I recently have completed a couple of two page projects in my art journal, in the style of Laly Mille. I absolutely have fallen in love with Laly's work and am enjoying using the process she uses. In both of these pieces I have used pictures cut (or torn) out of magazines as the predominate focus of my pages. I have included some process steps below the pictures.
THE SECRET GARDEN
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JUST BECAUSE
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PROCESS STEPS (ROUGHLY
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1. Find your magazine pictures, the ones shown here are from various magazines like home and garden type ones. Either cut them out or tear them.
2. Before you start to glue them down, decide if you want to add some acrylic paint or gesso to your surface to *prime you paper first. I used clear gesso to do that for my The Secret Garden project, but for the Just Because I just started sticking down the pictures with matte medium and cover the pictures and the rest of the paper with it as well.
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priming your page with gesso or matte medium just prepares your paper so that nothing soaks into your paper too much to wrinkle it, and gives a better surface for paint and other mediums to adhere to.
3. After gluing down the magazine pictures and covering them with matte medium, my next step is to apply some white gesso (or white opaque acrylic paint) to the paper, blending in the outer edges of the pictures, then I let all of it dry completely.
4. In this step I introduce some colour in way of watercolour, acrylic or Neocolor II water soluble pastels. First I look at the colours in the magazine and pick out a neutral tone that will help blend everything together. In both of these projects I started with a light watercolour wash using Payne's Grey, again let it dry. Then I tone down the areas of colour that are too dark with more white gesso or acrylic paint. When I am happy with the background I use a light covering of matte medium to 'set' the colour so that I don't smear or smudge the watercolours. Again let it dry. (there is a LOT of waiting for things to dry doing these types of pages! LOL!!!)
5. Now comes the fun bit of using inks, whether they are the water-soluble distress inks, or the fabulous alcohol inks that I also will use with water to paint with. I love how the inks add a beautiful transparent layer. Using alcohol inks is especially fun as after I have applied several layers around the art piece, I then use alcohol by itself to splatter across the ink layers which in turn reacts to alcohol inks beneath it, leaving these beautiful splotches and splatters!!
6. Of course, this is the time to also add some stencil work if you want to, or do some stamping, or whatever else you would like to experiment with.
7. I love seeing some written script on the page so this when I grab a gel pen and start writing.......... I write so that you can not understand or see the actual words, just loosely filling in the page with words or phrases or just gobbly-gook nonsense that doesn't mean anything, but looks like text. Of course that is just my choice, you can write whatever you like.
8. The next layer involves getting messy with some paint runs.... I normally use acrylic paint for this, very watery so that it will flow down the page here and there. I sometimes will use an acrylic ink for this as well but I just want something to blend into the background and not stand out too much so I will blot some runs with a tissue or paper towel to make them a bit more translucent.
9. At this stage I also had some paint splatter, normally in either white or black, or both.
and I also go around the edges of my paper with ink, a stabilo pencil (water soluble) or a Neocolor II water soluble pastel to darken the edges and give them a grungy look.
10. To finish off I find some cut out words from a magazine, an old book, or a purchased pack of word arts to finish of my page.
I mentioned in the title above that these are roughly the steps I have taken, I can't remember every single one and there were times I went back to add another paint layer etc. So this is a rough description of the process I used, not totally the exact steps that I took!
Also, I learned that it helps to have a couple of projects on the go at the same time. In most cases you are having to wait for one piece to dry so it helps to have something else to turn to. However, I have found that sometimes I become 'stuck', I am not sure what needs to be done next, do I want to add some stencil work, or stamping? or do I want to change any of the design at this stage by sticking something over the top of an area that isn't working?? So having something else to work on allows you to just stop and take a step back so that you can mull over what you would like to do next. Of course it doesn't need to be another project that you turn to, it could just be going outside for a walk, doing some housework (perish that thought!), read a book or do some gardening etc etc. The point is to just leave it alone. Some projects of mine have been completed within a couple of days while some have taken me weeks to finish, and of course there are still quite a few that need finishing, but I am learning that when I open my art journal at an unfinished page, in a lot of cases I instantly "see" what I want to/need to do next. There is no rush to finish anything!
