Raven Collage

This was a busy week for me but I did manage to make the trek to Hobby Lobby to buy some more art supplies. I bought the Ranger Melting Pot, bees wax and alcohol inks. I am really fortunate to have a husband who supports my art but even he couldn't understand the need for a Melting Pot. To him, melting wax and then pouring the hot wax onto my artwork just seems absurd. Normally Brittany is 100% behind my creative ideas but I think I lost her on this one.

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.).

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.

Creative Journaling

Brittany and I were running errands and decided to make a detour to Barnes & Noble with the idea that it would have to be quick because we had several other stops to make. The plan was to find our books and head over to the check-out. NO BROWSING! We walked into the store, headed toward the books and suddenly our plan fell apart. When we met in the middle of the store each of us had an arm full of books. We headed toward the check-out desk an hour later, but never quite made it there. Brittany spotted the journals lining the shelves along the wall. I found a beautiful handmade Italian leather journal with the Medici Lion embossed on the front cover. I love the Medici Lion! This book had beautiful ivory lined pages. Great for writing poetry but I wasn't sure how it would work with sketches. The journal was removable so I could replace it with a similar size sketchbook. The journal is so beautiful just as it is that I decided to sketch on the lined paper and cover the paper with gesso or some other medium when I don't want the lines showing through my drawings.
 

Medici Lion Journal

First sketch in the Medici Lion journal.

This sketch is based on the Afghan Hound sketch that I did in August 2010.


Directions for journal page:

The dog was drawn with a No. 2 pencil. I used Prisma Color pencils for the face and fur.

Highlights to the muzzle and the fur were added with Derwent Ink Tense pencils. Wet a No. 4 round paint brush with water and blot the excess water on a paper towel. Carefully paint over the lines that you made with the Ink Tense pencils.

Color the background with a dark blue Ink Tense pencil and paint over it with water. Be careful not to get the page too wet or the paper will curl. Let the page dry and paint over it again if necessary.

Add a quote or your own thoughts. I added both. I used the quote by Eugene Delacroix: "Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything."

 I used the EK Success fleur de lis paper punch and gold handmade paper to make the fleur de lis for the heading. The heading is written with an India Ink fine point pen. Highlight the heading by going over the words with a magenta Prisma Color pencil.