Art Journal Dream online retreat

For the next 3 days I am participating in Laly Mille online retreat - Art Journal Dream. At the end will be a completed double art journal page. Here is my Day 1 layers - more to be added in the coming days.

Here is my process - I hope you get a sense of what the retreat is all from this starting point.

I first selected the first 2 pages in my art journal - I usually move all around the place. I chose it because it had marks from previous entries down the centre line.  Laly's usually encourages writing for first layer - she uses marker pen I was not so brave I used pencil.  I am seriously thinking about travel to USA next year and so I wrote down some of my thoughts about this.  Don't worry they are covered up eventually.  In past workshops I have been reluctant to write and did move to putting a few words down but today more words than I have incorporated.

The next layer was to take colouring medium of choice and create deeper colour at bottom of pages. I went with crayons first in blues/pinks - I did not like the result once water had been applied, so I went child-like and when dry used black and grown Gelato crayons and scribbled over it again.  I used a baby wipe this time to spread the crayons.

Next layers - you can see the scribble now appearing.  Using various acrylic paints from my stash - a light blue, magenta and pearl painted over the entire 2 pages and allowed it to dry. The colour was too bright, so I applied gesso to lighten the overall result.

The final layer for Day 1workshop was to create a landscape at bottom and some texture on the top using scraps, I used scrapbook paper, music paper, tissue papers, doily and some tag bags.  Tea bags - yes after making my breakfast cup of tea and save the tea bags, allow them to dry completely and then when dry remove the tea and open up the tea bag - you get so many beautiful colours and marks just right for using. On the landscape portion when it was dry I did use a green Gelato to highlight the hills and then using baby wipes to spread the colour downwards to tie the colours all in together.  I added gold metallic dots (Liquidtex) ready for layers we will be adding in Workshop 2 tomorrow.

I really enjoyed the process today.

Margaret

This quote by Beatrix Potter is one of Laly's favourites - as you just never know where your art journal creation will take you as soon as you put down the first layer, piece of paper, or paint.