Playing with Multi Media

I pulled out an old book of mine on creating artists journals in multi media and just had fun for a whole afternoon reading and paging through the wonderful ideas.

(The nice thing about being old is you forget what you have read and so you get to re-discover it all over again! Hahaha).

The author is Lynne Perrella.

I got to thinking about designing a journal cover on some sort of fabric (WAY WAY out of the box for me.)

I had some left over watercolor canvas from a previous project and so I designed a journal cover for my daughter, Julie (who likes to keep journals).

It is planned for a 9 x 9 inch journal but I haven't actually cut the canvas to that size yet. I had some fun with transferring a photo image to the canvas which came out sort of in "ghostly" way but interesting with the texture. It is a photo of Julie and of me and I am really ghostly in the background and she is recognizable. I like the idea that I may be some influence in her life but am in the background.

I coated the canvas lightly with acrylic polymer medium and then lay a inkjet black and white face down on it and using a credit card I firmly drew the card over the back of the inkjet several time and then peeled it up carefully. Black and white seems to work better . I sprayed the image lightly with acrylic varnish and let dry.

Then I just played around with ribbon, fluid acrylic, watercolor, ink, stamps etc and thinking of her and the things she loves like nature, plants, labyrinths, drawing, etc.

I plan to coat everything with the polymer medium at the end for durability. I am thinking that at a later date, I will use a spray-on glue to attach it to the front of the journal and then lay it under some heavy books overnight.

Florida Sketches

We have been highly "on the go" for the last week while my step daughter has been down here in Florida on a visit from Lodi, WI. On Monday of this week I did two little sketches.

The first one is of Racing's North Turn which is a fun bar/restaurant RIGHT on Daytona Beach. We visited and had cocktails there on the chairs facing the water and took time to go down and sit on the beach awhile (where I did the sketch). The salt air smelled so good. It was nice to say hi to the Atlantic Ocean again.

This cozy building is at DeLeon Springs State Park where you can put your feet into the "Fountain of Youth" and then go inside and make your own pancakes! There was a rather long wait to get in and so I set up a chair and did a little sketch.

Outside they were renting tubes (see 3 by the right side) so you could swim in the 30 foot deep pool made by damming up the spring...clear as a bell but only 72 degrees (uh oh). It costs $6 for a carful to get into the park and they have paddle boats to go out on the St. John's River and also a guided tour boat (pontoon). This is just about half an hour south of Daytona Beach. It's a great place to visit!

Ginny with Elizabeth Nelson

It has long been a dream to take Elizabeth's paper painting workshop.

This was taken Sunday March 11 on the final day of the 3 day workshop.

What a treat to get to work with her for 3 days. I highly recommend her workshops!

Paper Painting Workshop with Elizabeth Nelson

You have seen this little toucan before in Yupo paper. (I have become quite fond of him!). This time he is on 11 x 14 wrapped canvas with an acrylic painted background. He himself is made of hand-acrylic painted torn papers. When I think he is done, he'll be varnished.

This was my day one assignment (apples).

Again the background is acrylic (splattered) although this time on canvas board (11 x 14). If you could look closer you could see we use music paper, hand written notes, newspapers, rice papers, etc.

Most of Day one was spent preparing these papers! Printing, stamping, splattering, and using layer upon layer of analogous colors.

The subject is painted first and then the papers added afterwards.

This is one of Elizabeth's paintings...part of a show called The Ark which will showcase 50 of her paintings in April.

(More on that later.)

Her paintings are on wood and are about 3 x 4' .

Day 3 is on Sunday although I only stay for the morning as the Hawthorne Park Art show will be tomorrow afternoon.

If you are in the Leesburg area be sure to drop in. I'll have 5 pieces in the show...1-4. Hawthorne Park is 3 miles south of Leesburg. We had advertising in the Orlando Sentinel today.