Artful Academy journal – October

Series: Artful Academy 2020 journal #11

Just as I got all caught up with the free art journalling challenge from Artful Academy, the rest of the year’s lessons were cancelled. 2020 messed with everyone’s plans and the last three months’ prompts were another small thing that fell by the wayside.

After a brief moment of disappointment — I had after all actually managed to get three-quarters of the way through this project without abandoning it — I determined to come up with some prompts and techniques to finish off the year and have a completed journal to show for it. Life events and the need to get Christmas stuff sorted conspired to stop me from actually making the journal pages in the relevant months, but they will be finished.

The prompt word I chose for October (after spending way too long staring at a selection of art journalling prompt lists) was “hands” — now, I’m sure that when I chose that word it sparked some idea in my brain, but whatever it was, I failed to make a note of it at the time, so I went for a literal representation, drawing around my left hand (I am left-handed).

Picking the main technique for this one was done for me after seeing Judith’s art journal page at Round and Round She Goes and watching the linked Abstract Explorations video.

While I was thinking about how to put this page together, I decided to add another technique into the mix: ink resist. This would have been more successfully executed if I had remembered to gesso the page first; however, given that I was using it to create the background layer, I am happy that I didn’t end up with a bright white hand on it.

I kept thinking about how I wanted to use the brighter coloured panel. A grid of squares would obscure the hand too much and, although I like circles as a motif, I wasn’t feeling inspired by them. Then, looking at the blue and purple of the panel, I was reminded of a lava lamp and decided to create a flow of organic blobs over the page instead.

Creating the matching collage page went quite quickly as I already had a selection of neutral papers in my stash, along with a couple of pink and blue ones.