Circles on Stain

This is another piece that has taken a long time to be finished...years even. I have a box where I put pieces that I started on single sheets of art paper, but never finished. It might be because I was tired of working on it, but more likely life got in the way and I didn't have time to finish it. Every now and then I look through the box. Some things get thrown out because I know I will never finish them. Some things have been there for several years. Every once in a while I take one out to finish.

Several days before looking through the box, I had created a new background in my daily journal. I used a brayer to apply Mermaid Lagoon Distress Stain to a double page spread. I had just acquired a couple of the new Dylusions Paints to try out, one of which was Lemon Zest. I used an old library card to spread paint over parts of the stained pages. The yellow paint, of course, turned the stained areas green. I now had a blue, green, and yellow background.

As I was looking through my box, I found an unfinished mandala with the same colors I had used on the journal background. Bingo, an a-ha moment! I had drawn the basic mandala shape on watercolor paper and painted the big blocks of space with blue, green, and yellow Twinkling H2Os. It was at that point I had stopped. Just out of curiosity, I looked back in my old journals to find I was drawing lots of mandalas in 2012. Sometimes being a pack rat pays off. :-)

I outlined the mandala and cut it out. I tried it in different places on the page and decided to create more circles for a background. Using a stencil, I drew different sizes of circles. I made 3 blue rings and 3 blue-green solid circles. I used a stencil through a stencil to add the small white circles.

To continue my practice with glazes, I decided to make the blue rings appear 3D by using a darker blue glaze around the edges. I was trying different brushes to see which worked better and each layer was only adding a bit of color.

A layer of glaze has to be completely dry before you can add the next, and glazing liquid dries slowly. If you try to rush it, the new coat of glaze will remove any color that happens to be even a bit damp. So I set it aside and go onto something else.

I worked on the rings off and on for several weeks, but then non-art things needed to be done. The journal was closed and was only opened to this spread again this past Wednesday evening.

I added some yellow dots to the blue rings and to the mandala with Dina Wakley's heavy body paint and a pencil eraser. While they were drying, I used a previously scanned copy of the mandala to try out doodles before I did them on the real thing. I'm glad I did that because I tried a bunch of things before I figured out the leaves with a flower. I used various markers to add my doodles to the mandala. I did discover that some markers don't write very well on Twinks.

I used Prismacolor pencils to add shadowing to my background circles and rings. Scor-tape was used to secure the mandala to the background.

Supplies used:

• Strathmore Hardback Mixed Media Art Journal
• Distress Stain - Mermaid Lagoon (applied with brayer)
• Dylusions Paint - Lemon Zest
• circle stencils
• Amsterdam Standard Greenish Blue Acrylic
• Blick Matte White Acrylic
• Golden Acrylic Glazing Liquid (Satin)
• Golden Fluid Acrylic - Paynes Gray
• Dina Wakley Media Heavy Body Acrylic Paint - Lemon
• Twinkling H2Os on watercolor paper
• Sharpie Poster Paint Markers
• Montana ExtraFine Acrylic Paint Marker
• Gelly Roll Stardust Pens
• Sakura Gelly Roll Moonlight Gel Pen
• Prismacolor Pencils

Finished at last! It feels really good to finish something.

Distress Paint in My Daily Journal

For the first week of the Summer of Color 2015, I used Distress Paints on a single piece of paper. That is probably the best way to do this technique because it is so messy. It takes a lot of paint and a lot of water.

Should you try this in your art journal? Maybe, after you have practiced on single sheets and see how messy this really is. (Oh, but so much fun!!!!) Will it leak to other pages? Yes. Will it get on the underpaper and get on your cover? Yes, probably. If you have a wire-bound journal, absolutely not, unless you want the Distress Paint on every page in your journal. It will leak through those holes in a heartbeat.

Have I every used the Distress Paints in my journal? Yes, occasionally. It leaked every time. But I have found some ways to make it less messy and less destructive to my finished work.

Below is a journal page I did with Distress Paints about a month ago.

You probably noticed that when I rotated the paper to make the drips, I tried not to let the drips go all the way to the edge. It didn't always work because they move quickly, but for the most part, I succeeded. There were some other things I did to keep this leaky project from messing up pages I had already completed.

The first thing is my journal, a Strathmore Hardback 500 Series Mixed Media Art Journal. The Strathmore Mixed Media products have been my go-to papers for several years now because they stand up well to the watery media I love to use. I rarely use gesso. Color never soaks through, including Dylusions Ink Sprays. The only other type of paper that works well with this much water is watercolor paper.

(Michaels here in the US carry some of the Strathmore Mixed Media papers.)

The hardbound journal is made of stitched signatures. The usual place were I get a leak is around the outside edges because I like my paint to go all the way to the edge. The other place where things sometimes leak is the middle page of the signature. Watery liquids will leak through the stitching holes, so I save them for another page.

But the Distress Paints are so messy that I go over to the next signature from where I am working. In that signature I choose the last page. 

The middle page has the stitching holes and thread. The page below that also has easier access to the holes. By the third page, the holes are less available. The pink lines show where I apply the paint. Notice that some of the paint leaks under the fold of the signature. But because paint doesn't soak through the Strathmore paper, the pages in the other signatures are protected.

I place newsprint between my working pages and the next page on each side. I have the Distress Paints poured out into recycled jar lids because I will be using a 1 inch brush for each color. You have to get the paint onto the page quickly so it will not dry out before you can spray water on it.

I first paint across the center of the spread with a background color, only going about an inch onto the left page. I do this thinly which means it is going to dry quickly, but that is okay. I won't be spraying water there. I am just trying to get rid of the white of the paper. I also continue this around the outside edge of the right side of the spread since I will try not to run my dripping paint over the edge.

Next I quickly apply the colors of Distress that I want to activate with water. Then I spray water heavily, avoiding the area near the center of the spread. I rotate the page in all directions getting the paint moving horizontally, vertically, and diagonally. Because I am working in the journal, I watch for drips that are getting close to the edge and rotate to send them another way. I might add additional paint and/or water, but not as much as I would if I were working on a single page.

After the Distress Paint is completely dry, I add some color to the rest of the left page. I make any notes regarding the art work, but I will not do daily journaling until I reach this spread as I go through my journal chronologically. I am just now getting to the daily journaling on this spread where the art was finished weeks ago.

As I worked my way into the signature where I used the Distress Paints, I found the leaks. A bit of gesso covers up the mess.

On the page I showed you above, Mustard Seed and Mermaid Lagoon were the colors used. They formed the green as they mixed. Later, while the paint was still wet, I used a pipette to drop in some Distress Black Soot and PIcket Fence (white). I often do this to add an accent color. If the Distress Paint is still wet, the drops will activate and spread. If the paint has already dried, the drops look like any paint spatter you might add to a project.

After I finished, I left my journal open on my art table. When I came back a bit later, a lot of the paint had moved to the right side of the paper. There was just a small curve to the paper, but that and gravity were enough. A lot of the paint was still wet and would be for some time since it was so thick there. I decided to see if I could still move it. It moved very slowly, but did get there. You can see how far it moved by the wash of color that was left behind.

If you work with Distress Paints on a large surface, I would enjoy seeing your results and learning about your process. I have never come across anyone else who does this.

Wet on Wet

Experimenting with new techniques and/or products is part of the fun of art journaling. I am always on the lookout for new techniques to try out in my daily journal. In this piece I modified a technique I found in the May/June 2015 issue of Cloth Paper Scissors Magazine. The article is "Zen Owls: Painting with Ink and Water" by Tracy Verdugo.

The ink referred to in the article was acrylic artist ink. Having only a few colors of acrylic ink, I decided to try it with Dylusions Spray Inks. Instead of owls, I painted flowers.

I experiment directly on the journal page if the paper in the journal is appropriate. But sometimes I want to use a medium that works better on a special type of paper or do a technique that requires a lot of water. When that happens, I work on a separate piece of paper and glue the finished piece into my journal. I use my daily journal for taking notes on my experiments.

Supplies I used: 140 lb hot pressed watercolor paper, Dylusions Spray Inks, water, brushes, pens and paint markers for finishing touches, black Archival Ink around the outside edge

Water is applied in the shape of the object you want to paint. Then you add the ink to the wet area. I found I needed to do small areas at a time and let them dry before proceeding. Otherwise, I would have been smearing them as I worked. It did take a little practice. I was doing much better by the time I got to the leaves. I like the result and will be using this technique again.

The background on the journal page was done with acrylics. I recycled a large sheet of bubblewrap by using my brayer to apply white paint and pressing it onto the page.

Sometimes experiments work. Sometimes they don't. Either way, I have a lot of fun playing in the paints.

Just passing this on...

In case you like Dina Wakley's paints and missed this announcement from Ranger, there is now a mixing chart for making other colors from her paints. You can read about it and find the link to the PDF here. The reds, oranges, and yellows in the background of my journal page were made with Dina's ruby and lemon paints. I have been mixing them all along. Now I have names for the colors.

My First Blog Post

Hi, I'm Neena. I have been art journaling for a number of years, although I didn't know it was called that until a few years ago. My introverted self used writing, pasting, and a bit of doodling in a notebook as a way to find a bit of solitude. Since I discovered art blogs and videos, my journals have become more arty. I am actually starting to think of myself as an artist. Others may not be that generous, but I don't care. I am having fun and plan to have even more. One of my goals for using this great thing called retirement is to improve my art skills.

I work in several journals. The one I work in most often is my daily journal. I do something in it nearly every day. In the past, it was only for a few minutes on most days. Once I retired, I found myself spending more time working in it.

I use the left page of my daily journal spreads for making notes about techniques and supplies used as well as documenting what's happening in my life. For privacy reasons, I'll only be photographing the arty right sides of my daily journal spreads to share on the blog.

I've been experimenting with abstract art while learning more about using acrylic paints. On the page below, I used glazes to build up the colors of the geometric shapes. The black lines were made with pastel pencil. I did this back in March, including some journaling about winter.

The piece was definitely not finished, but I couldn't decide what to add. Recently I was flipping back through this almost finished journal to find pages that need a bit more work. Adding stenciled and stamped designs popped into my head as soon as I saw the page.

Two things that ended up creating the focal point were due to messes that had to be rescued. The circles on the diagonal strip started out as a stamped image, but something pasted on the next spread kept it from printing cleanly. I colored in the circles and then added some marks with acrylic markers. Just below that you see a black stenciled area over some pink. When I was painting, I dripped a blob of another color on the pink. I grabbed a baby wipe to remove it. It took some of the glaze as well, leaving the lighter pink area. That area really pops under the black design. Sometimes messing up is a good thing.

Supplies used: acrylic paints, Golden Acrylic Glazing Liquid (Satin), black pastel pencil, black Pitt Artist Pen, stencils, stamps, acrylic markers, colored pencils

A friend says this is not bad for a first post. I hope you think so, too, and will visit again.