Sunday 13 February 2011

Art Journalling

Well, I've made numerous attempts at art journalling, since I attended a weekend course with the lovely Dyan at Art from the Heart last spring. However, none of my pages seemed to look right, and I keep giving up then having another go! Yesterday, I finally made a page I'm happy to share.....prompted I think by the sheer rage, anger and frustration I feel at the moment, after being told by our lovely son Nick that he will learn next week if he is going to be made redundant....this, after 60 weeks gruelling training with the RAF, and passing out as a Pilot Officer just before Christmas. How can the RAF justify doing this to such fine young men, just to save money? Why spend all that on their training, indeed continue to recruit, and yet still make such a short sighted, devastating decision that will wreck so many young lives?
Anyway, I will get off my soapbox for a moment and show you the page.
It started life a few months ago like this...
It was done with very sloppy watercolours and a bit of twinkle H2O's, which I let drip down the page. It didn't turn out like I wanted, so I just left it.
Yesterday, I took it with me to Leeds Paper Dolls and was thumbing through the Times Educational Supplement colour magazine (no, I'm not a reader, but the magazine delivered to school has some great images in!), when I came across this article, which summed up how I felt perfectly...

It looked a bit lost on the page, so I drew round the image and caption with a water soluble oil pastel crayon that Gill had told me she loved using...except I didn't know how to use them! It looked a bit grainy and insipid, and I'd forgotten to bring my paintbrush, so tried using a wet wipe...wow! I love how the oil just darkened and merged into a solid colour, I'll definitely be using them more often now, in fact I think they're my new favourite thing!
Finally, I wrote down all my anger, and this is how it ended up. Hope you like it x

7 comments:

Sarah said...

love it! oil pastels are lovely aren't they, they are great to blend colours into each other with your fingers

I hope your son gets good news next week

Scrapping4fun said...

Lovely page, seems to be just what art journals are for letting out all your feelings, hopefully that will kickstart you off now, look forward to seeing lots more pages. Will try the wipes as well!!

Giulietta said...

Brave woman, Karen! Its good stuff.
How dare they do this to Nick! You are right to be angry - and even if it turns out OK you have still had a week to worry about it. But you got the worry and anger out onto the page so thats good. And I do hope and pray its good news.

Uma said...

fantastic, my brain hurts a lot too! fingers crossed for Nick

VickiA said...

Love your page...and oooooohh, I could use that image and statement a thousand times over!

Juliwan said...

really great Karen, nice to see someone else who doesnt like their backgrounds all the time

Rosie said...

I love it too! Must try that trick of shading around an image or lettering too ... And thank you SO much for the lovely comment on my blog! You helped me remember why I do it, which is in the hope and trust that it will help somebody else.