Artful Academy journal – August

Series: Artful Academy 2020 journal #9

Unlike all the previous months which had a single prompt word, August’s tutor used the theme of “recycle” but also used “grateful” as a separate prompt word. I decided to keep it simple and stick with just “recycle”.

I went literal with the design, basing it off the Recycle Now logo, and I did include some recycled elements in it.

The distressed background — I love this effect — was simply made by lightly brayering layers of quinacridone magenta, quinacridone nickel azo gold, and white, going back and forth between the colours until I was happy with the result.

Although you can’t really tell in the photos, the green elements were cut from a piece that I collaged with scraps of paper and tissue that were destined for (and some rescued from) the bin. That was loosely painted over with a mix of green paints — pthalo green (blue shade) and green gold — and splattered with black. After I cut the shapes out, I decided that I wanted some more texture on the hearts so I ran them through my Big Shot in an embossing folder and highlighted the texture with some Indian Pink Art Alchemy wax. I went round all the edges with black ink.

Lettering is not my strong point so, when I made myself a template for the recycle logo on the Mac, I added the text on it so I would have a guide when it came to positioning the hand lettering.

The final element is the green metal hearts. Those were cut from a Nespresso Vertuo coffee pod. I have a bag of different coloured pods; I knew they’d come in useful some time!