Storm: An Art Journal Page

Hello there!

We're getting near the end of January, and though I've had less art time than I would like lately, I'm enjoying the Documented Life Project 2016: the UnPlanner online workshop and community. This is the first time I've signed up for a full year's online course, so let's see how well I can keep up!

I know already that I won't have time to join all the challenges, but the most important thing for me is to create and journal regularly, even if it's in my own pace.



The UnPlanner prompt for the second week of January was: Start with a quote and paint over all but one word.



"The greater the storm, the brighter the rainbow." I got the quote and the idea for this page from the January challenge at Viva Las VegaStamps!

I'm not saying that the quote goes for people in the face of truly great adversity: war, exile and poverty, to name but a few. It can be insensitive to just cheer someone to be optimistic in a situation where concrete help is all they need.

But the way I saw it, describing a certain kind of personality, I quite like the quote. My eldest and I are both sort of quick tempered and can have very strong reactions in our times of distress, but equally in our times of happiness and gratitude. So that's the way I interpreted the storm and the rainbow this time.



The inspiration board (above) was accompanied by this list of words: resolutions, one little words, pacts and more.../and also/... words like femininity, women, exploration, rainbow, neutral and nature, storm, maps, vintage, writing, script, yellows, tans, black and white, stripes, bold, rainbows, storms and more!

I chose to highlight women (girls), exploration, storm, script, stripes (the "One Way" arrows represent these), and for the colours, a combination of neutrals and some black and white.



I built my journal page on a previously Gelli printed paper, and machine stiched it onto a kraft cardstock cut to the size of my binder page. All but the script stamp are from Viva Las VegaStamps!

I stenciled the clouds with black acrylic paint through a DIY stencil I made with my Fiskars Squeeze Punch. Once the paint had dried, I put the stencil back in place stamped the script with white ink.

As for the anchor stamp, I was just experimenting patterns with it, thinking of a naval theme in connection to the storm, when I saw that from a distance the little anchors looked like birds flying away. So I stamped them around the girl as if she was releasing them from her hand.



The view where I photographed my page is from Kaapelitehdas in Helsinki, an old cable factory turned to a huge center of arts and culture. I'm lucky to take two weekly courses there this spring. This gorgeous view is from the art class where I study experimental techniques in acrylic painting, and the other course is painting with toddlers. I'm sure you'll hear more about these in my later posts!

The view doesn't show very clearly on a cloudy/snowy day like this, but right next to the building there's the sea, now covered with ice. And behind that, the city continues on an island. You can see the bridge on the bottom right corner.



I am also joining the Artistic Stamper Challenge, where it's an Anything Goes theme this month, and Words & Paintery challenge, with this prompt:



Speaking of art classes, if you're able to take some, that is one great way to improve one's life, both today and tomorrow!

Thank you for your visit and I hope to see you again on Monday, with my interpretation of the Scrap Africa February Sketch Challenge #68!