause at the moment, my mental health is all over the place. Good and bad day, but mostly I don't know days...

Anyway, we decided to do a challenge in our art journals, but were not sure about what and how. Till Anny (you) came up with the idea to ask Kyra (Youtube, Instagram), to be the random prompt generator, who does the monthly Take 5 Art Challenge :) She gave 5 random words and a Quote. Here they are: 

I have been using the Junk Journal Kyra has made for my birthday to art in and have a few pages left. It filled up nicely, so I don't have much choice anymore... But found these two pages: 

 Both of the other sides of the pages have something on them and since water paint is on there I decided gesso the pages. So the pages don't get soaked. I tend to use a lot of water. 

One thing I absolutely love and am glad I bought is my heat tool. So I dried down the pages and stared at it.  

 The watercolours I choose to use the Kuretake Gansai Tambi's, simply cause I don't use them as much as I used the other ones I have. 

I started with a very light blue colour (cornflower blue) and put some on the page and decided to close to page so it gets on the other side too. Faster way to get the background finished ;) 

I added more colour to it, more shades of blue. Since the turtle made me think of the ocean. 

 I was going to write down the colour numbers I used... but... nope, that didn't work. So the wet ones are the ones I have used. (I usually don't take photos when I do this, it was a bit distracting, to stop to take photos!) 

Well, When I thought the background was done I wanted to add a girl to it. The whole junk journal is actually filled with faces as a focus point. For this I am going to use the James Burke Luke stamped images that the lovely Heidi sent me. She bought the stamps and asked me if I'd want the stamped images. Thank you sooooo much for them Heidi! (If you're reading this!) 

Since I have only 1 page of each stamped image, no photocopier, I put it on my light pad to trace the girl with a pencil. That is a way to also erase your mistakes. The paper I am using is from Art Sensations (Action), 300 gsm.

After tracing it I changed her face a bit, the eyes are closer now and she has a mermaid tail. I also had to google mermaid tail, simply cause I forgot how to draw one... 

I then traced it with waterproof pens, since I am using watercolours. Used these pens, cause I couldn't find the pigment Staedler I usually have on my desk... So I took the Paper Poetry ones out. (The Staedler ones were hiding under some papers. 

 Used the 0.5 to trace the pencil lines and again changed the lines. 

Erased the lines and took the water paints again. 

So with watercolours, if I have to paint something I use something to put the paint on. The brush usually picks up too much pigment. Again, she is a mermaid, so I used a very light blue, had to add a LOAD of water to make it lighter. First layer. 

Second layer.  

Now the tail and the colour red. I started lightly of course. I decided that her corset needed some patterns and added those before I painted it. 

I ended up giving her red hair. And also added some purple to her tail so it is slightly different than her hair. 

Finished and close up. 

Realised I forgot to colour her eyes and choose green. They popped out. 

Next step was to cut her out.  

I always trace the sides of the things I cut out with a black pen (or marker). Here I used the Tombow N15 Black colour. The brush side makes it easy. 

Found a place for her to sit.  

Took out the stencils with the turtles. These popped in my head when I read turtle! ;) 

And to stencil them I've used the Ranger Archival Ink in the colour Library Green. Love this colour, makes me think of old book covers. 

This is how they look, Used the smallest and middle turtle to stencil through. As I you can see, because the blue is overwhelming they sort of disappear to the back. Which is okay, since they're swimming in the water. 

But to pull them to the front, very subtly, I've used a white gelly role pen. If I wanted them even more to the front I would have used a posca pen. 

So I have used most of the prompts, but not the envelope one. Which was a bit of a wild card with the other words that made slightly better sense together. I looked for a sea themed paper and found this one with the colour red in it. Red is not something that is used a lot in the paper crafts. Unless it is about certain red flowers... And Red in a sea theme is a bit random... Anyway, picked this paper block and choose one with the beach houses to make an envelope with. 

Also have these tiny papers. I think they are to make notes on or something... I am not sure where I have them from... But I do like them. 

I used the paper to make an envelope with it. Except I realized I made a mistake, so to fix that I cut a bit off the top of it. I wrote the given quote to it. 

Glued my envelope closed. 

Decided it was too blue and red. Used the library green ink again to give the envelope a green look... A bit like moss, cause it's been in the water too long. 

Of course the note also had to have a bit of moss ;) 

Back to the page, looking how to put it.. 

Glued it down and looked at it and added a border. Something was still missing... 

Decided to use another stencil to add a little bit of more layers to it. 

Random black dots, well bubbles since it is under water. 

Happier about it, but the mermaid looked as if it didn't belong there. 

For that I decided to use the Tombow pen again, by making tiny black lines to the sides and add water to give her some shadow. 

 Which ended up looking like this. A bit more fitting. 

Still missing something, so I took out a stamp to give it another layer. 

Randomly stamped the stamp with the scribbles. 

Yep. I like it. It is finished. 

End result when you put away the note. Oh, the note is from the human world. Our mermaid was feeling a bit different and weird, having been told that it is okay makes her feel better. 

I hope you enjoyed this. To be fair, my original idea was a red galaxy with a turtle with an envelope in it's mouth... But maybe that is for another time. (I know the galaxy, flying turtle and postage was inspired by the Terry Pratchett quote I used the other day.... Well not the quote, just the writer). 

Hopefully I'll be able to do this more often ;) 

Take Care, 

ST. 

Ps: I hope Kyra doesn't mind we called her the Random Art Journal Prompt Generator App.