New online course

I have started doing an online course run by Jane Davenport. It is art journaling using supplies we already have. As I am a bit of a collector of arty stuff I have lots of things to use.  The first week was all about gesso. I cut a full sheet of watercolour paper into 6 pieces to make my journal. I stitched it together and will make a cover for it later on.

 The first spread has various items added to the page for texture and gesso applied on top. I then heated the gesso while it was still wet to makes bubbles for more texture.

 When it was dry I sprayed the pages with glimmer mist so the paint would settle into the grooves made by the texture. I liked the way in turned out so left it with just those two colours.

 

Next I used a stencil to add flowering tree branches to the top of the pages. I used distress inks to do this because I wanted to have these flowers fade a little into the background. Unfortunately when they had dried the colour was absorbed quite a bit by the gesso (as you can see below) so I ended up outlining the flowers with pencil. 

 

I painted the birds with Golden fluid acrylics but they were a little too shiny when they dried so I probably won't use them again in a journal unless I want a glossy page.  I wrote the quote using a Pitt pen that easily worked on top of the texture.

 

The finished pages have a lot more detail added with markers because pencils didn't really work over the Golden paints.   I also added a little more of a border. I am looking forward to the rest of the course where we will learn how to do faces. To be fair to Jane (the amazing artist running the course) I will only show the finished pages from now on.