As I’ve mentioned (I hope not too many times), this year I’m on the creative team for Get Messy Art Journal. I’m having so much fun! Right now we’re about halfway through the Season of Play, so I thought it would be a good time to share some of the spreads I’ve made.

 

For this season we’ve been challenged to work in an altered book. An altered book is really simple: you find a book (I’ve found good ones at used book stores or thrift shops) and create your art in that book. You might have to do a few things to make it amenable to your plans, such as removing pages or gluing pages together. I’ve done this previously and did a little documentation of the process which you can see here.

 

I have run into a little problem. I NEED MORE PAGES! There are so many good prompts and tutorials, on top of just loving the theme of the season, that I’ve expanded into a second book. One is a fairly short story with interesting block prints illustrations. I like keeping some of the original peeking through when I can, and these prints are interesting. The second book is a collection of Helen Oxenbury illustrated nursery rhymes and children’s stories. I’ve always loved her illustrations so when I saw it on the shelf, I snapped up that book right up.

 

Now for some pages!

 

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Don’t you just love the idea of a Saturday from your childhood? All cereal, cartoons, playing outside, using your imagination, running until your legs feel like noodles, coming home all windblown and full of stories from your adventures? Yeah, sounds pretty great.

 

 

For the next page we got to play a game. You’d roll the die and depending on what number you got, you’d consult a list and do whatever corresponded to that number, paint, scribble, write, drip, stencil, you get the idea. So what started out like this…

 

 

…ended up like this…

 

 

That game could get addictive, I tell ya! It really took the decision-making out of your hands and kept you moving. Getting tired of painting? Roll the dice for a new idea. It was also a good reminder to utilize different techniques and not always rely on what you’ve always done, shake things up a little.

 

For the next page I used my hands quite a bit to spread the paint around. It’s funny but there’s something really satisfying about using your hands to move paint around. I put a small paper figure on the right side and then this big lady wanted to show up on the left side, and the contrast led to the writing. Sometimes I feel like I’m too much, too loud, too opinionated, too whatever but I try to remind myself to just be who I am, let my personality or my spirit be as large as it truly is, because that’s the authentic me. Why walk around doing a dulled down imitation of yourself all the time?

 

 

If I could wear my hair like the person on this next page, I totally would.

 

 

In my mind, playing often involves movement, really movement of any kind.

 

 

You can really see the block print figures on this next page. They were under a tree, so I went ahead and used molding paste to create more leaves with a palette knife. I liked the texture and dimension they brought to the page, but it’s a little hard to see in this picture.

 

 

Since we’re in the season of play, why not have a flower-face lady? She’s an image transfer from a magazine — I didn’t even have to put the flower on her face, she came that way!

 

 

Here’s a close up of the left corner because TEXTURE!

 

 

The next page just feels swirly and calming to me. The process involved a lot of experimenting and layering — this page is heavy with paint. I haven’t used these pigment powders much because they frustrate me, but someone challenged us to learn something new or use something you already had in a new way. These little gems have been in my cupboard, so I figured it was a good time to learn how to use them.

 

 

My own contribution to the prompts involved thinking of your favorite things from childhood, putting them in some kind of representation in a balloon and then connect them to you as a child. Here’s what I ended up with when I did my own prompt. I was thinking of a very specific outfit that I LOVED as a kid, it had these great puffy sleeves and a goofy skirt. The pattern here is it’s own thing, but the color scheme isn’t too far off.

 

 

Crazy how many different results there are from the same person. I know there are themes in my pages, things I come back to, but there’s also a lot of variety. Does that mean I don’t have an artistic voice? Does it mean I’m versatile? I don’t know! Making more pages will lead me to answers, so I’ll focus on that and let it work itself out.

 

Thank you thank you for visiting, and I hope you’ll come back again soon!