Again With The Good News, Bad News Thing!

Well, things have changed pretty substantially since I blogged at the beginning of the year. The bad news first: I won't be attending Jane Dunnewold's Art Cloth Masteries class, after all. It feels awful to even type that, but there it is.

The good news is that I will once again be able to blog at will and read my favorite blogs again, something I had given up simply due to time constraints. But those constraints are no longer an issue, and you should start seeing me pop up in your comments more frequently than I have for the last few months.

I'm still weighing my options for what my future might hold and where I'd like to take my career, but for now, for a few days at least, I've been taking some "me" time.  That's very good news for my sketchbook, as is has been welded to my hand for the last few days.

I'm working through my ideas for where I want to take my stacked journaling design idea, and what better place to do that than in the pages of a good, loyal sketchbook?

 

The page above was created with Fineline markers and stacked journaling- the word green, to be exact, which is what created the loopy bits to the outsides of the leaves and the great texture in both the leaves and the stem. So far I haven't found any design that I haven't been able to enhance with some form of stacked journaling.

Here, stacked journaling was screened onto a previously painted sketchbook page using a Thermofax screen and black textile paint. 

Stacked journaling was used here to create shapes on fabric which was then mounted into my sketchbook with fluid matte medium and "coffee stained" with fluid acrylic paint.

Creating contrast against a brightly painted background....

More screening of stacked journaling, adding depth to a previously sketched, screened, and painted page...

 

Stacked journaling on top of the existing text and Notan-like design of an old, yellowed telephone book page, cut and mounted into my sketchbook....

As you can see, I use my sketchbooks to do more than sketch. They are the incubator of ideas which will grow and develop organically, as I work each page in my own particular way. 

I hope you'll come show us some of your sketchbook's "particular ways" at The Sketchbook Challenge.