Combining Acrylics with Watercolors in Art Journaling
This summer has been sunny and warm in Finland. It has been great to spend time outdoors, gardening! Our garden is still work in progress. I think about it constantly. And it shows here in this art journal page, as well as the hot summer days!
I love the combination of acrylics and watercolors. They make a great background. Start with the acrylics, leave some unpainted areas and the add watercolor to them.
I continued by adding some handdrawn papers and wrote: “For someone this would be only a house and a garden but for us it’s the whole world.”
Coming up in Espoo, Finland: art journaling courses by Peony and Parakeet (in Finnish). The first evening (19th September) is about creating pages about landscapes and places!
Art Journaling Doilies
I haven’t ever been brilliant with watercolors but I have grown to like them very much. Recently I have used them more and more in art journaling. On this page I have used just watercolors, color pencils and markers.
This page tells a story and that’s something I want to increase too: add more text and content to my pages. Here I write about how as a small child I wanted to learn how to crochet. I thought it is a part of good parenting to teach the child to crochet as young as possible! As soon as I learned it I was crocheting like crazy: doll clothes, doilies, clothes, valence curtains … I was the crocheting queen until I started dating and my boyfriend took me to see his family’s summer cottage.
All the textiles in that log cabin were crocheted! Full-sized curtains, bed covers, cushions, table cloths, you name it! His grandmother had done all that. I was speachless. When I met her she told me that a doctor had told her not to crochet anymore as her hands hurt. But as she wanted to do something she had started to learn printing fabric.
The relationship with the boy did not last and the grandmother must have been passed away already but now I know that you do not need to hold the hook to crochet. You can use your pen!
Inspiration from Journal Fodder 365
I love this product: Dylusions Journal book. It has thick paper pages and it’s good sized. The only minus is that I had to order it online and as it’s pretty heavy the postage was high.
When I got my empty book I knew it would be perfect with another product: an art journaling guide called Journal Fodder 365.
I have many art journaling books, too many! I honestly regret buying some – but not this one! I love how it balances between the sketchy style and details. It shows the essence of art journaling by giving tips for writing, illustrations and inspiration.
I also love how structured this book is. I like order and find many art journaling books a big mess but this one is packed with information and idea in well-organized manner. And it still looks artistic and beautiful!
Here’s another page inspired by the book. A little detail that I like here most is the photo from my watercolors. I printed it on a sheet of paper that I had painted with watercolors first and I think it looks so much better than if I had used white paper instead!
With Journal Fodder 365 I will continue using more photos in my art journals.
Illustration Basics
When looking at skillfull illustrations, I often remind myself:
It is all about the …
* * *
Just basic shapes and some doodling makes it all look much more complicated and creative than it really is.
