New Experiments and a Pro Tip

I've been doing more experiments with cut Stacked Journaling, playing with the scale and line thickness of my lettering. So far, these have all been done with some type of paper, from mat board to 60# copy paper. I'm also playing with contrast between the background layer, which is usually just painted, and the foreground Stacked Journaling.  

Normally, the smaller the printing I use when Journaling, the more linear the design gets, as in this piece below. This isn't a bad thing, but it isn't always what I'm looking for.

It seems that the larger I go with my printing, the better I like it, and letting it fall off the background, along with its more open shape, makes the whole process feel more liberated, to me.

 

 

My favorite pieces so far have been the ones with a vibrant colors (big surprise, huh?) but I plan to do more experimenting with neutral colors and a black-to-gray scale. 

Also, being a frugal artist, I wanted to share this little pro tip with you today. If you're like me, you've collected your fair share of alphabet stamps. Frankly, I stopped using them years ago, but I uncovered them recently, and wondered what kind of background noise they're create if they were all stacked together willy-nilly and held together with rubber bands.

Easy-peasy.

As I was constructing my new tools, the little vulcanized rubber letters kept falling off the posts (these sets are probably 10+ years old by now).

Not one to waste an opportunity, I got out the Elmer's and glued the letters together on their own wooden block.

Three new mark-making tools in about 10 minutes! These little things make excellent, repetitive patterns.

Until next time, create (your own tools!)

Paint To Paper To Fabric

In the process of painting this piece, I used very simple "masks"-  a few pieces of white copy paper and one piece of 18" x 18" deli paper that created an "open windows" effect. (Lay the paper down, brayer paint over the edges, you've just used a "mask".)

By the time I was finished layering all those paint colors onto just a few pieces of paper, their surfaces were rich and vibrant with a complex blending of shades and colors. They were irresistible to me!

I monoprinted a little Stacked Journaling on some, left the rest alone, and when they were dry, I tore them up into random shapes and sizes. Using transparent fluid medium, I began collaging them back together into four distinct but obviously related art pieces

(18" x 18")

The multiple layers of paint and medium began to give the surfaces of the papers a glossy sheen, like they'd been polished.

(8.5" x 11)

I finally gave up trying to layer more matte medium on top of them to knock back the shine and just embraced the leathery quality that was emerging.

(11" x 14")

Deciding to mount the pieces for display, and still wanting to test the limits of  multi-purpose fabric, I cut 4 pieces of the fabric large enough to accommodate each collage, and using a 50/50 mixture of soft gel medium and fluid matte medium, I laminated the collages to the fabric.

 (8.5" x 11")

I sandwiched all of them between two weighted-down plywood boards until they dried, and then trimmed away the excess fabric from around the edges.

I'm really finding this fabric to be very versatile and I can see myself ordering more of it when this roll is gone.

Happy creating!

Stacked Journaling in a New Way

Well, I sure hope you're all not utterly sick of seeing more Stacked Journaling, because I have been developing it steadily over the months and I love the current direction it's taking in my painting and mixed-media work!

A few weeks ago, I began composing SJ art letters by squeezing paint directly onto my substrate out of a bottle that employs a fine, metal tip screwed to its spout. This gave me tremendous freedom not only to be able to use all of the various paint mediums at my disposal, but also to be able to write in many different scales, from very large to very small. 

One afternoon while composing a Stacked Journaling letter in this manner, I began to get frustrated with the paint I was using: I'd thickened it too much and it was getting blobby and heavy on the canvas. I grabbed a piece of deli paper, carefully placed it on top of the painted SJ, blotted with the lightest pressure, and lifted the paper away. POOF, I'd discovered Monoprinted Stacked Journaling. It was as if someone had hit me with a sledgehammer and my heart started galloping in my chest.

I've been obsessively using monoprinting with my painted SJ ever since.

In this piece, a 16" x 20" stretched canvas, I layered multiple monoprints of SJ in white, lemon yellow and golden yellow Neopaque paint on top of a painted background of soft yellows. A polishing of violet textile paint came next, and finally, one last bold stripe of monoprinted SJ in magenta brings the piece into focus.

To create the monoprints, I Journaled in paint onto strips of parchment paper, turned them over, and carefully pressed them onto the canvas. Using parchment allows me to wrap the SJ around the edges of the canvas, giving it an even more finished look. Here are those lovely, leftover parchment strips hanging on my design wall (I wish I could actually reuse them in my work, but being parchment, the paint will never adhere to the paper.)

In a wonderfully mysterious way, the Stacked Journaling plays hide-and-seek with the eye, fading in and out through the transparent layers of paint. The text, while perfectly obscured for privacy, still nonetheless reads as very deliberate and directed text (which it is), rather than as simple scribbles. 

I think it's about time to take this technique to something larger, like a gallery-sized canvas or a couple of yards of fabric!

Happy creating!