Saturday, September 5, 2009

Playing with Paint

This weekend's assignment is a journal for myself. While I have been making journals for other people, this weekend I will be dedicating to myself. One of the difficult aspects of art journaling (other than not being an artist) is that I get overwhelmed by the blank page. When I write, I never have difficulty getting started because I can just delete what I don't want and start again. With art, it is different for me. If I mess something up, I usually don't know how to fix it.

Sooooo, this journal will be dedicated to simply playing. No preconceived ideas of what I want on the page. I am allowing myself to play--artistically. If the page doesn't work out, then I will just move on to another page(s).

To overcome the daunting task of starting, I am coloring some pages before I bind them. I am taking watercolor paper, covering them with Gesso, and doing background washes. I am setting them to dry so that they will dry flat. I am using all sorts of coloring materials just to play--acrylics, Gesso, oil crayons, chalks, crayons, watercolor crayons, colored pencils, ink pads, etc. Anything to put a layer of color on a white page.

Once these have dried, I will fold them into signatures and sew them into a concertina which will be my text block. I will then case them in. I will share the process with you along the way.

2 comments:

fingerstothebone said...

Hey, I'm doing the same thing, only on panels rather than in a book form! I have to say that my philosophy is that you can always get there from here. No matter what the page looks like, you can always 'fix it' and get it right again. Good luck w/ your project!

Dr. Russ said...

Thanks for the well wishes. You were one of the two artists that inspired me to do this project. There is a certain level of liberation when you concentrate on the process and not on the end result.