White pen patterning

It's been a week since I blogged and when you see my completed art journal page you'll see why...it's just taken a while! I was doubly inspired by a post by Alisa Burke HERE where she used acrylic paint and white pen patterning to transform magazine faces AND recent lessons in my classes with Effy Wild where she demonstrated a lovely batik technique also using white pen patterning. I loved the idea of using the 'easy' option of a magazine face to alter, and found this wonderful advert of 3 faces 

It reminded me of Klimt's painting "The Virgin" and I am inspired to pattern the faces, the hair, and garments. First I positioned and glued the faces on the page, and then blocked out hair and garments with acrylic paints

I added clear gesso to the faces so I can add pen work more easily than to the glossy magazine surface. First face and hair doodles. 

I adored this process so much and I thought they all looked so cool I've taken photos of each individual face for you to enjoy. You can also click on any photo to enjoy it larger.

Was so fun to come up with different patterning ideas

Then it was time to start patterning on the garments. Interesting to see how doodled ideas lead you onto others - this one was vertical from her neckline

The teal led me to a top border and then florals

Because of the line of collage beneath, the purple begged to be more of a cloak with feathers

Here's the entire page...but we're not finished yet

I wanted to try Effy's glazing batik technique. These are all the mediums I used over the paper on this page :

As you can see I've got excellent matches in transparent high flow acrylics to go over the acrylic colours I used for the garments. So with a deep breath {and a baby wipe handy in case I hated the effect!} I added the layer of transparent colour 

And it was the opposite of hate... I LOVE the effect, especially when you look at the whole page with the drama of the faces

You can sign up for classes with Effy Wild HERE and with Alisa Burke HERE. Alisa is currently celebrating 10 years in business so has some amazing class bundle deals. See my Flickr album of all art work inspired by Effy's classes HERE.