Transcripts
1. Skillshare Class Art Journal Introduction: Hi, I'm Kristen. I'm a mixed media artist. And Bookbinder and I have been using art journaling as a way to belt my skills for quite a while. I got my start. Um, as ah, hobbyist and mixed media are and bookbinding about eight years ago. And so I decided it was about time. Teoh. Sure, I've learned with other people, and hopefully it could make as big a difference in your life as it has in mine. In this class, I'm going to teach a basic introduction to a particular style of art Journaling. If you are a complete beginner, this is great for you. I will need you right through step by step. If you have some experience in art journaling but learnt what to learn. Ah, few different skills or a different approach. And you like maybe the image that I shared as the project. I hope that you will learn something new to you can see I have a little helper. I mean snow, and he sometimes joins me in my videos whether I want him to. So please excuse theater occasional cat in this class. I'm going to teach some basic techniques that you can use an art journaling in a lot of different combinations. Eso that you can create your own look and style. You can start out by copying exactly what I dio. There's nothing wrong with that, Um, and then move on to use these different techniques in different combinations, different colors to find your own style. And that is the beauty of art journaling, which is it allows you to explore all of these different ways of doing things. Nothing is a waste, and there's nothing that you can dio wrong in an art journal. It's all about playing and exploring and using your intuition and honing that intuition to develop something that, uh, that you enjoy the end product. So just a few notes about this particular class. I'm going to teach a few basics about color theory because it has helped me get more comfortable in choosing colors. I won't get too technical. It's really just the very basics. I will talk about what supplies you need. There's a supplies list attached and you can find it down below. And then I will lead you step by step through a project that you can complete on your own. So That's the class. If you haven't taken the skill share class before, all you have to do is let the videos auto play, or you can click on the individual, uh, video that you would like to watch. I could watch him over and over as many times as you like. It's always yours as long as you remember of skill share. If you have any questions you can place, um, down below the video in the discussion section, I will answer them as soon as I can. And if you would like to share your project with me and the rest of the students, I would absolutely love to see that there's nothing I love more than seeing what other people have created so you can upload those and share images of that down below. In the project section, it's very easy. All you have to do is upload a photo. So with that, let's move on to talk about what supplies you will need to complete the project in this class.
2. The benefits of keeping an art journal: Hi. Welcome back. Before I dig into the project, I want to spend just a few minutes talking about art journals. What they are and why I think they're important enough that I just about anybody should keep, uh, you should keep in. Our journal and development are journal practice and have it. It's changed my life in many, many ways. Um, in the last eight years that I have been practicing art before that I honestly did not think I was a creative person at all. I had explored a few other creative outlets, but nothing gave me the sense of accomplishment and fulfillment. Um, that I was looking for and and nothing really clicked as faras. I think if I do this regularly, I'm going to ultimately really enjoy it, even if it's hard at first. Um and then I first and then I picked up, you know, uh, mixed media art and bookbinding, and it just clicked, and I haven't stopped since, Um, and it has made a difference in my life in areas other than just art. It has affected me in my career as a non artist has affected my level of confidence in myself. Um and I believe that that is due to tapping into this kind of creative intuition I don't like to get to, like, woo about. It's not about, you know, tapping into the universe are any or the source or anything else that people talk about. This is just down to basic confidence and using your own mind and skills and personality in a way that maybe you haven't explored before. I think creative intuition can come into play in a lot of areas of our life other than art and developing that intuition will help really kind of get down to solving problems and handling problems in a different way. Uh, finding that I do have this creative ability that I can do is creative outlet, whether I am as talented as some other people out there or not whether some people like what I do, whether some people don't like what I do. I like it and I can see myself getting better, and I can see that I have developed this sense of style that I didn't have before. And, um, I bring that now to everything that I do, too, Uh, the way I approach other people to the fact that I am much more willing to interact with other people now and engaged and build relationships to the fact that I am now, uh, more ambitious in my life. I've seen that I can accomplish things and I want to keep accomplishing Mawr and Mawr. And that is an ambition that I lacked, uh, previous. So I don't want to say that an art journal saved my life and totally changed everything, but I almost feel like in a way, it did. And so, while I won't get to, uh, kind of psychological or woo about it in the project itself, um, I really just wanted to talk about this with you and share my ultimate motivation and encourage some discussion in the class about why you are seeking this creative outlet now and what you hope it will do for you. Um, I title subtitle This class unlocking your creative intuition for that reason, because I really think that that can make a big difference in our lives. It's about silencing that inner critic. That's another big thing that I want to communicate. Um, you can't find your creative intuition while your inner critic is telling you that you're not good enough, that you'll never finish anything that no one cares about, what you have to do, that it's never going to be good enough to put something down on paper in a permanent physical form. And our general practice is a way of practising silencing that inner critic. Uh, when you regularly sit down to create some art, whether it's practicing a technique or creating a finished piece of art active telling yourself that it's worth putting your creativity down in a visible part in a minute form, no matter what the negative voices are telling you, is going to give you practice at doing that. Every time you practice doing that, you're going to get better. And if you do it regularly, uh, the s'more, the better you'll get at silencing that voice. It's why writers have a regular practice of writing all the time. Some of them make it a ritual and right every single day at the same time. Some of them start with morning pages so that, uh, that gets that inner critic silenced. Creating a practice where you make that kind of muscle stronger is going to help you when you have to do other things. Um, that your inner critic is telling you you can't do so you're gonna get better in your job when you're in. A critic is telling you you don't deserve that raise or you don't. You can't do that project or you can't go for that promotion. Um, were you know, at the basic level you're just not good at your job. Why are you doing so? Every little thing helps. And in our channel practice builds that, uh, that confidence because every time you sit down, you are challenging your inner critic and you're going to get better at it. And this is a little bit of kind of just a passionate rant about this, Um, because I just really wanted to express this part before we get into the project, um, and encourage you to see it that way, encourage you to practice in a way that's going to carry over into other areas of your life . I want you to create art that you think is bad. I want you to create art that you think is not worth the quality of paper or products that you have been using it is all worth it because it is your creative expression. No one else can create what you will create. And I want you to just sit down and silence that inner critic and practice of this art journal habit and do it regularly, no matter what it is. Whether you do what I teach you to do whether you draw you write your sketch, you collage, you just grab some magazines, cut out images that you like and thrown down paper. I don't care what you dio. It's all art journaling our Jinling. There's no mistakes. You just keep going and it is all practice. And if you want to take what you learn and create final pages or final pieces of art, um, you can see some of mind back here That is fabulous. But if you even if you never do that and our general is worthwhile, it's worth your time. Um and so thank you for giving me just a few minutes. Go on and on about something that I'm really excited about. I am a little sorry that this is not more concise when coming up to my class deadline. And I really wanted to get these thoughts out and share them with you. Eso Thank you so much. If you have made it through this far next up you will be learning about a very basic color theory and the color wheel. Thanks.
3. Skillshare Class Art Journal Color Wheel 1: All right. Welcome to the color theory lesson of this class. This is really just the very basics introduction to color theory, and I'm not gonna get too technical. Um, this is a color wheel I've actually printed out because, um, color real appears to have disappeared. Of course, for the moment, um, the color wheel have each of the primary colors on and then the secondary colors that you can get when you mix the primary colors together. And some of them will have even additional colors When you add different ratios of the primary colors together a color wheel. If you get one from an art store, it's going to show you different combinations of colors what those are and how they go together For these for these purposes, um, all we're gonna really, uh, look at is where the colors fall on the color wheel. Um, and what that means. So we've got the primary colors of on the color wheel red, yellow and blue, all spread out evenly, and then when you mix them together, you've got your secondary colors. You've got yellow, purple, orange there, Um, and there placement is deliberate. It's an order of just like the rainbow, and they go together in certain ways based on how they're placed. Colors that are next to each other on the color wheel, which is red, violet and blue, Red, purple, blue Jay, where you like to call it, are called, and now guess colors. Those go very well together. They're very harmonious, kind of blend all together very nicely and will create additional colors when you warn them together. Colors that are opposites on the color wheel called complimentary and they do not mix well together. If you mix them together, you're gonna get kind of a brownish, grayish kind of don color. Um, it can be done in a purposeful way, but, uh, for beginners. Basically, you don't usually want to mix them together, but they are complementary, and when you place them on the same piece of art or place them next to each other, they make each other stand out even more. They really make those other colors pop, and you'll find a lot of sports. Teams use, um, colors like that, like, uh, purple and yellow combination Christmas colors for reasonable red and green or complementary. They make each other stand out when they're next to each other. Eso, knowing how they work together can help you just get started using colors on your page. So you know what's gonna look good together? What's going to stand out? Um, I'll show you some art that I have so you can see in this painting that I did mixed media painting. I definitely use pretty much analogous colors. See if I can camera to cooperate here. Oops. So you can see in this painting. For example, I pretty much used, um, analogous colors the blues, a little bit of violet, um, and just a tinge or a hint of some greens are in there as well. Eso This is something that's in completely with complementary colors. They all kind of blend very harmoniously together. It's hard to see where one starts and another ends, so that is an example, very literal. Take on the analogous colors. It's almost monochromatic because it's really primarily one color. It was just a little little hint of other colors. I also have one. I will show you with the complementary colors, and I want to note the complementary colors do not have to be completely literal It does not have to be bright Christmas red and green, but it could be shades of those colors. So I have, um, this piece, for example, with the red and green. It see it's more of a teal color. Um, red is a very bright red, but it's not quite christmassy red. And of course, I distressed, uh, distressed. It made it look a little bit older and grungy. So it's not just those bright who's too bright colors kind of standing out. So that's an example of using those complementary colors. You can see how much they stand out next to each other. That red really pops. The kind of teal ish bluish green really stands out as a really distinct color because those two are next to each other. Um, and they look very by, vibrant in a way that's different than when you use something like the monochromatic or the complementary coat or excuse me analogous colors
4. Skillshare Class Art Journal Color Wheel 2: Now I want to help you make your own color wheel with, um, the water colors that you will pick up from the supply list just to get a start with what these colors are, how they work together and how they mix together. Be very basic. First, I'm gonna zoom in on this easel here. Try. Okay. Let's, uh, just try this out and see how well it works about ah, watercolors in tubes here. You can get them in tubes. It's very easy to work with. In some ways, this is actually, although they are in tubes and that seems kind of fancy, this is actually very low cost set. I really, really use very high quality water colors because it's just not what I work with. So But this set is very artist oriented. Um, so it will have very basic colors that you can use to create the additional colors and to you create a cartwheel. So I have brilliant red here. Um, I'm just going to put this right on the page. So I got a brush with some water here and risking kind of great little square here. I'm just using putting this right onto dry paper. I've got a fellow blue, which is a very pure blue color. I'm gonna do the same. Just gonna put that right here and we put it in, sort of. I kind of did that backwards. I probably should put that over here, but that's OK. So again, just gonna use a wet brush. Great little square. Artie Mueller, shape here and then I've got the yellow. I've got a couple of yellows. Uh, this is a lemon yellow. Actually, I'm going to use the medium yellow for this. Using my wet brush to this. Spread that out just a little bit. So there we have the very basic three colors and we're going to create secondary colors in a circle here, so Well, I could mix the's on a pallet. I would be very lazy for the purposes of this demonstration. That's a long hill. And I'm just going to put double yellow there. The dad was this red as well, cause we're going to mix these two colors here in this spot. Do you get are nice orange color. Okay, thanks. You can actually mix that right on the paper itself. Okay. And we're going to do the same for the red and blue. Got my fellow blue here. Make sure you don't use too much and I want to get approximately the same amount of color I want to makes it on 1 to 1 ratio. That's what's gonna give us our actual secondary colors here. If you get too much his wipe it up a little bit with a people towel or a dry peat brush just a tiny bit, too, which right there and I was like Sure, okay, again, I'm just gonna mix it right on the paper. Great. Our violet. And if it's coming out to dark, you can always spread it around a little bit more. You can also do this on a flat surface, so that doesn't tend to pool at the bottom. I wanted an easy way to show you at the moment. And then I want my blue and yellow, which, of course, is going to create a green color, my blue and e love and see, I have my helper back. Uh, he hears my voice and tends to come and want to see what I'm up to. So I'm gonna make SOS create my green, and you can see just how strong some of these colors are by the colors you create. Um, and this is a good thing to practice with whatever set you choose that you can see what kind of green that really creates with these two. What kind of purple that creates If you would like to mix and use, uh, different shades of these colors, so that's your basic color wheel. I'm going to do one more because I want to show you one with a set of really inexpensive watercolors that I'm actually going to use in the project. As you can see, this comes with many colors, um, already mixed. And it does not necessarily have pure mixing red, blue, yellow. But it has a variety that you could actually use, um, to mix different shades of those colors. So let us show you that you can create your own unique color wheel with the paints you're actually using on these. So we're gonna pick a red. It's kind of an orangey red here. I'm going to get a nice blue. Put it in this order now, because I this looks better to me for summer. He's hit and I'm gonna get yellow too much That blue on there. I got a little bit of blue in there, so I'm gonna get some green. But for the purposes of this demonstration, and you can see what's happening here. So this will give you a good idea of what your colors are actually gonna look like when you use them. Stand when you mix them so again you can mix in lid. So I'm going to take some of that blue put it right here in this little well, take some of the red. But I used and also mixed that up to create our violet. You can see what kind of violet that will create. So if you want to play with the colors that you actually get, I recommend doing a basic color wheel You might even say, Okay, I want more on what? This other reddish color in between here. So I had another part red to that, um, you can go back and fill ins several shades. This will give you a basic idea of what your paints are going to look like and how they're gonna react together. It's a very useful you can do this in a Starter Art journal in the starter pages. You can do it just on loose watercolor paper like I used here, but it's a way of getting familiar with the colors and how they look together and have a mix.
5. Covering the blank page: All right. So let's finally get started within our journal page layout. The first thing I like to do is make sure I cover up this white page and also put something in here so I don't continue to get these little spots of color through. Ah, this crease here. So what I like to start with lately is a little bit of collage with printed paper. There is a couple. Uh, there's a lot of things you could use. I am going to use a little bit of the Tim Holtz tissue rap, which is a lot like tissue paper. It's got a little bit different coding, so that actually lose down much more easily. I've got two different kinds here. Yes, another. So, uh, and then just kind of a text paper. And I'm also gonna use some old book pages. Can either get an old used book from the bookstore or even usually by some, uh, Cem collage packs everything. As I said on on the, uh, the supply section. Everything is there. Um, all my suggestions are in the supply list, so let's start with this Super. This is really pretty because it's already got some collage on it. I'm just gonna tear off a bit and use part of it on here. Menus collage, pa je I used plenty of this because it can dry a little bit on fast side compared to some other glues. So I want to make sure I have plenty of it down so it doesn't dry before I put my paper down, just using a big brush to for that out. You put this What's down here? And he's a little bit of, ah, text paper here is well, give a nice collage. Let's go over the edge is that it does go so we know it's going all the way to the edges and will cut off the extra later. Once this is all dry. One tip I have is that you don't want to do something just one place on your layout. You don't want just one piece of a textbook paper. Make sure you use it in at least a couple places least two or three because one looks random. Two or three looks planned, whether it's very well playing out or not. So I always like to make sure spins because I'm not. So this is, uh, exactly where it needs to be. You see him with other texts, actually got a lot of text here, So I'm gonna trim off this extra news that it's got some that pretty butterfly from the drawings saluting this all kind of overlap. I wanted to be somewhat random. You can if you don't want to mess with putting a lot of different things down on here. You can just put one complete page of this tissue up, whether people down all over your page instead of a bunch of different pieces and it looks just fine. So now Miletic, it's with Do you like to kind of sprout even out, though that the text and the collage or the music and images on I want one more piece of this here. We're gonna get kind of a triangle shape so that my focal image could be here and it will draw my eye here. Hopefully, that is the plan. I don't always get what I think that I want at first. Sometimes that comes out totally different. That is the wonderful thing about this kind of intuitive process that I use. So that is good enough for first collage layer and basically just trying to cover up from that white. So I got something to start with, and I'm gonna actually cover this all up with a layer a thin layer of gesso to kind of push it back in the background a little bit more once it's dried. All right, this is all dry. And I pulled off, uh, the excess paper from the sides. For the most part, I leave it a little bit ragged, and I'm ready for my Jess. Oh, any kind of Jess. Oh, is just fine. Uh, the cheap stuff will work just as well as the expensive stuff for what we are doing. I'm gonna take a bottle of water first and spray this because I don't want a six layer. Just so I just want a thin wash. Take a little bit of that. Just so this washing over the page, you can change this layer up by, um how much, Jess? Oh, you put on you can either put a really even coat all over, or you can choose to cover up parts of it more than others and gonna really, uh, make sure that there's not too much bold black showing. I'm not gonna have it all completely even either. I want to cover up some of this text because there is a lot of text compared to the rest. Some of this music here and there. You can see it's going to kind of push that back into the background a little bit more so it's not so bold so that what we put on top of it will stand out a little bit more. Each layer adds to the layer before and the overall piece. So now that I've got Jess, oh, don, I want to dry that.
7. Create interest with stencils: Now that that's dry, you can see what a soft look those watercolors have. Once they're dry, I can give you a better shot of this page. His whole very, very nice look. That's why I really like the water colors. So in the next layer, we're gonna give a little bit more interest by adding some stenciling. There are many ways you can use stencils on your page. You've been used the spray inks that I discussed in my page. You can use acrylic paint. You can use pens and trace stencils, all kinds of things. For now, I'm gonna show you some sprays because those are a lot of fun. There are lots and lots of sprays out there, and there are many things that you could do with them. But I like the spray because it also adds a very soft look and let me take care of my cat. I was making a little cameo appearance here. Alright, So, back to the sprays, I want to use a spray. In this case, it's gonna add some color, but not to dramatically. So I'm going to start with um let me see. Here is highly swap color shine. Uh, this has, uh, shimmer in it. Taken care? Well, mixing ball in there, there's a powder and adds a little a lot of shimmer, actually, uh, to and you want these will spray all over the place to make sure you protect your surrounding workspace and everything you have sitting close to your journal. You're gonna hold this down. Ah, hold the spray a few inches away from the surface. The closer you get, the more concentrated ankle get in one spot the further away, the more it will disperse. And the one I want to show you, Of course, these can get clogged, especially the ones with the powder in them. So I'm going to try another one from accents. Actually has sent Teoh is a peppermint scented spray. Has Absolutely Ah, I don't know. I was It was too good to resist. So And this is going to go on to one side is going with a contrast in color from underneath it so you can see how soft that looks when you spray, uh, stencils on. I can smell the peppermint. Yes, it is minty. Gonna take this with some ink on it and press it. Now get a little bit of that over here. And just because I don't want to waste ink, I actually also press it down often on my scrap paper, which is usually watercolor paper, because it will take anything that I throw at it. No, really, it off. And if I don't want quite that much color swatches over here, I can just can look that up a little bit there. So now it blends in a little bit more. So that was my first stencil. But I don't want just one stencil on here just kind of floating there by itself. I once more down here, uh, I am going to go with more of a pinkish color because that's contrast ing here, and I want it kind of the opposite here. That big sense actually going to go with paint instead, I'm gonna go with distress paint. This is very opaque, and I don't want ah really opaque look on my stencils. So I'm gonna dio have this filled block for stamping. I'm gonna put some paint down on it. Just a little bit of water. Hey, stencil brush can reach you. You know, when I just stood still. That right in here. Now you can see this is very, very light, so I might actually need a little bit more paint. All right, so you can see those three little numbers, and it does mix with underneath it a tiny bit. And because we thinned it out, it will show that paint through it rather than being a true bright pink color. Because these have dabblers. You can also just put that right through the stencil if you want a really bright ah number there, whatever your stenciling. All right, so that's gotta dry each layer, remember to dry. Okay, so this is a great start to a background, but we really need something to focus the I. We need a great image or quote to really be the focal piece to make it a complete journal layout. Um, some things you can do our draw. You can write a quote out. You can print a quote out and glue it down. You can use your own photographs. You can use vintage photographs, all kinds of things that you can do to create that focal interest point. What I am going to use is ah, vintage image. I will show you. You can get vintage images, all kinds of places. You can get your own like flea markets and things, um, and digitize them. You can buy them online. You can get free stock photos, all kinds of things. So I will be back with that next step in the next lesson.
8. Creating an aged look: that. Um okay. For this next part, I did decide on an image. It's an image that I bought on at sea. Vintage photograph. Uh, and so I'm just I just printed it on slightly heavier printer paper, and I'm gonna see how this works. I'm just trimming it down when you're picking your focal image. It's, um you wanted Decide what kind of looking what? Or you can start with your focal image and go from there. But, um, figure out what looks best with your background. What will really stand out on your background, um, or blend in, Uh, depending on the look you want. Play around with it. Um, print out some images or use images that are already printed. Uh, try the layout. See? Just see how it looks in different places. Decide, um, how you want it to to be positioned. What else? You might want to put on the page to kind of, um, blend this all together so you don't have just one heavy image, and then nothing decide if you like how this looks with the background or if you want to change something on the background itself. Just kind of, uh let it sit and play around with it and see what it is that you really like and want it to do on the page. Um, I love this image, and I think it's looking very nice. The colors look nice with with the rest of this. Um, I do feel like this is just a little bit too much right now, so I'm going Teoh tryto, um, do what we did with the, uh, Jess. Oh, and kind of pushed that back just a little bit. Just so this is a little bit better. I'm also gonna go ahead and print this on some glossy photo paper just to see if that helps it kind of stand out the way that I wanted to. But first, I'm gonna take some white spray. This is from delusions, but there's a few different kinds you could use for that starts getting stuff really well with mixing ball. And I'm going to make sure I'm fair a distance away from the page when I spray this because I don't want it really white. I want whoa. All right. That's what I got sometimes, uh, these mixing and the sprays can be a little unpredictable, especially a part of it is a little bit clogged up. Do you think is what happened there? Totally fine. Ah, And so what I'm gonna do is just go ahead and can make sure get that until it's the way that I want it to be on. Um, gonna check that against check. That was the image. The other thing is that I don't think this is quite as, um 50 g to match this vintage image. I want this to be a little bit more vintage E, so I'm actually going to, uh, distress it, and I'm gonna take you through that process of using some distress inks. And this is something that you can use or not as you choose. There's also other ways, uh, to do this. Um, Tim Holtz. Project products by Ranger are very, very good for aging on image. And that is basically what I want to do here is age this a little bit. Create a look that it's it's not brand new, uh, kind of match that vintage e feel of this. So he has some very nice browns. And you can use, um, any of his products that include some acrylic paints. He has ink pads, expressways, all kinds of things. But right now I'm going to stick with this quote paint for now. And the way things age is that they start getting darker along the edge. If you look at old paper for old documents, they get darker starting on the edge, and then it kind of moves in. So that's what you want to imitate when ever you're going to try to make something look a little older or more vintage E. So I'm going to start with this paint. This is frayed burlap. It's the color I'm going to start using. Uh, I'm just gonna put it around the edge here. Sooner I can get that. You know, this is very opaque paint, so I'm gonna just smear it right with my finger. You can use, uh, makeup applicator or anything else. You like to kind of smooth that out If you don't like them. A serve using your finger, just run it along the edge there. Smear a little. It's also goes in the corners. We'll get a little bit aged. Um, what kind of age? A little bit. Around the corners. A little bit more. So you want to make sure you get that nice soft look like it's, uh, been sitting around a while. So hurry. There's also a color called vintage photos that is meant to be very vintage e. It's gonna be a little bit warmer color here more brown soon earlier. That here is Well, the trick is to not make it too neat, because, of course, things don't age all completely evenly. Okay? And, ah, the other really wonderful thing about these distress paid. I'm sorry about that cord. This is just I had to find a better way to get this microphone work in. So you can see this is kind of given that that aged look. And it's also creating a frame or on the page, um, thes distress pains, react toe water so you can kind of create a little bit of a texture here by stabbing it with some water, especially if you don't like. If it's looking a little too ah, uniform, like it's a solid line across which I don't like great here. Just a little bit of water just to kind of blend that out a little bit more. Just be careful of what's underneath because a lot of what I've used is going to react toe water so you don't want it to You don't want to start smearing all of this all of your previous work and lose all that gonna go it on the crease just a little bit as well. All right, so now you can see that creates a little bit more of a vintage, the look and a different kind of framing for this photo. This photo was edited. I could see down here also to create this kind of, ah blur down here, and it's kind of blending into the paint. So I think that I'm gonna use that now. You don't want the photo? Just sit right on top of your page and nothing else and just have these solid lines here. Um, so I'm going to do more to this as well as put this vintage photo down. But right now I'm going Teoh, um, I really like this kind of in chalice. Vintage. You look turned out. It went just a little bit. Like I said, you can use distress ink pads. Um, and in future classes, I will show a lot more about how to use all these things. But for now, I really like that. I think it's going to stay at the moment. I'm going to print this out on glossy paper and see if I like it better. Um, so you can just do that sort of thing with your images and your focal images. If you want to use a quote and hand writing, what you can do is write it out on tracing paper and then put it down and see how you like it. Try things out before you go home down. And while in our journaling there's no mistakes. I mean, literally, you could do anything you want and that you can fix it if you if you don't like how it looks, um, but you do want to kind of take a little bit of time just to see what it is you really want to put down on the page.
9. Adding your focal image: All right, this is the glossy photo image, and I am, like, in it so much better. It just really pops a lot more. Um, so I'm gonna glue this down, and I really like it right here. I'm gonna add some paint, but I'm gonna wait until it's all glued down to kind of blend it into the the page a little bit more. Now, instead of regular glue, I'm going to use, uh, heavy gel in a mat, uh, finish. And this will hold up a bit better than glue when it comes. Teoh. A kind of unusual surface. This is still kind of smooth to regular paper. It's also a little heavier. Any real strong glue will work, but, um, if you can get some gel medium, it is really going to help you out. It's very versatile. I'm going to be teaching more stuff you can do with it. So I do think it's worse the price. Now, if you're on a budget, just find you can get creative, um, and find other ways to, uh, at here your your images, um, to your page. You can also stick with a lighter weight paper to print this on rather than photo paper. Um, if you really can't spend the money on the heavy gel medium or the soft gel medium, which works also for this Justus for these purposes, just as well, I totally understand. There's times and everyone should be able to do this without having to spend a ton of money . And, um, not really already to invest in the gel medium. That makes perfect sense. So just make sure that's all down there. Don't get too much glue on the top because it is going to create that map finish. I think I might put some here on the top to help blend it in and give a surface. I can add inks and things, too, but try not to get too much of that great on the surface. Um, this I just used a palette knife to spread that you think that tends to work a little eat more easily than a paintbrush for some of these things. So now I've got that down. I want to give that plenty of time to dry. It is gonna take longer to dry than regular glue. All right, so now that this is a rich dried. I need Teoh integrate this into of the project as a whole and make it was not just stuck there right on the top. And that means you need Teoh to do that in tow Layer. Something's on top of it. It, uh, kind of push it back a little bit, but not too much that make it so that this is not the top kind of layer that you see on here. So what I e to dio again is integrate this little kind of blurring that, um, is happening here on the photo itself. Uh, and bring the paint up into that, and I want the pain to go on kind of evenly. I'm gonna put a little bit of this, um, gel medium on here so that paint goes on the surface of the photo and the paper exactly the sitting way are pretty close to the same way. And this will also help Kind of pull us into the image into the page himself. I, uh, kind of putting it in the same level here. Um, I hope that makes makes some sense to you listening. Uh, so I want to kind of make thes part of the same project. Do you believe? Um, so we're just gonna kind of hold that? I think the paper and the photo both part of the same layer. In some ways, I don't know a better way to to explain it than that, but, um, so I've got some of that Matt gel medium on there now, and I need that to dry before I can really do anything else. Okay. And, uh, this paint matched really, actually. Well, with with the color that they used on this, someone start with that freed burlap stress pain again. Just sort of bring it up. Uh, here. So it kind of blends in here with onto the image itself. Mm. And I also want to use that vintage photo because it's a nicer color. I think then that plays burlap. Someone important. Those in up here is Well, he was kind of bring that in, so that now is at least starting to look more like heart of page. From that world, closures could see
10. Integrating your image and finishing your page: So I'm also gonna do a little stamping because I found that, uh, this, uh, moonlight white ink. Uh, brilliance, not pigment ink. Uh, and it's again only on my, uh, list of supplies. Looks really pretty when it's stamped lightly. Um, in sort of a collage. The look on top of these, this photo paper, um, so amusing a script stamp and not putting a whole lot not covering the whole thing. I just wanted a little bit here, and I'm gonna kind of overlap the photo and the other rest of the paper can put some of that on there in a few places. And I absolutely love how that looks on that photo paper. Hope I don't know if that looks as good on camera as it does in person, but it is, in my opinion, it's so beautiful. Um, and again, because you don't want something just in one place. It's gonna be very subtle, but you want to put it in a few different places on the rest of the layout here. So I've got it now in a few places, and it's kind of overlapping the image and the paper here. So that's going to help bring this into the image as a whole again, or the pages whole. I'm sorry. Um, I've decided I really want the the, um, edges of paper also do just a little bit more dramatic. And so I'm gonna take some of this distressing in black, and for some reason, my black is very, very thin. It comes out like crazy. Oh, and he's just gonna be a mess on here. So unfortunately, that happened. But if you find that you have something that's really tough toe work with, there's always going to be a way to deal with it. So I'm going to do it's again. I don't need a whole plastic palette for paint. I can just add it onto this little code block and take a brush. Not to what? And then I can just kind of go in and put a more controlled mount so they I can have this little a little bit of an outline here with that black that why this is just a little bit more more distress looking a little older. Maybe it's gone through, uh, even more pain in its life. Just aging. So I do like a dramatic outline or on my pages. It's not necessary. Uh, you might like it. You might not, But I just think it gives that final really cohesive feel to the page itself. And now it looks very dirty because I did get way more than I wanted over on this side. Let's see if I can clean some of that up a little bit. Put some water on it. Here we go. Lightened that up. Yeah, here we go. It's a bit better. Okay? So there's always ways around anything that you want to do it in your journal. That's a fantastic thing about art. So I do want also Teoh, just emphasize was coming into the page just a little bit more just standing out just a little bit more than I would like. So All right, I am going to take my brush again with the black with a lot of water this time and just kind of go around this edge here just for a little bit of a shadow. So it's actually kind of affecting the layers beneath it. - Just drive. Now you can see finished page. And now there's room here to actually journal. If you are the type of person who likes to incorporate text regular journaling into art journaling. You can try it out, See if you do like it. Um, I was trying to show you this from various angles. You can kind of get an idea All the different aspects and how they worked on the page. I have a really pretty romantic, distressed layout here. Uh, I hope that you will try it out and share with the rest of us what you have done, um, And post any questions or comments down below in the discussion peer discussion section, you can post your journal page in the project section. Um, again, I'd really love to see what you have, uh, accomplished. I'd love to hear from you. If you have any questions or comments, just leave them blow. Thank you so much for joining me on this class. I hope you will join me on the next one. I will see you soon.
Christen McGee
