Week 21 - Circles

So, this week over at Artful Journeys, our prompt is "Circles"!  Now, generally circles are right up my alley, but for whatever reason, THIS week, I just was NOT feeling it!  I tried painting them, drawing them, cutting them out of painted paper and cutting them out of book pages...still, I hated them all.  So, finally, a phone call with my dear friend and suggestion from her, I had an idea....so I got busy...again.

I started with some medium magenta and titanium white, and got busy on the first layer of my background, then added some craft acrylic accents in ocean reef blue, turquoise and parakeet.  Then grabbed my "bubbles" stencil by Dyan Reavely, and went back over the background with my medium magenta...so that it looked like this.

So far so good...now using my craft acrylics, and an assortment of discarded lids, I started making circles on top of what I had so far, until I got this.

I actually liked it here, but thought it needed more...so I added more.

Not really liking it anymore...I think it's the white...but at this point, I've decided that I just can't take anymore circles and move along.

I added my quote down in the bottom right hand corner..."I've wasted time, I've wasted breath, I think I've thought myself to death."  Kind of appropriate considering all the hell I've gone thru since I started trying to do this prompt.

Here are a few close-ups of the page...thanks for coming by and looking!

The quote is actually part of a song by The Kongos

Clarity and a Calendar for April

Every once in a while, I shock the shit out of myself with the art I put onto canvas and in my journal....today was really no exception to that, except that there wasn't my usual string of cussing when I screwed up!

So, I grabbed my large Dylusions journal and started off by gluing down a bunch of paper scraps, then adding paint....

As you can tell, I am not afraid to use some color...and a lot of it!  But, to be honest, looking at it like this makes me kind of nauseous...lol.  That's a lot for a brain to take in right there...but I knew that was only the beginning....the 2nd layer as it were.

Next, I used a homemade "mask" to create my flowers, then put white gesso down between them.  Of course, there were a couple of times, when I got carried away and painted right over one of my flowers, so I had to repaint them, but all in all, not too terrible.

Next came the black....This was the total tip over point for me.  Those flowers didn't just jump off the page, they exploded!  This layer took the longest...mainly because when I first went in with the black, I used my acrylic paint, which dried shiny and tacky, and I did NOT want my page ruined by the damn thing sticking to itself, so I went back over it with black gesso.  I really love gesso...so helpful!

Then I grabbed my white uniball and made little dots all around all the flowers...so far, so good.  But it was still lacking a little something.  Stamps!  I wanted to add some stamps...something I probably should have done BEFORE I did all the painting around the flowers, but you know....hindsight is 20/20...so I grabbed my flower and a piece of copy paper to make a "stencil".  Lining it up over the flowers I then stamped thru the stencil onto the page.

Now I'm getting somewhere!  I don't know if it's finished yet, or not, but I do love how it's looking so far!  Here are a couple of closeup shots....

I have to say, while it's not my first time doing a page like this, it is the first time I've set out to do this, and I am so pleased with the results.

And, since it's a new month, that means a new monthly calendar in the journal....This one was actually quite a bit of fun....Purple and white...that's it...just 2 colors of paint, some scrapbook paper, a punch and some rubber stamps.  In my creative frenzy, I got carried away and punched AND glued down 31 squares for the month of April.  This was right after I'd done the how many days in a month thing in my head...go figure...I blame shit like this on my teenagers...it's more fun than saying I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed...lol.

The big stamp in the bottom right corner says "I love Paris in the spring time"...I don't know if I do or not, but maybe one day I can find out....I'm going to say that I probably do...I can't think of too many places that aren't made perfect by Spring.

That's what I have for you so far this week.  I hope you enjoyed looking...please leave me some blog love so I know you stopped by!  Thanks 

Later, y'all!