Friendship Journal

I took part in a travelling friendship journal for a yahoo group I am in Blissfully Art Journaling. These are the three spreads I made for it. One was to be about me and the other two something about friendship.

The picture I painted was with gouache. The paint lifts very easily when it gets wet so I was going to spray it with fixative. I tried the fixative first on a different gouache page and it worked fine except the spray wouldn't quit spraying until the can was empty. So for this tea time painting I was goint to use some UV acrylic finishing spray from Krylon that I had. Hmmm, three big blobs hit my page before I could stop them. This time I got no spray; the stuff just bubbled out of the can till it was empty. I don't know if my cans were too old, too cold (the house was between 66 and 68 degrees) or what but I even went and found my spray bottle of hairspray I've had for a few years but couldn't get it to do anything but shoot a heave stream rather than a fine mist. So, the page is going to go as is, with three horrid blobs on it. Thank goodness they didn't blur the paint under them.

Do any of you ever seal a gouache or watercolor page in your journal? I have only done it as a trial effort and on a painted cover to a journal. I figure they don't usually get wet but when the journal is going to someone I don't know, I just wanted to be safe.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers. It's a quiet day for me with my husband still recovering from surgery. I spent the morning drawing this sketch, then baking a Burnt Sugar Cake which I will have to eat all by myself since my husband doesn't like it and there is no one else around. Aw, poor me, lol. Then I went back to my sketch and added gouache. Now, what to have for dinner is the question. It seems today is mostly art and food for me! My son called to say happy mother's day and I am waiting for my daughter to call later. Life is pretty good.

Tucson VA Hospital

My husband is having surgery soon at the Tucson VA hospital so we had to go down for some pre-ops which ended up including a stay overnight for a cardio-catheterization. I took the opportunity to do a couple of sketches from his 3rd floor room window. It is a beautiful old place and they are keeping it up quite well (the room wasn't so great and the food was inedible but the hospital is lovely).

One sketch is on watercolor paper using watercolor and the other is on some Canson MiTientes brown paper so I used gouache on that one.

Fake Journal - Page Five

Today's fake thing is my plastic flower pot I got from Wal-Mart this year. It looks like ceramic but it isn't. I went for it because of the price and the hope that I could move it if necessary once it was full of dirt.

Hopefully my tomato plant will take hold. The first one didn't as the wind bent it in half. I'm going to get a tomato cage for this next time I go to town. I don't think they are fake yet but they have reduced the number of rings to 3 and I seem to remember 4 years ago.

This is ink and gouache. I like how the gouache covers the background mostly. I'm not using it so thick as to hide all the ink or background but it's not totally transparent either. If you haven't tried the gouache I would recommend it for your tool arsenal.

Fake Journal - Page Four

I have my fourth page done for my fake journal. This page has my fake flowers on it. I made french beaded flowers and put them in clay I had stuffed into this watering can. Then I sprinkled a little dirt over the clay to hide it. I love these bright flowers but of course, there is no real substitute for real ones.

I painted the watering can after a question was asked in the Oils class I am taking with Nel . What color do you paint a metal thimble was the (paraphrased) question. Nel said to paint it the colors reflecting off of it as the metal doesn't have it's own color exactly. Well tonight I needed to paint a metal watering can so I played by using blue, teal, red, orange, yellow and purple in this painting. Didn't it work great? Thanks Nel.

Well I have a third page done for the idea of fake. What do you think? Is the milk we drink today real? I used Pitt pen and gouache to do this page.

I am working on my latest class which is a virtual trip to England with Laure Ferlita. I'll post about that as soon as I get some paint on my page. Stay tuned.