Above: Finshed page of collaged bits and sketching. Pentel Pocket Brush Pen and gouache. Read below for an explanation of the process. Click on the image to view an enlargement.
There's a lot of serendipity in my life, or at least journaling lets me see it, or perhaps journaling creates it. All I know is that it is awfully fun to live this way.
This post is a demo of sorts for my current journaling class, and I liked the final page so much I wanted to share it here on the blog too. It also relates to the collage and journaling workshop I'll be doing next year for Strathmore (I'm actually producing the materials now but it won't be available until then). It's like shuffling a deck of cards and letting the cards fall into each other. It all just seems to fit. Of course brain scientists will argue that when you set your brain tasks it just naturally finds these pieces that will fit, and I think that's true. Which is one of the best arguments I can think of to always be working.
The above page spread from the current journal (a page size of approx. 7 x 10 inches) is indicative of how I work in my journals on the visual pages (there are lots of pages that are notes and also a mix of notes and visuals; and still other pages where I stick photographs and other odd bits). The paper here is Magnani Annigoni Designo, which is a great tan-colored paper with flecks of fiber in it. It's sized for working with wet media.
Left: The image shows the background painted on the page. The paper items are described below. (Apologies for the poor lighting, but you can still get the idea.) Click on the image to view an enlargement.
I began this spread by painting blue and orange strokes of diluted fluid acrylic paint. (Golden) I work ahead in my journals doing this at odd moments when I'm at home and can leave the journal open to dry. You might try this at night before you go to bed, or in the morning before your workout (so the journal is dry by the time you have to pack it up and go to work). If you can, lunchtime is also a great time to pre-paint pages.
I was prepainting samples for my Strathmore demos in the Strathmore journals (obviously that entire workshop has to have examples done in their product) and I had some left over paint, so I grabbed my current journal and splashed on some paint.
What you also need to know is that besides sketching directly on journal pages I sketch items on various bits of paper and then stick those items into my journals. I did a sketch of a man on graph paper and then stuck him on the NEXT page, but didn't want to cut away the rest of the paper. I folded the graph paper over the fore edge of the recto page and glued it down. Initally that was all that was on this page. When I had that extra paint to use up I decided to paint this page spread and push the graph paper into the background by painting onto it a bit. (Making it less glaringly white.)
Note: When I did that my trusty glue stick (Uhu, purple variety) did release some of the graph paper, but no problem—when it dries, if you apply pressure it often seals back up OR you can peel back the paper and reglue it, pushing it back into place. The idea is to not get too hung up on all this. You can of course use an acrylic medium or PVA to attach your pieces that you'll still be using wet media over, but sometimes (or all the time) that's too much hassle to get all that stuff out and clean up afterwards. You decide. (I also don't like the plastic feel of acrylic media in my books, or the stickiness that often seems to happen. Fluid acrylics in a wash don't have that resultant plastic-feel or look.
Usually I work chronologically in my journals, but sometimes when I start putting sketches on odd bits of paper everywhere I tend to move on away from certain pages, because later pages are developing faster. That's fine with me. Find your own comfort level. I'd rather have a book full of filled pages and one empty page I have to go back and fill, than spend 6 days staring at one page when nothing occurs to me to fill it. Chronological order can only take me so far.
As the next spread developed (and I'll show that to you another day) I added the blue foil at the right fore edge. Again, this was serendipity of an immediate kind, because it went with the color scheme on both page spreads. If it had only worked on the next spread I could have simply cut the over flow off when the glue was dry, and not folded it over on to this page. But I enjoy how it brings something sparkly to the spread, and knocks that graph paper even farther back.
Sometime in the next week or so I was messing around with rubberstamps for some pieces for my current collage class and I stamped a couple office/industrial rubberstamps on the page spread, using a light beige ink that would not demand too much attention. I wanted the stamped text to provide texture. (You'll see this in the next image.)
Then the spread sat for about a week while I worked happily in the journal on other pages, chronologically, until suddenly there were only 2 spreads left to finish. EEEK. That means it's crunch time. I wanted to get into that next journal. But often something about an unfinished spread calls to me and demands something special. Sadly I can't always deliver. Typically I'll take a before photo so that when I really mess up the page I have a record of how "fine" it once was. I enjoy that not in a regretful sort of way, but in a, "wow, remember that? I can do something that fab again some time, so what if it is now under a sludge pile of meeting notes!"
Having taken a photo of this page already (so I could show my students what eventually happened in a series) I went ahead and stuck a Post-it Note on the page (a note Dick left me that morning actually, because I was working on a group project that went kookoolala, stayed up too late, didn't wake up with him, and he knew it would be good for me to find this note—it was).
Now maybe this action (pasting down his supportive note) colored what would eventually fall on this page? I don't know, but I know with previous notes of his that I've saved the pages might become the previously mentioned meeting notes, or random collaged bits from a busy day—whatever. Sometimes it's just good to save the notes. It's positive and personal ephemera.
The next day another late night, up alone, unwinding after packing it in with that group project, I needed to draw, but there was nothing calling to me. I was out of it, still tired, still coughing, and really, really grumpy. Imagine my delight when I turned on Project Runway and they went to Mood Fabrics and there was Swatch with some sort of bag on his/her (don't know what gender Swatch is) head—I think it might have been a Halloween costume.
I love black and white dogs (as you may have guessed if you look at my Daily Dots—both Emma [Dottie's aunt] and Dottie were black and white Alaskan Malamute bitches). They are so graphic.
I grabbed my Pentel Pocket Brush Pen and started sketching.
Left: Pentel Pocket Brush Pen Sketch on pre-painted and collaged background. In this image you can see the rubberstamped text that preceded the Post-it Note. Click on the image to view an enlargement.
I sketch directly in pen and ink because it is FUN. At any moment it all might go horribly wrong. That makes it more fun for me. Perhaps I was a daredevil in a previous life? Now instead of plunging off cliffs in speeding cars I careen around the page.
I got rid of that bag (or costume) on Swatch and accentuated the anxious look in her (his?) eyes. I actually started the sketch like I typically do, with one eye (here the one on our left) and worked my way out.
For a long while (2 minutes or so) when I had finished the pen sketch, I actually thought about stopping there because I love the interplay of background color with the image of the dog and the negative space around it, but also the way the background color seems to radiate from the face. And it would have been fine to stop there. Some days you create a pen sketch that you fall so in love with you really do need to stop and move on to another page.
I would just like to encourage you in the following way—by all means save some pen sketches, but if your goal is to paint, and that painting means loosing those lines, embrace that goal as well and realize that you will always be able to make more line art, in fact the more you make…you get the idea. If you don't push past the point where you think you maybe should stop you will never learn that moment and place where you actually should have stopped. The great ink lines you covered on the way to knowing that are a small price to pay.
Since I was in a grumpy mood anyway I was dangerous, of course I pushed ahead. I got out the gouache and started to paint. I wanted the starkness of the black and white face against that tan and pre-painted paper, so there really wasn't any other choice. Also because I wanted a very opaque white (to hide most of the background color in the face) I pulled out the jar of Dr. Ph. Martin's Bleed Proof White which is essentially industrial strength white gouache in a jar. (I've written about white paints on the blog before but couldn't find anything with the search engine—it's not perfect. I'll have to address this some other time.)
For the black on the dog's head I used PB60 (Indanthrone blue—Dark Indigo) and Burnt Sienna gouache (both from Schmincke). The background colors played nicely into this palette, and I let the background colors show through in the body. (A bit of magenta also from Schmincke was used in the ear, eye, and muzzle.)
I also made a decision not to paint all of the dog's chin. I liked the interplay of background colors in this area too much. For me it seemed better to save that bit of the drawing. On another day, I could have made a different decision. For me, not painting the chin saves a bit of underpainting I love and keeps the focus on the eye.
Did I lose my ink lines that I was happy with—yep. But not all of them. I was able to cut around the white eye and save some shape lines, and the body lines of course trail away. The forehead line was actually improved once I laid in the white paint with a tinge of blue.
For me the trade off was worth it. Even more fun for me was realizing when I finished that I had drawn the look I gave Dick, just before he went to bed, and it totally fit the Post-it Note. That's just another bit of serendipity. Whenever I see this page I will remember the group project that went crazy, Dick's support, and that fact that even grumpy it's a good thing to push myself to draw—it leads to great fun, and an improved attitude.
