Using Black in Art Journaling
Last week was great. I went to Scotland! I started with a small business conference in Glasgow and then had a couple of days sightseeing. My husband joined me in the end of the week and we really enjoyed our time. To celebrate the journey, I made an art journal spread which is based on the easy, yet effective technique, using black in art journaling.
Before I get into the process of creating the spread, I want to show a page of a smaller art journal which I had with me. I made the page while I was eating breakfast at Willow Tea Rooms in Glasgow. It is a wonderful place for a Charles Rennie Mackintosh fanatic as I am.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh was a designer and architect in the early 20th century. I have admired his and his wife’s Margaret MacDonald’s work for ages, so I wanted to look around the tea room area really carefully. Because sketching not only makes me observe things in detail but also memorize better, I recorded most things that I saw. The first tip of this post is to create sketches before making the actual pages. It is easy to keep a black pen and a small journal in the bag.
When I saw this doorway of St Conan’s Kirk, I knew it would be inspirational after getting back home. When thinking of doorways and windows I remembered a page spread in my largest art journal which was started some time ago but was not finished. I often create jumpstarts for the future pages. This was just perfect for the theme!
To get to this stage is really easy:
1) Paint a background with watercolors. Use various colors and brush sizes. Do not repeat colors or patterns too much but create areas that differ from each other. Create few layers and let each layer dry before adding the next.
2) With black watercolor, add a new layer on the top. Leave empty areas so that the previous layers show through.
And after the black layer is dry, the real fun begins:
3) Doodle on the black areas with color pencils and gel pens. You can also add details in the other areas. Feel free to use decorative papers too.
I wrote to the art journal that my best experience of the journey was to visit Mackintosh house. Taking photographs was not allowed but I did manage to take a couple of photos of Charles Rennie Mackintosh work. The first photo is from Kelvingrove art museum which is located near the Mackintosh house. In the second photo I am standing on the front door of Mackintosh house. There were no stairs as the house was a replica of the real house and was built inside Hunterian art gallery.
When walking around the interiors designed by the creative couple, Charles and Margaret, I wondered what kind of discussions they had had in their beautiful home. Margaret’s remarkable collage art showed extreme talent but she was not valued as an artist back then. Charles also struggled at times. Still, what those two people shared with each other, must have been wonderful and deep. I just wish I could take a time machine and spend at least one evening with them, talking about the form, design and philosophy of art!
These photos also worked as inspiration to the art journal spread. Here is Inveraray castle and its beautiful entrance with summer flowers.
The day we visited the highlands was sunny and the nature looked incredibly beautiful. The Stalker castle was not available for visitors but the view from it must be breath-taking.
Here’s the finished spread again. Hopefully you enjoyed the photos of the journey and fell in love with Mackintosh couple’s work. I also wish that you’ll try my technique of using black in your art journal!
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Fun Designs from Decorative Papers
Were you ready for the color bomb? I just could not resist creating this design with the vibrancy that is almost inappropriate. Hopefully, you are like me and need to get your overdose of colors and patterns now and then!
Collage Elements
I have created this surface pattern from handmade collage elements. I often mention how I create single decorative elements which I use in collage art or art journaling later. This time, I made a pattern that is based on those odd elements. These elements are like mini collages. They were made by cutting handmade decorated papers and adding some doodling with markers.
The elements might look complicated but are super simple to make:
1) Combine few paper pieces.
2) Add details with markers.
3) Cut the combined piece in half.
4) Repeat the previous steps changing some of the pieces as you go.
Cutting and combining the cut pieces repetitively is fun, and the result is like a mini quilt. Especially if you add seams with markers like I have done.
Surface Pattern
When creating a surface pattern, you also need something in the background unless you will put the elements tightly together. I wanted to add the background to make the design more interesting. The plain black background was something that I considered first. But it looked too separate from the pieces.
Luckily I save all kinds of doodles, even the ugly ones. I found a file called “blue mess,” a scanned image of the paper which I made a long time ago.
At the time I had thought this doodle was horrible, but now it would be just fine!
I processed my scanned images at Photoshop image processing software. At Photoshop I created a solid colored background, added the blue mess as the second layer and changed its color. Then I removed the white background from each of the four decorative elements and added a stroke to each element.
The repeat was created so that one decorative element is in the middle, two at sides and the fourth one at the corners. It takes some accuracy to place the elements so that they match when the design is repeated. It would have been easier to have each element separate, but I wanted to create a sort of appliqued look.
If you do not make a commercial pattern, you can just create an artwork manually instead of composing a repeatable pattern on the computer.
Here’s the design again, with more muted colors. This design reminds me of an old quilt, colors faded a bit unevenly but still suitable to be the centerpiece of any room.
I call this pattern Kira.
Create more hand-drawn collages: Buy Doodled Luxury!
Fabric Collages
The idea for this card came from the pile of fabric scraps that I have. I began to wonder: could I use these instead of papers to create fabric collages?
Fabric Collages – A School Project from the Past
I also remembered one happy moment from the childhood. I was about 10 years old. A teacher asked us to bring fabric scraps to school. We were asked to cut the fabric into pieces and create a collage from them. My schoolmates were not excited but I was thrilled. I cut the fabrics into tiny pieces and began to glue them on a paper.
When I had finished the collage, I was very pleased with it. I had also had such a good time. Little did I know that I would be cutting tiny pieces whole my life – that the moment I picked the scissors was to follow me many times afterwards!
1) Cut and Glue the Fabric Pieces
The supplies for fabric collages are simple: scissors, glue, paper, fabrics.
2) Add a Layer of Gel Medium
Because my collage was small, I wanted to add some fine details and extra layering. To be able to do that, I covered the first layer with the gel medium. When dried, I would be able to doodle with markers and create dimensions by adding more layers.
My favorite is Golden Soft Gel Gloss but any gel medium will do. Even if I am not a big fan of buying more stuff, purchasing this is a good investment. You can use gel medium not only to create surfaces but also glueing paper pieces when making paper collages.
3) Add Doodling
When gel medium dries it becomes transparent and you can doodle with thin markers or gel pens on it. Make sure to dry it first throughly!
4) Add More Details From Fabric Pieces
After doodling on the first layer, I wanted to add details like the house in the middle. After constructing the house with fabric pieces and glue, I added gel medium to the details to add some doodling on them.
The photo below shows how the fabric is layered. A part of the card is covered with gel medium and feels like plastic. There are also fabric pieces without any coverage on the top and they feel soft.
You do not need a sewing machine to enjoy working with fabrics!
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Finished Art Journal
In 2012 I bought a pink Smash book. Two years later, it’s now finished. With this video, I want to encourage you to continue art journaling. Whatever a single page looks like, it will be pretty and meaningful when being part of the full book.
Finished Art Journal – A Thick Book!
I love handling full books, the thick, filled pages just temp to open them again and again! Smash books have a lot of pages and I had to remove several of them when my book grew thicker page by page.
See the blog posts written during the years about this finished art journal:
Pretty Art Journaling
the first pages and introducing the concept of the journal
There’s a Little Girl in All of Us
drawing faces
Smash Book or Handmade Journal
using Smash book as an art journal
Homemade Happiness
creating more pages
Art Journaling about Imagination
a spread celebrating imagination
Would You Try That
playing jewellery designer
You may also recognize some artwork on the video that has been shown in this blog. I often use art journals to save them.
Here’s the back cover again which I finished on the video. I create decorated elements (like the centerpiece of the flower) now and then. They are stored with hand decorated papers and when I create collages they often work as jump starts. It always looks better if all the elements are not made in the same day! The same is with the journal itself – keep on decorating, day by day, one piece at the time!
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