Art Every Day Month – Day 9

Once again, I used the NaNoJouMo song-title prompt for the day.  This time it was “Palisades Park” by Counting Crows.  Boy, is it a far cry from the original song with that name by Neil Diamond!  I listened and listened to the song and then read the lyrics.  I realized the important parts of the song to me (for an art journal page) were the park itself (an amusement park in New Jersey across the Hudson River from New York City that closed in 1971) and the narrator in the song asking where his friend Andy went.

Immediately, I recalled a gelli-plate monoprint that I had created a few months ago, one of my first as a matter of fact.  I created it using acrylics in primary colors on deli paper, a type of waxed paper that disappears when you collage it onto a page or canvas.  I had used 2 or 3 different mandala-type stencils whose shapes are reminiscent of ferris wheels and other carnival rides.  I grabbed that and glued it into my 7×10 mixed media journal using matte gel medium.  Then I printed out a silhouette of an ambiguous figure because the narrator refers to Andy as ‘he’ sometimes and ‘she’ sometimes as if he/she were possibly transexual.  I collaged the silhouette and two different lines from the song onto the ‘amusement park’ background. Finally, I highlighted areas on the page with a black Stabilo All pencil (which I smudged for a grunge look) or a Sharpie white paint pen.

I am very pleased with how this turned out.  It was an easy journal page to create since I had previously created the background monoprint.   But I think it accomplishes what I had hoped for.

Now off to write a poem for the day!  I hope you’ve had time to create today too.

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Journal 52 Week 21, Prompt: Mandalas

The prompt for this last week’s journal page was “mandalas”.  I usually draw and create my own mandalas from scratch starting with a hard-lead pencil in my journal then finishing with Micron pens and coloring with alcohol marker.  But I wanted to do something more organic this time.  Mandala means circle in sanskrit.  The circle symbolizes eternity or completion of a cycle or homeostatis/balance.  That made me think of the principles of Yoga and all the elements in Nature that are organically complete and balanced. 

Materials used:

• Dylusions Journal 9×12
• Acrylic paint (different brands and types and colors)
• Gelli plate monoprints that I had previously created on copy paper and deli-paper (this formed the background and the cutout flower, spirals, snake)
• Stencils by StencilGirl and (the webbed design) by TCW
• Pitt artist big brush pens in black, purple, and green
• Sharpie paint pen in white
• Sakura gelly roll gel pen in white
• Micron pen in black (.03)
• Washi tape (to form the header)

And this was the result which I think turned out well.  I really love the colors.