Cath Sheard Art

Tag: art journaling

  • CJS17 day 10

    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.

    10

  • CJS17 day 8

    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.

    9-jan

  • CJS17 day 7

    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.

    8-jan-jodi-ohl 

  • CJS17 day 6

    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.

    6-jan-jimmy-leslie

  • CJS17 day 2

    Day two was about being inspired by the work of Mystele Kirkeeng. She mixes outsider art with folk art and it’s amazing! Her work uses lots of layers, collage, bright colours and mark making, and she often works over the top of an existing work.

    In the same spirit, I worked over the top of a page I’d never finished and added lots of collage elements before doing the self-portrait in outsider-ish colours and adding symbols I love, such as the feather and flowers. I also painted the negative spaces in blocks of colour, something I don’t normally do, and love the effect. Although the self-portrait is pretty ho hum, this work feels like a real step forward because I love the way the background turned out.

    BTW the word ‘shrinking’ and the text to the left of my body relate to my weight loss of around 37kg so far. Now that I am not so sick I am starting to feel the positive impacts of the weight loss (finally!).

    day-2-mystele