Art Journal Freedom by Dina Wakley

A couple of years or so ago now I took a class at Art from the Heart with Dina Wakely.  When I make cards I love a lot of white space on them and I particularly wanted to transfer this to my journaling.  Dina's new book, 'Art Journal Freedom',  has a whole chapter on 'white space' and was a great reminder of her workshop.

It really is a fabulous book, and quite different to the other journaling books on the market, teaching about composition and colour theory - knowing the rules means you can break them if you like!

I used Dina's 'circle' page design, creating a swirl of watercolour before adding some texture to some of the lines with a pecil crayon then adding circles through a large piece of 'sequin waste'.  I stamped a couple of the flowers then drew the other two before adding the words from a Stampotique stamp.  Dina's challenge is to create a second page using the same elements but in different quantities.  I've not done that yet.  I did, however, NoT do a double page spread, which is my usual way of working!!!  Quite a breakthrough for me!  I just felt that the page was too long and thin, as a double page spread, to carry this composition.

My 'low cloud' page did work well this size though.  On the first day of our ski-ing holiday my youngest son questioned whether we could refer to 'low cloud' whilst up in the mountains as, surely, it was just that we were high up and maybe we should call it 'high people' instead!  This really tickled me so I carved a couple of stamps - one of a tree, the other with the word 'cloud' - and made a journal page.

I used Tim's umbrella man and put him at the top of the mountain because I really did meet a lady with an umbrella whilst walking at the top of 'Saulire' between two ski lifts!  It was snowing.  

I made the mountains from a piste map and added the true names and heights of a couple of the mountains I went to the top of using my pedestrian ski lift pass.

Coming 'down' is a bit scary!  But the lift attendants were all lovely, and often slowed the lift down at the end to help me get off!!

And it was definitely worth it for the views!

What on earth was I thinking?!!!

... when I decided NoT to include my snowflake stencil in my travel journal kit for a week in the French Alps!!!

Whilst the rest of my family went ski-ing (I tried it a few years ago and it scared the living daylights out of me so I stuck to walking this time!) I had time to read, walk and journal :)

Bliss!

The view from the apartment changed daily, sometimes snowy, sometimes cloudy, sometimes very clear, but it did have an influence on my journal pages.

I made myself a couple of stencils.  One of the little tree you may be able to see peeping behind the building in the carpark in the above picture; and of a snowflake!  Funnily enough, after hankering after a snowflake image I didn't use it that much, but still...

My other influences were a couple of journaling books I bought recently to bring away with me.  I love Melanie Testa's style of journal page so treated myself to 'Dreaming from the Journal Page'

Her suggestions for 'decorative drawing' [pg 84] got me adding some drawn texture to my pages.

I took two journals with me, and worked in both (well, a couple of small ones snuck in there two but I didn't use them).  One of them is my typewriter teaching guide, which I love to use, and the second was a new one from Hobby craft - the same size as the typewriter book but plain cartridge paper inside.  Both books are A4 in size, but in landscape format, so the pages are really long when you work on a double spread.

Although I really like this page now, it took a lot of working at, and didn't feel quite as relaxing as when I splash a bit of ink or paint on a page and respond to it from there on in (although learning curves don't tend to be that relaxing!)  It's my 'Melanie Testa' style page!

I did enjoy painting with my watercolours though, something  I used to enjoy at school but hadn't really incorporated into my journals.  I really like the contrast of pencil with paint and pen and added some visual texture by tracing within my stencils - not that is ReaLLY fun!

I have more pages to share, but will keep them for another post, some inspired by my other new book, Dina Wakley's 'Art Journal Freedom' which I HiGHLY recommend.