Art Journaling From Partial Pages

I thought I'd share some Art Journal (AJ) pages I've been working on, showing them from the partial page to the completed page.  When I teach AJ classes I often use my own books as a "stomping" ground to show how a particular color looks, show a technique, or do a quick play-by-play.  What this means is that I come home with several pages of miscellaneous chaos.  However, I make sure my students see what I'm leaving with, and when I bring it back to the next month's class...it's transformed in some way for the start of another AJ page, or even ... dare I say, completed!

I think it's a rather good way of showing that you can still make something out of, what seems to be, imperfections.  One of the things I love about teaching is that I can show an entire class the same technique, using the same stamps, etc., and not one of the Art Journals will look the same, yet they all have their own style of creative loveliness -- how much fun is that?!! 

Here are a few of my page progressions...completed pages (at least for now), directly beneath the partials I began with.

Partial - showing Dylusion sprays on a dry page (color intensity/saturation)

Painted hearts w/black marker, white Signo pen, & Archival black inked stamps
Background resembles the look of tie-dye

I really liked the look of the tie-dye background, and could've gone in many directions...but I like the simplicity of the page layout, at this stage.  

Playing with stencils, sprays, & ink (positive/negative imaging)
You can see the "tie-dye" page coming through on the right side.

A little Tim Holtz tissue collage, magazine cut-out, & black marker.

The stencils recede into the background with the boldness of the journaling and outline of the collage.

Partial - working with color: sprays, inks, & gesso

Background & Corner stamps, and black marker

Adding a gesso layout between the two pages helped bring the two colors together, as a temporary fix.  Adding the stamps & journaling makes it into a simple readable page layout. 

Partial - stencils, stamps, inks, gesso...randomness

Paint, gesso, Archival ink, distress ink, marker, stencils & stamps
Reverse imaging using the Claudine Hellmuth Nature bird stamp.

Many times I'll grab a random stamp for a technique -- the challenge later is finding a way to make it work into an AJ page.  If nothing else comes to mind, gesso covers a multitude of mishaps...but what fun is that?!

Think about all the possibilities for your other projects, scrapbook layouts, & cards -- you might even surprise yourself, what you can come up with. 

Have an Artful day!  Lisa

'Never say, "oops". Always say, "Ah, interesting"!'   ~ anon.