Hope: Art Journal Page

I did it! I got into working in my new handmade (by Parkside Harmony) art journal! Success! The paper quality is most excellent. No wrinkling or buckling. The pages are Stonehenge heavy weight paper - some of my all-time favorite paper! It is good for just about any medium.

Most of yesterday was spent creating this page. I didn’t really plan much where the different papers were going to go. I just went with what I picked up at the time. I used matte gel medium to glue the paper down and went over it to seal it. I like to go back and fill in the blank areas with paint. The gel medium makes for a nice painting surface. It is also good for stamping on with paint or ink. Adds a lot of dimension.

Click on images to see in my flickr stream.

The book pages measure 8” x 8” so this spread is 8” x 16”. I liked working across the fold of the binding. I have been working in spiral bound books and it’s harder to do that in those.

I thought the theme of “Hope” would be a good way to start my 2010 art journal. My plan is to complete the whole book by the end of the year. Ideally, I would like to then exhibit the book somewhere. But first things first… make more pages!

I took a lot of photos of the page so I can print out artist trading card sized images and use them for “instant” backgrounds. Why not make all this work go a long way? I multi-task… so should my art!