DLP Week 23 Illustrative Art Journaling

Hello fellow art journalers! This post features my latest project for The Documented Life Project 2015 - The Journal. It's hosted by the lovely ladies HERE! 

This is my 14th challenge completed, out of 29 prompts already LIVE. I am not stressing that I haven't completed all the challenges. I want to keep this fun and stress-free, and for me, that means not worrying about staying caught up. :)

I have loved nature and travel illustrative journaling for a very long time! It all started when I read Charlotte Mason's books of a home educating philosophy, particularly of studying nature through nature study and art journaling. (See links towards the end of this post where I share my favorite books about nature journaling. )I've been smitten ever since! So when I read the June 6th DLP Art Journaling prompt, Illustrative Journaling, I was excited! I thought about it week after week, but never actually took the time and courage to work on it. Illustrative journaling is not something that comes easily to me. I struggle with "seeing" in order to draw something. Definitely a wanna-be! One of these years when I have the creative energy, I will really dig in and learn and practice this type of art more.

But, I did do a little bit this past weekend. It's nothing spectacular, but I made an effort, and that counts!! 

The first step for me was to pick two types of leaves near my art table, I mean picnic table, since I'm camping and everything...I traced the shape, then roughly drew in some details, not worrying too much about trying to make it look realistic. Next, I used Inktense pencils and a waterbrush filled with water and Dylusions inks to color my rough sketches. While I was painting, the boys came back from fishing, and lo, my oldest son's first cast into the water brought up a fish! I documented it there in the bottom right corner while he was telling us his tale. That poor fish doesn't really look at all like the Northern Pike, but I think it does resemble a fish, right? Please say yes? LOL

Not long after, my youngest boy came to me with a beautiful feather, so I drew that too. :) I also added in little details about the food we ate, and also some conversation around me. We camped with friends. It was a very simple, slow, relaxing weekend! Our favourite way to vacation.

I finished my whole project up by tearing my painting out of the mixed media sketch book and glueing it into my Dylusions journal. I had prepped the two pages weeks ago, when I was playing with my new Dylusions paints and various stencils.

DONE!!

During our camping weekend, I wandered the beautiful campground and river banks while my hubby and boys swam or fished in the river. My senses soar in nature like this! Lovely trails to the river, bordered by the sweet buffalo bean wild flowers and sweet clover.

Little discoveries here and there.

Levi, Liam and I watched a video earlier in the week about an adventurer building a wattle and daub house in the bush, using absolutely no ready-made tools, and one of the things he did was make a fire by rubbing a stick a certain way. Levi tried it, but did not meet with success. It's harder than it looks!

We camped really close to home, and we had promised to do our neighbor's chores while they were away, so I drove home every morning and evening to tend to their animals. On the way back one evening, I saw this beautiful rainbow. God's glory all around us!!

My fave books about illustrative and nature journaling:

Keeping a Nature Journal: Discover a New Way of Seeing the World Around You by Claire Walker Leslie
Handbook Of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock

Another great resource I haven't pursued very much, but I know will be a gold mine:
 Danny Gregory.

I have one of his books that I've started to read. Need to finish it! Art Before Breakfast

I get lots of inspiration from the pins on my Nature Study board on Pinterest HERE.

Thanks for visiting my blog! Have a great creative week!

Anna

♥♥♥

Daisies Afoot in my DLP Art Journal

June theme for the Documented Life Project is Travel Journaling.

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 ♥♥