A Little Art Journaling

I managed to lose my bad attitude about the last couple of Positively Creative Art Journaling exercises that I refused to do. I'm glad I waited because it gave me time to mull things over and come up with an approach to the journaling prompts that I felt comfortable with. It also gave me a chance to get out of my mood and be more open to the process. Part of my frustration lately has been the lack of new methods to try to get paint on the page in preparation for the journaling. So this break also allowed me to think of some things I wanted to try on my own. Could I create some texture by sponging paint over a piece of netting? And flipping the net over to the other side like a stamp to remove the excess paint?

Yes! This is the netting that bags of oranges come in and this particular one was quite stretchy and springy, unlike others that I KNOW I have stashed somewhere but couldn't find. This would have worked a little better had I taped or clipped the netting in place, but I was kind of in a hurry. When I flipped it, it bounced all over the place so I couldn't get a net impression and struggled to get the paint on the page, but basically it worked.

Of course, I had lots of paint on the sponge still and a second lesson I had skipped so prepared a second spread. The sponge I used is just a simple household sponge with small pores which when dabbed lightly gave very nice subtle texture. Where I dabbed a bit too hard I just got a blob. I went back over this in a second color, then painted vertical strokes with a scrub brush with very diluted white paint. The bristles created these fine lines that I liked very much. Looks much better in person than in this picture, trust me. I made the same brushstrokes over the previous spread, thinking to lighten up the green, but the paint was so thinned that the opposite happened; the green showed through to make the white now look grey.

I don't know yet what I'm doing with the second spread but here's the beginnings of the first one. The prompt was about giving yourself a hug, which at the time was not going to solve my problems or make me feel better. Maybe a hug from someone else, or being able to give a hug, but hugging myself and finding magazine pics of people hugging to paste on my page was just making my eyes roll that day! So after days of random returns to this idea and my reaction to it, this is the start of what I came up with. The heck with hugging myself! I tried out my new set of Sharpie pens, which struggled, frankly, to write over the paint. 

I played with this over several days, adding some dark shading around the large letters and finally journaling on the opposite page yesterday. I started in one corner, writing down a ways, then turned and started in the next corner until I had text starting from each corner. By the time I was done, I'd worked out my issues with this hugging yourself thing and my greater need to hug and be hugged. There - I feel better.