Stitches

This week’s Art Journal Adventure prompt was provided by my friend Jana.  Jana has a way of creating wonderfully curated collages with mixed media elements and lots of visual texture.  She produced one such piece as her exemplar for her guest blog post.  I aspire to put together collages as wonderful as the ones Jana produces but I am not there yet.  I don’t have a collection of ephemera to riffle through either, just random papers.  I, therefore, decided to use Jana’s page as jumping-off inspiration rather than strictly adhering to the prompt.

I did technically start the page with a collage but it was just a case of roughly adhering some book page scraps to the journal page and then knocking the whole thing back with a layer of white acrylic.  I loved the colour scheme in Jana’s collage so I too opted for a palette that was monochromatic and neutral with a pop of red.  What I was really taken with was the use of stitching as a mark-making tool.  I am not someone who has much skill or ability with fabric arts or textiles and my sewing skills are limited to hand-sewing and are very basic.  I, therefore, would not normally think to add stitches to my art journal pages but that was precisely why I wanted to do so in response to this prompt.  I really enjoyed it as a different way to add marks to the illustration and what it contributed in terms of a different visual texture.