Journaling, Collaborating, Collaging

Do you ever happen on someone's blog, and you just have to give their technique or idea a try.  I do that often.  Today, I worked on some pages from this lady's blog:  http://katthorsen.wordpress.com/

I will be interested to see where her journal prompts take me.  This first scan is the result of prompts 1-3.  I  combined them all into one.   You are to start with free conconcious writing.  Then you list the words into negative and postive lists.  Then you make a drawing of a heart, and add words to the heart drawing...the words you have used that really affect your heart.  I still have to add the words.  I started with a gessoed spread, then wrote on the left page and sorted on the right page.  I decided rather than do another page with the heart drawing, I would just do it on this spread.  I used my new Portfolio oil pastels and an aquabrush to do the drawing.  One thing I like about doing journal pages is you can try out new art supplies to see what you can do with them.  If they don't work out, it's no big deal.

For page four, we just did a collage, just to relax and have fun.  I had a box of black and white images so decided to use those.  Then I began adding the yellows to brighten it up.  By the time I was finished I had the distinct feeling this collage was a direct result of having lived in a foggy overcast environment for what seems like months, although it has only been a few weeks.  So this is my "looking for sunshine" spread.

It does cheer me up a bit, lol...

And my friend Lori from the sketchbook group sent me an art journal to share with other artists in a collaboration.  Here is the first page I did in it.  

The first step, I used a stencil I made from a magazine...the girls face.  I have used this stencil before and I am always happy with it's image.  This time, I used regular paintable bathroom caulking on the stencil, which gives the eye brows eyes nose and mouth a 3-D effect.  Once that was dry, I washed the face with acrylic to model it.  I keep noodling with this page.  I am not sure why.  I don't really like this but I do like it... I wanted to add some really bright colors, but that didn/t happen.  I think because my inner critic interferred.   I still might do somemore to her.