Moving right along (not counting all the weeks I've skipped).... in October I actually worked on one assignment in the current week it came out! It took me over two weeks though. Gesso, dry, paint, dry, experiment, dry, print clip art and spray with fixative, dry, paint some more, dry,... you get the idea.
October theme: Translucent papers
Week 42 - October 17: Art Challenge - Vellum
Journal Prompt: Sheer Genius
For my paper, I picked some stationary I've had for a very long time, vellum-like with bees on it. The more I thought about bees, I decided it was a good choice for the prompt as well, since what they do to make a little bit of honey is sheer genus!
I needed something to put on the page and found a few things on the internet to print. I did spray them with fixative so the ink would not run. I also knew I wanted to use my honeycomb stencil and some gesso on the page. I thought clear gesso might be a little like beeswax, and I experimented with some transparent inks mixed in the clear gesso. I tested this in a smaller journal. It turned out exactly as I wanted.
A few days later, I tackled the page in the larger DLP journal. I'm not sure why, but the clear gesso and ink combo did not react at all the way it did in my testing phase. It globbed up and dried as soon as I mixed it. I could not even spread it, so I mixed more. I ended up with mostly clear gesso, and very little ink mixed in. But I kept going, although I might have muttered some things in the process. I stamped the date on the page and smeared it all over the place. What a mess. I kept going.. just stamped the date on a tag and glued it over the smears. Happy accident.
To fill in all the blank space, I used a black Intense pencil with the honeycomb stencil, just drawing part of the design. In the end, it didn't turn out exactly as planned, but it's good enough to move on....
Since the beginning of the year when I started the journal, I have kept a Word document on my computer with each month's themes and each week's assignment. I print off the month and take handwritten notes as I watch the tutorials online. If I don't get to that week, I use masking tape to put my notes on the page until I can get back to it. While I was waiting for the bee pages to dry, I went to the next week online. It was at that point I realized my week numbers were off. Somehow I had skipped a week in August on my Word document. I was able to put the correct week #42 on the bee page, but I have some "fixing" to take care of on previous pages (but I was slightly thankful that I'm so far behind, very few weeks were affected).
I am glad I had time to play, but I have never had a day where so many things seemed to go wrong. But as Dina Wakley says, finished is better than perfect!
