Lately I have been working in my Medici Lion journal. At first I found art journaling intimidating-where do I start? I remembered how my high school art teacher required me to keep a journal and turn in 10 entries per week and how much I dreaded journaling. I wasn't visited by the Muse and my teacher was always complaining that my journal wasn't creative. How could it be, with a required number of entries a week? I set my fear of journaling aside and decided to make my journal a creative place where I could experiment with ideas and a variety of art products. I am really starting to enjoy journaling and look forward to each new entry.
The idea for this journal entry was inspired by Dali's Prince and Princess painting. I chose to do a collage rather than a painting. I used Van Gogh's Starry Night for the bottom of the collage, hand drawn elements (Raven, Moon and Tree) and dried hydrangeas from last summer's gardens. I added a quote by Edgar Allan Poe to finish the piece (Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.).
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| Finished Raven Collage entry. |
The base for the collage is created by painting the pages with thinned light purple, dark purple and medium blue acrylic paints. The blue is painted on the lower half of the page and the purple on the rest of the page. Let the paint dry and take the Tim Holtz Honeycomb stencil and place it randomly on both pages. Apply modeling paste over the stencil. Remove the stencil and let the pages dry overnight. Apply acrylic paint over the stenciled area but don't cover the stencil completely (let some of the Modeling Paste show through). Cut a circle out of yellow card stock and glue it to the top of the right page. Glue a layer of yellow tissue paper over the moon. Cut the tree trunk and branches out of brown card stock and glue over both pages. The branches should extend to the right page. Draw or trace a Raven and cut the bird out of black card stock. Glue the Raven to the branch on the right page. Glue two small dark blue feathers to the Raven's tail and glue blue glass glitter on top of the feathers. Add a small crystal for the Raven's eye. Add decorative trim for the nest and glue to the branch under the bird. Print a copy of Starry Night using the 3x5 option. Cut the Cypress tree, the village and the mountains out of the picture and glue it to the bottom right page (lower right corner). Stamp bats around the top of the pages. Cut out a banshee and glue her to the left side of the tree. Apply dried flowers to the tree branches with Golden Clear Gloss Gel medium. Print the quote by Edgar Allan Poe, mat it with black card stock and glue to the left page. Randomly apply dots over the entire collage with a white gel pen to unify the piece.
