Friday, July 27, 2012

Poppy Play for Art Journal Everyday

  It's Friday already and time to share the spread I did in the paper journal I use to brush off, spray off or stencil off any extra mediums I have from a project I was working on. Ahhh, this one I remember well. I had pretty much brown acrylic paint left on my palette from another project and tho I don't particularly like dark colors I didn't want to waste the paint. I opened to a spread that already had some bright color on it so I thought OK if I brush a border all around it it won't be so bad....WRONG!

  Here's what  the ugly spread looked like:



  Funny how when life happens and I get stressed I just want to splatter and play with abandon...the best therapy one can have, besides some really special friends :) Anyhow, I opened to these pages, grabbed at a bunch of acrylics and gesso and transformed it to this:



 
   I used a handful of Golden's acrylics -Transparent Pyrole Orange, Quinacridone Crimson, Cerulean Blue Chromium and Turquois(Pthalo), along with white gesso. Several drops of each color were randomly applied over the pages along with drops of gesso. I simply used my fingers to spread it all around. Cleaned off my messy hands to take the pic and allowed this to dry a few min.

  When visiting Dina Wakely's blog not long ago she posted a  really wonderful series of brightly collaged and painted pages from a book she made. Besides all the fun colors, she used a bunch of really fab quotes/ sayings that I knew I had to use as  great jump starts for a journal page. You can see her pages beginning here ; just scroll further down to see the others. I had a page of them already typed and printed so I just grabbed one to use- "Let us lay in the sun and count every beautiful thing we can see." All I could think of was the beauty of my favorite flower-the red oriental poppies, especially as I was organizing some photos and had just come across this one which I took of our neighbors flowers in bloom in the Spring.


  
   So I threw caution to the wind, got out some green acrylic paint, Golden Pyrrole Red, watercolor crayons and oil pastels and hoped my attempt at some loose finger painting  would result in somewhat  recognizable poppies.

   Here is a close up of one of the poppies:



   First I put some dots of green acrylic paint along the bottom edges of the pages, spritzed with some water, then held the book up to allow the green to drip from the bottom a bit. I used some of those drips to be the stems of my flowers. I used a stencil and yellow acrylic paint at the top left of the spread to make the "sun". I finger painted white gesso circles where I wanted the flowers, let dry, then finger painted over it with the red acrylic. I watered down some of the red and made some splatters over the pages. Black oil pastel was used for the flower centers. You can see the softness and dimension you get when just using your fingers. Along the bottom I added a combination of green watercolor crayons and oil pastels to form leaves and grass and deepen the stem drips a bit.
The quote was added and here is the end result:



    Sorry, the photo isn't as sharp as I would have liked. I may do a bit more with it yet but for now I am so happy those hideous brown pages are gone!
I'm linking this up to Julie Balzer's Art Journal Everyday. Although I don't necessarily link up every week it's a really great way to take the time to play and share the inspiration.

  Speaking of inspiration, you simply must visit my friend Frieda Oxenham's blog!! Besides being an international award winning quilter (her quilts and designs absolutely blow me away!!) and mixed media artist, Frieda takes without a doubt THE most gorgeous photographs of flowers and of museums, cemeteries and the like in her native Scotland. It's a place definitely on my bucket list.

  Til next time...wishing you warmth and sunshine!

    "Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order." Virginia Woolfe

 

9 comments:

  1. Oooh these are gorgeous spread, Linda!. With some more paint colors you really transformed them into heavenly poppy fields!. LOVE the 'fuzzy' look around the poppies and the grass blades & stems. Beautiful piece!. Hugs.

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  2. Wonderful the changes of your pages. The endresult is marvelous. Love the poppiefield.
    Lovely greet and have a nice weekend
    Marja

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  3. Beautiful paintings with beautiful colors, beautiful flowers.

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  4. Thanks SO much for those wonderful words about my blog, Linda. They truly moved me. And as I wrote there yesterday sharing my art and meeting up with fellow artists like you is for me one of the biggest advantages the internet has to offer.
    I love poppies and you've done them proud in this spread! I'm looking at Julie's 30 day journaling class videos but haven't been able to getting around to doing it every day!

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  5. A great page and so beautiful flowers! Monika

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  6. Linda, what an amazing and wonderful "creative recovery". I love what you did and your attitude about it! I think the gesso and other paints over the background you didn't like, looks so wonderfully layered. Perfect! I think you told me you wanted to be a little more "free" in your painting and journaling. You are definitely succeeding and I know you are having fun!!!!!!!!

    Of course, you know I feel the same about Frieda and her art and photos as you do!
    xoxox

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  7. Wonderful transformation of the page Linda.Love the depth and richness of the poppies.Thank you for sharing the page and your joy in free creative play:)I too love using my fingers to paint.
    Susan

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  8. The idea of a brush off journal is so great!!
    I don't do brown either - maybe because my entire school uniform was brown!
    After building up the layers your finished pages are amazing.
    Those poppies are totally reminiscent of the fields I saw in France - they're magical!!!
    I so appreciate your lovely message - thank you. It's wonderful to know I've got friends who care.
    Shane x

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Thank you so much for your comments; it's a pleasure to connect with you!