Art Journal - Anny's version

This was fun, and it's so good to be blogging again. Here's hoping we can keep it up hey?

So, thanks to the Random Art Journal Generator App (also known as Kyra) Seher and I had to make an art journal page with the prompts turtle, red, watercolour, envelope and stencils and the quote 'Don't be afraid of being different, be afraid of being the same as everybody else." Let's see how I went shall we?

Ahh! Nice clean page. I use a Mont Marte A5 journal, and after having only about 4 pages used for 2 years, it's gradually filling up this  year. Yay. I'm learning to put a protective piece of paper behind the page I'm working on, and add painter's tape on the other page (although that was kind of pointless, as I discovered later on). I wasn't sure at this stage what I wanted to do but I knew I had to put some gesso on the page.

Doing this sort of thing makes me feel so professional! Well, that and watching art journal videos on YouTube. When I'm doing that I can pretend I know what the hell I'm doing, before it becomes a bit more apparent that I actually have no clue. Still, while that was drying (I didn't want to use the heat gun in case it bubbled up and went all bizarre - does gesso do that?) I decided to work on my turtle. 

 I used a Kaisercraft stencil and a Mont Marte Watercolour pencil and traced the turtle. I grabbed a piece of watercolour paper, but I didn't think to check and it was Hot Pressed paper. Usually that would be fine, if I was using watercolour markers, but I wanted to use actual paint, and it was too smooth.

I considered redoing the whole thing on cold pressed paper, but I kept painting while I was thinking about it, and soon enough I'd finished the painting. Joys of being lazy!
I decided to mask one of the panels on the turtle's shell, using some masking fluid I bought in January but hadn't yet used. The stuff stank, but it was fun to use and, wonder of wonders, it worked!

I actually painted the various segments on the shell but then it blurred together - joys of the hot pressed paper. But I had an idea. I ended up repositioning the stencil over the top, and used Cottage Ivy, Bamboo Shoots and Rich Cocoa Memento Inks to add the patterns back. Then I peeled off the masking fluid and added a special panel.

You can't really see it all that clearly, but the panel is gold and silver paint mixed together. This is the 'different' part of the turtle. This poor little dude was feeling bad because she had a part of her shell replaced after an accident, and felt like a freak. So the message was left for her that she was special for being different. 


 I had thought about maybe doing the quote in an envelope, and I felt so clever about it, and then I saw that you (Seher) had done that. I figured, oh well, I'll just match. But then I found a stencil that had envelopes on it and decided to use that with modelling paste. I figured that was a decent way around the prompt. Had little to do with the image over all but meh!

The stencil was NOT fun to use. The edges were really fine, and so it was tricky to deal with. I ended up with modelling paste all over the place, but thankfully the gesso background made it easy to tidy up. Good to know! 

So I had used turtle, watercolour, envelope and stencils, but I hadn't used red. I grabbed some Nuvo Shimmer Powder in Catherine Wheel and started to play. I took so many photos of this, but this entry is already pretty photo heavy so I'll only add a few. Basically I got the page wet, tapped on some of the powder, added more water, and repeated until I had a background I liked.

Then I wrote the quote in the top right corner, using first a white gelly roll pen and then a fine posca pen (first time the gelly roll didn't work the best, but I think it was the surface). 

 Lastly I stuck down the turtle, gave her some gem stone stickers for eyes, peeled back the painters tape and I was finished. I also discovered that the red from the shimmer powder had bled through a few of the other pages but oh well. My book now has a pretty red spine!

What is the next set of prompts, oh Random Art Journal Generator App? 

Seriously need to think of a snappier title for her! 

Anny