Art Journal Every Day: Step-by-Step with Lechatquitousse
June 08, 2012
If you're new to Art Journal Every Day, all the posts can be found here. Please read this post first. There is a flickr group for sharing right here. Remember, it's just ten minutes of nourishing your creative self every day! No need to finish anything or even like it. If you've done some art journaling this week and you've blogged about it, or put it on flickr, please leave a link in the linky list at the end of this post. Thanks!
Today we have a guest post from Carol Mahy-Merveille or Lechatquitousse:
During my life I've tried various artistic pursuits and all these things have left traces in my practice of art journaling. I always design a page like a small history and I pay great attention to colors, contrasts, dimensions, reliefs, effects…
Actually, I love to work on dry and/or wet surfaces to observe the effects which are created on paper…and also to preserve zones of breathing, “white” zones as in Watercolor where white doesn’t exist !
Here thus a page especially made for you in this way of thinking and it's step-by-step:
1. Wet most of your page with water, using a brush and/or a spray, but leave some zones dry. Stamp and rub over the top with Distress ink (Ranger). Use different stamps and do not hesitate either to rub your pad over paper, to make spots… Ink will react in a different way whether the surface is wet or not,.
2. With an old credit card and/or a palette knife, apply gesso to the middle of the page, like an horizon. Make lines, create texture… play with your gesso. When drying it with the heat gun, gesso will bubble and give even more texture to your page
3. Tear tissue paper into small pieces and stick it on your page with gel medium.
4. Let us pass to inks now! Spray on the central part of your page various inks in blue tones. Before they dry, spray over water and make them run downwards by tilting your sheet. Start again a second time but without water this time to obtain darker run-outs...
...and dry with the heat gun.
5. On the top of your page, spray the same inks through a stencil. I used the Triangle Plaid stencil designed by Julie for Crafter's Workshop.
6. We are going to paint using 2 or 3 different tones of acrylic paint applied with a palette knife and your fingers. Nothing more pleasant than to paint with fingers as when we were children! On the middle of your page draw a line with a fluid acrylic which you stretch upwards to form a landscape. With a darker painting, you reinforce contrasts with the bottom of this landscape and the third layer comes to give small keys of colors on the left and on the right.
7. With a bottle of black Archival Ink re-inker, trace a line which you stretch to the bottom this time.
8. Stamp a “text” stamp with black Archival Ink on the section of the middle to the bottom of your page, in a random way, over the entire length of your page.
9. Cover this median part with washi tape torn in long bands.
10. With a little bit of golden wax, rub with your finger the texture left by the gesso from step two. This will add a touch of light.
11. Stamp on all the top of the right part of the page with a butterfly stamp with Archival Ink black.
12. The background is finished, pass to collage now. Gather several labels, tags, stickers, etc. that you stick on the left of your page in “clusters.” Add some glue for well fixing the whole.
13. On the right side, embroider a line with green cotton (by making large holes) on the Washi tape.
14. Hang 2 small tags and stick a piece of grid metal (or another embellishment) over the stitching. Stick also sequins which fly away to the top.
15. It is there that come to nest your title.
16. As the sheets of my art journal are not thick enough, I worked on a sheet of watercolor’s paper (300mg ) which I had cut out with measurements. Once finished, I divide my page in 2 and I stick it in my art journal.
I do not begin all the time a page from art journaling on a white sheet. Often my art journal paper has previously been used for wiping my brushes, cleaning my masks and stencils or using my too full paint palette (nothing is lost!)…. I use these easy and fast backgrounds where it only remains for me to stick some embellishments, to find a title, to write journaling… what to finalize my page. I don’t think, I am in the moment… I leave speaking to my mojo!
I have also, as a principle, to use the stuff on my desk. First, I may arrange and clean my desk…but also I let my mojo be expressed even during the week when I don’t have time!
To work in a group is also very joyful and I like that! With some friends we formed a group of mixed media which meets once a month (at each person's house in turn): the “Collectif Patouille.” To explore a technique, to make something from a video found on the internet, to carry out a collective project or completely personal...and spending a good evening together, this has enabled us to learn and discover many new possibilities only by looking at how the others are working. The session of this year is finished but I hope to compose a new group in September!
This group was the base of a new project which was born not even one month ago: Art Journal Café! We are 3 funny and crazy girls (The Frappucinos) whose decided to create an entire collective blog devoted to art journaling whatever the style and the approach (artistic experimentation and/or with a touch of personal development ). We propose there challenges, articles, tests of products, and we speak about what we like, who inspires us, what motivates us, in a convivial, colored and joyful spirit. Do not hesitate to come and visit us….
Just one more thing: thank you Julie, thank you a lot for this experience !
Here's the linky list for this week:
Thanks for stopping by!
Hello everyone, My name is Carol but my nickname on the internet is “Lechatquitousse” (in English: The cat which coughs). I’m 43 years old and the mother of 2 marvelous sons: Hugo (12 years old) and Murat (7 years old). We are living to the landscape in the middle of Belgium in a small village called Ramillies. I’m working like political scientist for a regional administration but a great part of my free times are busy to create. I’ve, since I was a little girl, all the time loved drawing, painting, playing with colors and stuffs like that. I discovered scrapbooking in 2005 (I was member of 2 DT, I give workshops in Belgium and I‘ve been published in French scrapbooking magazines) and art journaling in 2007 from a workshop with Donna Downey (at Version scrap, a scrapbooking show in Paris, France). During a long time I didn’t practicing but last year it becomes a necessity for me to express myself when my husband went to work in Arabia. He came back but I didn’t stop to make art journaling….same that, like I said in the article, I build a blog with 2 friends to art journaling: “Art Journal Café.” A great adventure!
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