June 20 art prompt is hometown inspiration,
and the journaling prompt is: There is no place like home.
I instantly thought of all the wandering and discovering I and the kids do around home. We have wild nature as our backyard. This year we have lots of daisies growing everywhere and I love taking photos of them!
My youngest brought me some of the beauties, and they graced my table for a week. I finally got up the nerve to do a little 5 minute sketch. I was quite pleased how it turned out! So next, I got up the courage to color it in with watercolors! I painted it on Japanese Tomoe River paper, which is a strong but very thin, somewhat translucent paper. It has a very similar texture of good quality bible pages. The use of water on the page created an interesting warp, which I think lends itself to the imperfectionist style I am going for. :) Took some manipulating of the paint and water on the page to get it right. Well, I know there's lots of improvements I could make to this, but it's my very FIRST watercoloring piece from a sketch, so I'm happy! A for effort, right? ;)
See this pattern in the center of the daisy? It's a beautiful pattern that is found in many aspects of nature, like in the honeycomb, the pine cone, snail shells, and more. Based on these patterns, the Fabonicci sequence was discovered by classical mathemeticans. I'm not explaining it well at all. I suggest googling it for a clearer idea, if you're interested. They came up with an algorithm for use in many practical ways. It's fascinating to me! Math IS art! I talked about this to my daughter and niece, so that's where the art journal page comes in! I had posted this on my Instagram feed, and chose to copy my words to my page, documenting my "traveling".
I sewed messily around my watercolor painting, and glued it to my page. I added a square of bright yellow paint through a gorgeous stencil above it. Now it sat for a few days, too busy to work on it, or no ideas coming forth of what to do next to make it look cohesive.
A few days later, it all came together.
A doily at the bottom, cut in half, on a yellow paint and ink background.
I used a fountain pen for the border, which has water-soluable ink in it. I also added Dylusions spray in a water brush, spritzing it several times, and wiping away, repeat, repeat, until I had the look I wanted for the background. The letters are foam stamps, an old set by Magnetic Poetry, from back in the day when I was an avid scrapbooker. It is still one of my very favorite alphabet stamp sets! :)
Before adding anything to the page, I gessoed it first. See the corner? It's thick with gesso and water and paint layers. Once dry, I scratched with an exacto knife, adding more texture to the piece. I spritzed water over Dylusions ink spots by the letters as well, to get a more watercolor-y effect. I also doodled with a white Signo Uniball gel pen over the letters, so that they weren't quite so stark and for added dimension.
And here it is again, the whole page.
I had a great time doing this! I want to thank the Art 5 ladies for all that they do, inspiring us with great challenges, and it's all free.
Thanks for stopping by!
Blessings, and ART ON! :)
♥♥ Anna ♥♥
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