Hi everyone, Micki here to share another one of my art journaling adventures using every single one of those yummy Dina Wakley paints, lots of stencils and some playing cards.
I began by opening up my art journal, found a couple of somewhat empty pages and covered both pages with some color. One side was painted yellow and the other blue using Faber-Castell Gelatos and my waterbrush during my lunch hour at work or more appropriately called, my therapy session! My initial idea was to sketch a tower of cards, the way one would built them on a table but I couldn't figure out how to incorporate real playing cards. I thought about cutting the cards up and paper piecing my sketch but instead I glued whole cards sort of crooked to my pages (yes, I also brought glue in my traveling art sack).
Later that evening, I grabbed several stencils and like I mentioned at the beginning, used every single color of Dina Wakley paints. I threw a lock on my analytical mind and just played with those awesome paints, adding lots of stencil layers. Before adding the stencils over the playing cards, I lightly sanded the cards and covered the cards with a layer of Clear Gesso to ensure that the paint wouldn't chip off. Those playing cards are pretty slick since they were brand new.
I thought the lines from the bridge in the Cityscape stencil from The Crafter's Workshop would make great journaling lines as well as a neat background behind my "tumbling houses". I use a blending tool to dab paint through stencils, which seems to work for me. I seem to get the best impressions with no over spill using the foam blending tool. After stenciling the bridge, I continued dabbing my tool around to get the night sky. I liked the variation in the black paint. (Complete listing of stencils and supplies used is below). Then it was time for me to step away. When I came back to the journal the next evening, I decided to tone it down a bit with watered down white gesso. I still wanted the stencil layers to show through but didn't like the background color - not enough contrast.
This time as I was adding paint colors I paid a little more attention to my color wheel and placement of color. While the other side was drying, I focused on the face. I initially was going to sketch a side-view face, but ended up using TCW's Profile Stencil designed by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer (who is teaching a class at the eP Shop this fall!!!!). Instead of dabbing paint through the stencil, I lightly traced the face with a pencil so I could make the end result sort of my own and make it look more painterly.
Boy, the trouble I had with the lips and eye almost caused me to start over and just stencil the face with paint, but persistence won out. I kept at it.
Still not happy with the eye, but trust me, a lot better than the previous layers. To help cover up some of those mistakes, I used some bleeding tissue paper piece under her eye. It covered the black lines even if I could not get the skin color to match the rest of the face. I used a blue watercolor pencil for some eye make-up, which was blended with a wet brush.
For shading I used a combination of Stabilo All Pencil and some watered down paint that was left over on my craft sheet. Once that was done, I used my Fude Liquid Ink Roller Pen to doodle around the houses. To spell the title of this spread, I used Tim Holtz Idea-ology Alpha Cards which were cut apart and glued to the cards with Beacon 3-in-1 Glue to make sure they stay put. Then I started journaling with with my Uni-Ball White Gel Pen, starting at the bridge but I had quite a bit to say and ended up journaling around each of the houses too.
I added some random stamping using some old, but much loved, Wendy Vecchi Studio 490 stamps. Lastly I darkened the edges using Vintage Photo Distress Ink and blending tool.
Supplies Used:
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