Journal Jam : a lesson in persistence

I love arting alongside Effy Wild in Canada. Watch the unedited replay HERE. Effy draws prompts from art cards and then we do what they say. Have decided that rather than explaining steps I'm just going to make this a series of process photos. As you look at the spread, the left is from the prompts and the right is my palette and cleaning off page that will be finished separately at the end.

This is a painting of our now extinct Huia. I love my wooden block stamp.

The prompts stopped and I had a long way to go. I lost my way with the pink iridescent turning purple and the green gold background...I almost gave up here to be honest! Time to take a breath and remember that ALL journal pages go through ugly stages so if you don't love it, keep going. Small steps are best. Time to cover some stuff up! Used some gelli printed collage paper, re-stencilled with the kowhai leaves and stencilled over the feather again with bronze. This looks better with more analogous colours.

After some consideration I realised that I needed to doodle to make that feather more like a feather. Some words and suddenly I can call it done. 

Definitely learning in this one...and the facing palette page has been painted over with white gesso so I can start fresh! I share everything I create in the hope that it inspires you to keep going on your creative journey too. See you again soon. 

Journal Jam

Another Journal Jam that I could do live :-) I love arting alongside Effy Wild in Canada. Her 2pm afternoon is my 8am the next day. Watch the unedited replay HERE.

Add some tape I have some old rolls of tape which is cream and I've been using as a good layer in a background. I use gel medium to make sure it sticks properly.

Mix your own colour Effy chose to use Iridescent Fine Gold Bright with Carbon Black to create an antique gold colour and I decided to follow that since I love metallics and have never tried that colour. Brayered on and I filled in round the outer edges with my brush

Draw a face Yay! She will hopefully sit nicely next to my last journal girl.

Scribble Scribbly writing with a pitt pen

Glaze I used Golden brand transparent high flow acrylics for my glazes. No idea why she has blue hair!

Love Hearts My own hand carved stamp on some collage paper I made almost a year ago - I love using little pieces of it in my art.

Least favourite colour I needed to add some colour to my background so decided to add another glaze. I don't use red very often and usually it's blue toned if I do use it. When I reached for my transparent napthol red light it wasn't even opened so clearly a least favourite colour! I like the effect - perhaps I'll use red more often...

White pen This  became Effy's last prompt and led into the tending/finishing stage for her, but I obviously had more to do. When I added her skin tones I took the opportunity to move her eyes further apart, and did some other coloured pencil detailing on her face.

I wasn't able to keep up to art along in real time all the way through this week, but I loved her so much I finished her later in the day ♥ Has also loosened me up for doing this week's self-portrait Wanderlust lesson so that's a bonus.

Journal Jam : Believe

Journal Jam - first one for 2021 and I'm on holiday so could do it live :-) Effy Wild is in Canada - her 2pm afternoon is my 8am the next day. Watch the replay HERE.

Add squares of colour - rolled for colour - blue Effy used watercolour. I used Phtalo blue transparent paint for similar watercolour effect. You can see that somehow the flower stabilo outline from last journal jam is showing in the background. This will get covered. No other problems with quality of this watercolour journal so far.

Use a colour you love and Effy decided to use a stencil with that She's seeing sky with stars, I'm seeing sea...I used one of my fav iridescent paints with swirly stencil and then finished off the paint through a circle stencil

Brayer I'm going gold....

Scrapey tooly thingy! - rolled for colour - purple Yay! Using a credit card. 

Metallic Yay again. Keep adding subtle - this time the Lumier Halo Violet gold (also from last journal jam). More stencil for me

Add a glaze To unite the spread. I used Transparent Dioxazine Purple and blended it with a wet wipe to make sure it wasn't too much. The metallics glow through

Quick! draw a flower I don't want a flower again and Effy goes into finishing off from here so I let mine dry and then came back in the afternoon knowing I needed a bold move. 

I really love using butterflies in my work. Lay down a mask and sponged around the edge with matte black, and then followed that by sponging around the rest of the outside with Pebeo Iridescent Blue Black

Just needed some gold pen work and words to complete this one.

Journal Jam : Celebrate simple pleasures

I was up early Tuesday December 22nd (6am in holiday time!) so that I could Journal Jam with Effy in Canada. See a replay HERE. Journal Jam is art prompts drawn randomly to lead to page creation in your journal without having to think too much. Watching Effy is fun but I always try to put my own spin on things. Didn't manage to finish this time...

Effy's was lovely at this stage of the prompts, and she moved onto tending which is adding finishing touches. This is Effy's completed spread from that session : 

Mine, on the other hand looks like a child's painting. I do know it's just at the stage where it's nowhere near finished, but I was a bit stuck. Then Effy had a New Year's Eve Day paint party which you can watch HERE. If you want to skip the general chat, at 34 minutes she shares how she's journaling this year. The actual painting starts at 40 minutes. This is how her page turned out : 

Because of this, I decided to go back to my unfinished spread and see if I could turn it into something I love. I didn't actually follow Effy's process very much, but just painting alongside her freed me up. I used my lovely stencils with iridescent colours for more interest 

and then glazed the flowers with Lumiere Halo Violet Gold (glazing medium added to thin down the paint) before doodling with a white uniball signo pen (make sure the paint is completely dry). Found a plastic word label in my stash that fitted perfectly with my colours and the act of creating this page. Happy to call it done. You can see the page just glows which fits my word of the year, SHINE, rather well 💜

Journal Jam : You got this

From March-May I created journal spreads with Effy Wild in her live online Journal Jam sessions. We were in lockdown and our time zones were compatible for a while. Journal Jam is where Effy draws a prompt from a special deck of cards, and you follow along in your journal. I take process photos of how I respond to the prompts and it's really interesting to see how pages develop. A few weeks ago, I just wanted to do some art without any idea of where I wanted to end up so played along with the recording for Journal Jam 15. Didn't realise then it would take me so long to finish. This is what Effy created using the prompts and following some impulses : first is the actual page, and the other is the facing page developed from using it as a paint palette.

I decided I will do the same and use my right hand page as my paint palette.

Overlapping circles. Roll the dice for colour (1. Red, 2. Blue, 3. Yellow, 4. Green, 5. Purple, 6. Orange) Ended up with too much paint on my right hand page so smooshed together - at least I have a layer of colour!

Gesso Priming the rest of my page. Put some on areas with a popsicle stick and then dragged with credit card. Not pretty but early days. 

Add a word Affirmation in silver letters on scrapbook paper torn and glued without too much thought to placement - just what feels good right now. This was the week that I'd started my last treatments - Radiotherapy for 15 days.

Add some tape Found an old piece of gelli-printed micropore tape which I've used up down the middle and some lovely watercolour look washi tape cos it looks painterly and nothing else appealed.

White pen Some Asemic writing - it includes the words "I can do hard things" so seemed appropriate to outline the found words "Don't be afraid" which I saw after I'd done the other writing! (outlined in white upper right page)

Cover something up I love stencils - will cover over some of the gesso. I want to add more purple to the page. Used the right page to put my paint on again, and then used baby wipe to clean stencil off on that side. Effy then added drips so I decided I'd like to do that too :Quinacradone Red transparent. Now I'm starting to love where this is going. Photo taken next day when all dry and in daylight. Then sat for a few days before I got back to the next prompt.

Metallics Yay! I think I'll use gold with another stencil. Then dabbed the excess around with my cosmetic sponge.

Use a colour you love I think I'm going to add some glazing like Effy did ie. a transparent layer so can see beneath. But this spread sat again for more than a week before I was able to act on that thought! And then it was a simple matter of more of that Quinacradone red blended with a baby wipe

Spirals Decided to add a stamp with micaceous iron oxide, so a bit grungy. Then I uploaded my photos and saw the face in the right hand page...this really inspired me and I completed the spread quite quickly.

Finishing this spread coincided with the last of my radiotherapy sessions yesterday. I'm finished with all the aggressive parts of my treatment and am now breast cancer free ♥ I need to look after myself and get plenty of rest while the radiation is still active in my body for the next 2 weeks. Then it's school holidays and I'm looking forward to some fun art play and sharing again with you more regularly. 

There's a list of all of the Journal Jam replays in Effy's Wilderhood FB group HERE. Check out my other Journal Jam spreads HERE.

Journal Jam 7 : Positive Plus

Effy Wild is sharing a weekly Journal Jam live session (Mondays 12noon EST). I'm now having to watch replays since she has rescheduled the time = 4am Tuesdays NZ Time! Since we moved to Level 2 in New Zealand last week I will normally be at work at the old time now anyway. Doesn't stop me playing : here's the replay for last week so you can have a go too. This is what Effy created from the prompts that follow :

Add Squares of paint in any colour (roll the dice for the colour 1. Red, 2. Blue, 3. Yellow, 4. Green, 5. Purple, 6. Orange) Began with squares for Journal Jam 6 - learned my lesson there and I want to keep it light this time so first covering my background with white gesso and then rolling a dice for colour : 4. Green. Used a stencil of squares in a square and thought it would be fun to use 2 different greens

Meaningful phrase or song lyric Great idea of Effy's to scribble song lyrics with white paint pen so part of the background layering. I decided to add asemic writing using Faber-Castell Pitt pen which is permanent and waterproof once dry. 

I won't be able to read it later, but I used words from a favourite Victoria Erickson poem

Quickly draw a flower Black ink applied with a Fantastix applicator. You can rinse them out for different colour use later. 

Add love hearts A good opportunity to use one of my hand-carved stamps. Still looks very much like background but happy so far that I'm in a more comfortable place than I got last time!

Draw a face Knew this was coming because of seeing Effy's spread before I started but tried not to let what she did influence my responses. I positioned a face based on those hearts coming down her forehead. Drawn in with stabilo, activated with water and sprayed with workable fixative. 

Effy didn't draw any more prompts so let's just see where this goes....got to this by Friday. I know the face and flower need work but do I need to add anything else?

And then I had my very special Positive Plus quilt delivered to me yesterday and I was able to add tape from the wrapping (perfect colours!) and 7 +s (one for each member of my quilt group) to finish my spread. That poem above is even more apt. 

This spread has so many layers of meaning now. In my experience it's worth waiting to be properly inspired before you move forward when stuck.