Book of Days : January with Sal Scheibe and Rachel Kentish

I've joined Book of Days 2020 as the only online year-long art journal class I'm doing. I am always inspired by Effy's lessons and I love that this is a collaborative platform now with lessons presented from 24 artists over the course of the coming year. This is a sneak peek of our offerings for January - amazing right?

I wasn't really sure where to start but the next spread in my journal already had paint on it and I thought I could manage Sal Scheibe's lesson (bottom middle) about words for the year over the top of it. 

Sal used watercolours for her face base. I needed to use acrylic to cover some of my background. I suppose I could have used my watercolour ground. Maybe next time. I love that these words appeared at the very beginning. I used a black posca pen 0.7mm to outline the lower ones and bracket the ones at her eye so I don't paint over them later by mistake. I like the idea of "shoulder friends" but am not at all confident drawing animals. Trying out a bird sticker instead. 

Painted hair and coloured pencils are currently my favourite method for face shading. 

I actually think her face is done - I like the suggestion of the background text and don't mind the previous layers of colour beneath. Click on any photo to see it in larger detail.
I really love using stencils in the hair area. I was going to just use the rose, but then looked below it and decided she could feature all those lovely hearts and just before I did that I decided that's going to be where my words go. I also used the little dot pattern to add light to the darker area on the opposite page for what I want to add next.

Quite early on in the piece, I realised that there's a lot of space to fill on the left, and I decided that adding Rachel Kentish's wish feathers lesson would be a magical way to finish my spread. I want my background to be more unified = a glaze. My go-to is to use Goldens Hi Flow transparent paint with some extra glazing medium added. 

First I put in the feather shapes using a stencil and my watercolour ground. Then I added the glaze across the remaining background. 

You can now see why I added those white dots - wish I'd done more of that but I can add some extra elements on top if I feel they are needed at the end. I don't mind that the bird is obviously collaged but I like that the glaze helps to soften the white edges. Little bit nervous about using the watercolours to create the feathers, but Rachel's teaching is so good that I adored every step.
Layer 1 wet with salt sprinkles

Layer 1 dry

Layer 2

Layer 3 = feathers complete ♥

And then it was time for just a few more finishing touches across the page - gold dots help unite the page and disguise some of the background text a bit more. 

Find out more about the collaborative year-long class Book of Days 2020 and join us HERE. THIS LINK will take you to all the work I've ever done inspired by Book of Days through the years (I began when I won 6 months of this class in 2016)