August Journal Is Under Construction

IT DOESN'T ALWAYS HAPPEN that I can be true to my word and keep to my agenda. More often than not something comes up to rearrange "agendas." This week things have been moving pretty smoothly (in that direction, anyway).
Last night I started painting this thick annual report with house paint primer. By the way, I am not endorsing this company. It just happened to come in the mail. The pages are similar to Kleenex. Cheaper to mail a phone book type document that way! We have since gone to paperless reports.
So here we begin. I used one of those sponge "brushes" and it was pretty handy. In order to begin reducing some of my collage collections, I took a brown paper bag full of inspirational pieces and just started pasting them in using the house primer. This is one of my favorite artists, Maira Kalman, and I really liked her New Yorker cover painting, so of course I had held onto it. Trimmed out and pasted down, I like the shadowy "self" behind the woman in front.
The words "Divine Companions" in the newspaper story about pets caught my eye too. With the "shadow woman," or maybe "soul" of the person Kalman painted, the phrase felt right. Sometimes - and I'll bet others will agree - the elements just seem to fall together and often they're right in front of your eyes.
So I'm on my way with this August journal. While I was waiting for the pages to dry a bit, I used the house primer to paint over the cover of another book and some pages in another. I liked the primer. It dries fairly quickly and isn't sticky. Makes a nice base for other things too.
When the Kalman page was dry enough I went on - and I'm painting together several pages at a time to save time and make the pages thicker. I don't want to paint every page in this thousand page document!!
So first I found the quote in the paper bag of "stuff" and then I found the ballet picture. The headline was with the dancers. Then this gent caught my eye. I don't know that he was really terrible. You can use your own imagination to interpret what the "seven minutes of magic" are. : ) A dance? A date? A ... .
Separating the pages with waxed paper was a good idea. It allows you to work on several at a time so long as they are not terribly wet. I used some gloss gel to glue down the pictures too and used a brayer which picked up a lot of primer. The brayer is now coated with the stuff and has a great texture. It will never be totally smooth again, but it does get the bubbles out of the glued down elements.
This last page was just a bunch of tags I made and found at the bottom of the bag I was trying to get to the bottom of. I think I got the window from Judy Wise and the mosaic came from a magazine ad on traveling to Turkey.
After all this gluing and painting, I was glad to have dinner and a movie ("Coco - Before Chanel"). Time to relax and peel all the gloss gel and primer off my hands!
More tonight, if I don't have to water the plants or make dinner or do anything else but have fun - femminismo
p.s. "Coco - Before Chanel" is very slow. Audrey Tatou is lovely and the straw purse she carries is to die for, but I wouldn't recommend it for an engrossing portrait of the artist.
p.p.s. Happy birthday to Peter, my little baby boy!

Can't leave the paint alone.

THIS MONTH I am doing a much smaller book - one of the books I made during the February book binding classes I took each Friday. Since the pages don't allow much room to do more than a small sketch or journaling, I've been missing pushing paint around.
Then I remembered I had never finished the cover on my August book, which is huge. I had visited Dawn Sellers' blog (that was on Monday) and she was doing cool things with glazing and layering matte gel and paint - and I have to admit I didn't read through all her instructions. I was just so excited I jumped up and went to my art table, took the large book, inserted newspaper to protect the pages and started dumping on thick matte gel and wiping it all over the paper with an old debit card. Then I added a little yellow paint, since August suggests yellow to me. (In Oregon, that's the month when summer really begins.)
I embedded a large tag, with a string hanging from it, and painted over it. Then I laid down a leaf skeleton from the tulip tree and painted over that (carefully) and ended up adding a piece of crumpled tin foil, too.



I stamped the cover with a star-shaped rubber stamp, did some writing ... just about everything but the kitchen sink.
The front cover took overnight to dry and last night, Tuesday, I painted the back cover. It was fun to get the gel and paint on thick and then drag a tool through it to make a pattern. I figure I can always put more goop on the outside over it if I don't like it. Perhaps I'll even check out Dawn's instructions and see if there's something even more interesting I can do.
I'm a slight bit concerned about reinforcing the spine of my "book" also, after the things I learned in the book binding class.
This August journal/art book is so large (12" x 15 1/2") because it's made from folded watercolor paper. Looking back a few months, it's amazing to see what I did and wonder if that was really me! I remember the enthusiasm I had experimenting with all sorts of new paints and techniques - cutting up fashion magazines and putting men's heads on women's bodies, and painting with melted wax. I really made some big messes.
Well, I'd better leave those excuses behind and try to get a little more radical with what I attempt inside the house, too.
It's getting late. Better be toddling off to bed soon. Cheers! - femminismo

Ever Since ...

Ever since Judy Wise helped me mend a small ripped section of a journal page with a tiny bit of paper towel soaked in paint and matte gel medium, I have wanted to try this.
Tonight, after cleaning up after dinner (I've cooked two meals this week; don't I feel housewifey?), I decided to make some paper towel "paper" for my art journal.

I took a paper towel square - one you can keep a big square or tear in half for two small ones, since they're perforated that way - and I dampened them good and then squeezed them out pretty well. I laid these on a thin plastic mat I usually chop vegetables on.

I squeezed acrylic paint on the towels - white, gold, ochre - and added globs of matte gel medium. I folded the towels over, one on top of the other and used my brayer to blend the colors between the sheets.
Then I opened them, checked the color and added a little purple and red. Closed them and blended the paint with the brayer, and opened them again and sprinkled luminiere powder and glitter.
Next I tore the sheets in half on the perforation and laid them on waxed paper. I let them rest for a minute while I tried to find a handy electrical outlet in my 1960s kitchen (good luck!) for the hair dryer, which I set on low. I gently dried the paper towels for just about three minutes, mainly on the corners.
On the drier corners I pinched with slightly damp fingers and eventually the paper towel began to stick to my fingers and pull apart so I could gently peel it into two layers. I pulled the one layer off and put it in my journal. The rest went on pieces of waxed paper. (Don't leave them there too long.) Now I have four pieces of "paper."
With the matte gel medium added the glitter will stick and the paper will be fairly durable. I can paint over it again with more gel medium and stamp it, write on it and basically have the best time!
Here's my page (below, left) before sticking down the damp paper towel and here it is after (below, right). It may not look extraordinary right now, but just you wait!
Sorry my photos are so large. And, I just want you to know, my purse and I were happily reunited (see yesterday's blog entry) and I have the use of my camera again! Life is good. - femminismo