Playing with Resists

  

I love experimenting in my art journals, playing with intention and also those happy little accidents that just happen. I had cleaned off a stamp in my journal here that I had been using with white acrylic paint, some time later I wanted to test out the new colours I got in distress ink pads and the 2 mediums worked beautifully together and got me thinking about different ways to use this resist from the white paint and what else could I use to highlight it?

I did some stencilling with white acrylic and experimented with dylusions sprays, I love this resist but the bleed through was pretty heavy and that was in a dylusions journal so was a bit disappointing. 

 

This one was white gesso through a stencil and I used a paint brush with alcohol inks , the colours are really vivid and I loved the interactivity between the colours and the gesso.

This one is on canvas and I have white acrylic resists and also modeling paste to add layers and depth.

"Nature Study" A travelling Art Journal

 One of the things I really love about the modern internet connected world is forming communities online that span great distances and finding friends with similar interests and outlooks all over the world.

One way I love to join in with my online tribe is to share in travelling art journals and there is nothing like the thrill of finding a package like this covered in foreign stamps waiting in your mail box-

 So much fun opening it up and discovering all of the grace and beauty snuggled in the pages.

Then adding your own work.

This journal swap was put together by the amazing Palma Rea on Milliande's online art community for women.

I had 2 super talented partners and we each sent our journals around a few times

This and other pages here are by the most gorgeous Helen Lindton

And this one is a sample from lovely Karen Musgrave

you can see more of her gorgeous work at Connections by Karen 

Working with Little People

I just love sharing my passion with kids.

I love sending them off with something special, something unique, something they have created.

I love their joy and smiles.

I love their freedom and abandon 

I love their trust and openness 

and I love it extra when they bring their mum who is an incredibly talented photographer. Thank you so much  for these gorgeous images Toni Hutchison 

Gratitude

So Thankful
 for all the blessings in my life
Things have been really busy and challenging here lately,
for me and for my friends,
 there has been a swelling of overwhelm
and also of incredible resilience and positivity.

I had a dear friend have a horse accident and broke her back, luckily she is OK, she is in a brace for a couple of months and she is on light duties but she is doing well, she is such an amazing and inspiring positive person and she will be fine- there is so much to be grateful there. Another friend has had ongoing legal battles to protect her beautiful precious child for 7 years so far (most of his life), I am so grateful he is safe for now and growing up into a beautiful person, and that he is such good friends with my youngest boy. Unfortunately we had an accident coming home the other night and hit a kangaroo causing a lot of damage to my car, we were all safe though and I am so thankful none of us were hurt and my car can be fixed.


All of this here and what is happening in the world has me reflecting on
 GRATITUDE
and the many ways I am blessed in my life,
I am so thankful for my family-
those living with me and those living away, you all know me at my worst and love me anyway, you all add so much to my life and I love you all so much. I know my sons and my mum are there for me no matter what.I am so thankful to Adam for fathering our beautiful boys and working hard to support us.
I am so thankful to K for the wonderful soul searching intimate relationship we have, for the personal growth and challenges we have shared over the last 3 years and the love and support we offer each other.
I am so thankful to live in Australia and especially here on the beautiful NSW north coast on my beloved mighty mighty Clarence river. I love my country I have such a deep connection to this space to the age old spreading fig tree's and the towering gums, to the dozens of kangaroo's out the back paddock. to the multitude of birds that share our space and clear starry skies. I love our north coast community - there are some incredible people and groups and organisations here.
I am so thankful to live the life I do, homeschooling my boys, finally getting our house built and having the work opportunities to share my love and passion for art with people.

I am truly blessed.

There is so much to be thankful for, I could go on and on but will save that for another journal page. My little one and I are off to see Medicine for the People in Byron in a couple of days and we can't wait. I am so thankful for this opportunity and the internet where we discovered Nahko and his tribe.

Life is good.

My Waste Paint Art Journal

Layers, lovely layers of colour and pattern, I love them.

While I am playing with my gelli plate I keep a student .visual diary beside my plate, I am using a canson A4.  I have it opened up and use it to clean my tools as I use them on the gelli plate. I also clean my stencils and stamps in this journal and I end up with some really gorgeous prints and so inspiring, I just want to play in this journal all the time now..

All that excess green I rolled of the brayer formed a lovely background for cleaning off the dwarf nandina leaves the day we did botanical printing.

Here I was cleaning off some tools 

I used to stamp into my plate,

they make great starting points for journal pages.

This page has been used for cleaning off the brayer and various stamping tools and then I have cleaned some of my home made stamps off on top of these pages, the white is gesso I was stamping onto a different piece of work.

And this page you might recognise if you are a regular river girl art reader.

It looked like this when I took it out in my car the other day 

and it turned into this.

I am loving this journal so full of inspiration, colour and texture and just ready for me to start playing in it at any time. I still have a few pages blank in the back and some have notes scrawled onto them that may become another layer in a journal page when I get to them or may just stay like that to remind of the day they were written.

Art Journalling on the Road

I am a busy person, 

these days I don't know many people who aren't busy.

  I always have so many things I need to do, and often the things I want to do for me come after the things I need to do as a mother or a house renovator or a working artist and I hate just sitting around waiting so I have been art journalling in my car on the road for years. 

I have a lovely van with a comfy bed in the back because the boys and I love to travel in it but I am equally fond of spreading out my supplies on the passenger seat and using the steering wheel as my "table" to lean my journal on.

All that time I spend hanging out at skate parks or BMX waiting for my boys usually gets put to good use.

I keep a basic kit packed and ready to go at anytime, it is how I store my most used tools anyway and I love the fact it also makes them easy to grab at a moments notice, I also love the way the boys make sure they are in the car when they are loading it up with bikes and skateboards and helmets and drink bottles.

I take a shopping bag with a couple of journals, a magazine to read a water bottle and my pencil case. In my pencil case I keep an assortment of gel pens, markers and paint pens, my favorite black pen for journalling is a uni ball eye micro, and I favor the broad white signo from uni ball as well. For bolder writing I love the posca paint pens or the Faber Castell pitt pens. I also have some 2B pencils for sketching, some paint brushes, some derwent inktense pencils, a water brush, a sharpener and a an eraser. I also take a sturdy plastic box with an assortment of stamps - mostly my own handmade ones, stamp pads, spray inks, water spray, impasto gel, white acrylic paint plus 2 or 3 other colours, glue stick, double sided sticky tape, scissors, a few stencils and any odds and ends I have swept into the box last time I had it out working with it.

I worked on this page at a recent weekend spent at the BMX track while my boys were following their passions, I was recuperating from the flu and following my own.

Botanic Prints with the Gelli Plate

We have had a mild winter and I was noticing lots of luscious weeds growing with lovely veining so I did as any paint splattered girl would do, I picked some and took them inside to play with. The sample above is a ruby dock weed and I just adore how it came out. 

Next I decided we would play with botanic printing in my class at the Grafton Art Club 

and we produced some really beautiful delicate prints using the leaves as stamps

I also ended up with some stunning embellishments like this one.

As I was selecting a colour to paint my house at the same time I ended up with a heap of little paint sample cards, just perfect for printing onto.

We experimented with leaves and these are poinciana seed pods, I have plans for some sturdy flowers and grass seed heads though as they come into season.