Rainbow Art Journal – Thrive & Survive

This page was another one where I had lobbed down scrapings of leftover paint and scraps of collage material.  As with the majority of the pages in the green section of my Rainbow Art Journal, my brain wandered to plants.  Because I was thinking about all of the weird bits of rejected odds and sods that made up the substrate of the page, I thought about weeds and that idea that weeds are just plants growing where someone doesn’t want them.  The plant doesn’t know it’s a weed; the plant thinks it is a flower with as much merit as the one a human is caring for in a garden.  So then I thought about the fortitude of weeds and their feisty attitude.  I pretty much started identifying with weeds.  So that was the theme and idea for this journal page.

I used a negative space painting approach to pick out the shape of a weed growing across the page.  I then stamped “survive” and “thrive” on to some green paint chip cards I had.  Unfortunately, I was distracted when gluing them onto the page and transposed the words.  Oops.  It didn’t bother me enough to either remove them or cover them up, however.  Anyway, survival and being determined to thrive no matter what seem like good messages for these pandemic times we find ourselves in.

 

Rainbow Art Journal – Sea Glass

This page was one of those messy pages crammed full of pieces of collage, odds and ends of washi tape, and surplus gesso and paint.  It was, therefore, very textured and incredibly visually busy.  It has been in my Rainbow Art Journal for months waiting for me to finish it.  I focused on on the wine label that reads “seaglass” and used that as my colour palette inspiration.  I used to collect sea glass as a child.  I had different jars for the different colours.  I found some really cool pieces.  I have a vase filled with sea glass from Scotland in my home now.  I collected it when I went back home to Fife in 2015 so it’s a visual reminder to my childhood.

I struggled to pull this page together partly because the lumpy, scratchy texture made it hard to work with and partly because I was so sick of looking at this unfinished page for so long.  The page was just annoying me and I wanted to get it finished so that I could move on and forget about it.

PS There is a weird colour caste in my photo of this piece, a sort of pinkish glow.  When I try to adjust it, it just throws the greens and aquas out too much.  The background colour is white gesso so that should give you some indication of the actual colours.

Rainbow Art Journal – Valley Cottage

I had this page that was covered in smears and spatters of leftover green paint, washi tape, and offcuts of origami paper.  I had placed the collage elements with the intention of them eventually becoming some sort of landscape.  Once I began to draw lines around the patches, the drawing started to take form and I had the idea of where the cottage should be placed within the scene.  The finished piece is reminiscent of a journal page I created in 2017 and a page from the orange section of this rainbow art journal.  I guess this is my style and approach to landscapes.

Rainbow Art Journal – Heart of the Forest

Will I create an illustration in the green section of my Rainbow Art Journal that does not involve foliage?  It is looking doubtful based on the evidence so far.  Women with antlers crop up in my artwork from time to time and I really don’t have an explanation for why or what they might symbolise for me.  I wish I had a deeper explanation than the fact I just seem to enjoy drawing this subject.  Also, I should probably develop my skills with painting leaves as I am pretty sure my abilities in that regard have not developed since my age was in single digits.

Rainbow Art Journal – Green and Golden

This illustration is another experiment in a yellow and green colour palette but this time using just ink and watercolour instead of mixed media.  That combination of colours always makes me think of ‘Fern Hill’ by Dylan Thomas.  It was one of my favourite poems to teach and I have fond memories of doing so.  The colours of green and gold are used throughout the poem to signify different things about life’s changes and stages.  That got me thinking about the transitional phase between childhood and adulthood so I chose to draw a tween girl.  Lately I have been drawing ears too small but I think perhaps I over-corrected myself this time and gave this girl ears that are a wee bit too large – what were called “jug lugs” when I was wee.  Maybe the proportions just add to the sense of tweenage awkwardness. Yes, let’s go with that.

PS I am participating in Drawlloween throughout October.  You can find the illustrations I create in response to each day’s prompt over on my other blog or on Instagram.

Rainbow Art Journal – Lemon and Lime

This page is another example of me plagiarizing myself because I sketched this up from an ink and watercolour illustration I did just over three years ago.  It is always interesting to see how I translate the same (or similar) drawing between mediums.  This mixed media version was also an experiment in using a lemon yellow and lime green palette.  I think the combination is as fresh as you would expect from citrus inspiration.  I suspect it would have more zing to it if not dulled down with the flesh tones.  I am finding that I really like to use text papers in my mixed media pieces.  Maybe it is my love of books and reading but I also just like the sort of mark-making quality it contributes, all those shapes and forms.

Spring

Have I mentioned (more than a zillion times?) that I am over Winter and yearning for Spring?  A couple of weeks ago, I saw a rabbit bound across my yard and I thought that was a sure sign.  Turns out that bunny was just a dimwit who needed to stay in his burrow a bit longer.  I also noted that our daffodils were sprouting out of the dirt.  That was another hopeful sign.  Then the shoots got buried under a foot of snow.  Spring has to be soon though.  It has to.

My latest art journal page was, therefore, inspired by thoughts of Spring.  The Art Journal Adventure prompt was S which fitted perfectly with my intention of creating a Spring themed art journal page.  The idea is a personification of Spring waking from a slumber and starting to bloom.  I must confess that this was a far better idea in my head than translated on the page.  I had to work in a whole load of small rations of time which certainly did not help in terms of cohesion and the fact that I rushed through some of the elements is very visible.  I like the idea, however, and might return to it when I have more time to accomplish a better execution.  I will state that my art work is perfectly straight – it is my iphone photography that is squint.

 

Rainbow Art Journal – Poppies

I turned another page in my Rainbow Art Journal and decided to do another two page spread.  I am still in the red section of my journal and thought of poppies.  I didn’t want to use a monochromatic palette so decided to incorporate some grey and green too but I probably used too much of those and not enough red in the end.  Not being very adept at painting flowers, I created the poppy blooms from clippings from magazine pages collaged onto the background.  I am pleased with how the hands turned out but otherwise I think this is one of the “blah” pages in my art journal.

 

Antlers

I had to diverge a fair bit from last week’s Life Book lesson.  The lesson was taken by Effy Wild and was a bit too “art therapy” for my taste.  I definitely appreciate the therapeutic function art and other forms of creativity can and do play in people’s lives but it just isn’t for me.  For me, art is cathartic just through the act of creating, the calm space it creates in my busy life.  I don’t use it for delving into deep feelings or processing them.  While I opted out of that aspect of the lesson, I did enter into the spirit of working intuitively.  I consciously chose to work in shades of green because it is a colour I don’t often reach for and maybe that woodland palette is why what emerged on the page was a female figure sporting antlers.  The antler thing has been happening a lot lately.  I have no idea what that is about or what it might represent.  I’ll just go with it.

Spring Girl

This week’s Life Book lesson was taken by Misty Mawn.  Misty Mawn is a mixed media artist I had heard a lot about so it was fun to experience a lesson with her and learn what her approach to art is.  Hers is a much looser, much more painterly, much more intuitive style than I know I am capable of so the lesson really dragged me out of my comfort zone.

This is one of those pieces I regret not taking progress shots of because at no stage did it ever resemble or even predict what it was going to end up looking like.  My initial sketch was actually a self-portrait (without glasses) and actually a rather good one so I wish I had thought to take a picture of that.  It was, however, never my intention for the final painting to resemble me.  Instead I was using my face as scaffolding to underpin the other layers.  As soon as I started applying paint, with a large brush, the quality of the drawing disappeared and it became a mess.  I was not happy with either my mixing of flesh tones nor my mark making with the brush.  It was a complete and utter mess and I seriously doubted in my ability to refine that layer enough to make it worth persevering with and progressing.  I managed to refine it a little more by switching to a medium brush and by improving the flesh tones but it was definitely in the “ugly stage” by then.  I admit that it was then that I threw in the towel.  I could not get the painting to emerge as anything worthy of escaping the trash bin using a painterly, loose approach and acrylic paint.  What I decided to do, therefore, was use other media and revert to my drawing skills to pull out the facial details and make the painting cohere.  That saved the day and saved the piece from going in the bin.

As an aside, the green and pink colour scheme definitely speaks to my longing for Spring.  I am so done with Winter and its bleak, grey, dull days.