Today we were inspired by Tori Weyers, and I loved her technique so was excited to try it. She combines organic pen and pencil marks with acrylic paint and inks. I used a Pitt Big Brush pen, pencil, Golden fluid acrylics and napthol red ink by Liquitex. I’m pleased with how it turned out, although initially one of the shapes in the drawing reminded me of a penis, which was quite off-putting!
Today’s video was with the fabulous Birgit Koopsen, whose work I love. I used her techniques to collage and paint the front cover of my Moleskin diary. I started with gelli printed tissue, then stencilled on the tissue with Tim Holtz and StencilGirl stencils, and stamped with a variety of older rubber stamps. I added a coat of gesso to the cover, then tore the tissue into pieces and adhered with gloss polymer. Once it was dry I used black and white Dina Wakley paint and my favourite StencilGirl stencils.
This was a fun project and I’m happy with the end result.
Today’s video with Andrea Gomoll was about using watercolours in mixed media. I used pan watercolours and Neocolour crayons, with light modelling paste underneath and copper paint stencilled on top.
Day 7 featured artist Jodi Ohl, whose work I have admired for a long time. Exciting! The challenge was to work in her style, using Tim Holtz Distress Crayons. Challenge accepted…
I applied two layers of gesso to my page to give it extra strength because I knew I’d be using quite a bit of water and pushing the crayons around. I normally love Tim Holtz products but find the Distress Crayons, which I’ve had a while, a bit difficult to use. They don’t move as easily as I want and it’s hard to put anything on top of them as they’re quite waxy. I used Aquarelle pencils for the initial linework and then a felt-tip calligraphy pen for the final lines as it worked ok over the waxy surface.
My initial page was based on a photo of Faith. I got partway into it before realising it wouldn’t work because Jodi’s style needs a definite outline so I scrapped it and started afresh. I’m okay with this as a finished art journal page; it’s enough like Jodi’s to please me but has my take on it too.
Today’s artist was Jimmy Leslie, who talked about using mediums such as grit mediums and gloss medium in more structural ways including through stencils. I had a bunch of ideas for using mediums I already have but didn’t think about the layout as a whole. The result is an ugly, but useful, page that reminds of his tips and techniques!
The big red flowers have Golden Fine Garnet medium under them, used through a stencil. The green heavy body acrylic in the background was thinned down with Golden gloss polymer, which I also used as a glue. The red heart and the yellow circle in the centre of the collaged circle on the left are gel skins. The collages elements were a laser photocopy of some of my work which I coated with clear gesso so I could use a pen to add details.
Cath Sheard Art 