Page 6

Still on the chapter on minimalist art I continued in this theme but bumped up the colour palette to a much brighter colour range. I included a quote from Lily Tomlin "The road to success is always under constuction". I love this quote because I seem to be experiencing the same view on success.

Page 5

When I was working on page 5 I found myself reading a book on abstract art and paused at the chapter on minimalism. So I decided to try out my own minimal piece. However, I could not keep it so simple as to forget my love for mixed media so I included a gauze layer. And I assembled pats of it using a collage method.

Page 4 in Cheryl's book

This page began with a layer of pulled paint in 2 colours. I looked at it for 2 days and it did nothing for me. So I changed and did a layer of magazine collage. What was to come next was a mystery for another 2 days. Then my most recent issue of Cloth Paper Scissors arrived. I thought perhaps I'd try something inspired by the cover painting. So I added a layer of partly transparent painted tissue. Another day passed, mostly so that layer would dry. Then my brain took a completely different direction with transfers, collage and paint. I think Cloth Paper Scissors will have to wait for another day.

Page 3 in Cheryl's book

This is my first page done in Cheryl's Journal. I didn't plan ahead on this I just adapted at each step. Some steps turned out as expected others did not. At each stage I decided what to do next to make each layer work. There is texture, collage, transfers, paint and stamping. Between each painted layer I worked with alcohol to reduce the paint layer to allow each colour to come through the next.

Page 2

For page 2, I thought I'd try out a background technique that I discovered on YouTube. I called the technique crossed abstracts. Here you create one abstract, wait for it to dry then tape off stripes before you paint the second abstract. I stopped at only 2 layers of stripes as I was begining to get too much wrinkling in the watercolour paper. Cheryl may have a challenge ahead of her to work on the reverse side. 

After the background was dry I embellished with transparent painted tissue, a bit of texture from gauze and a snippet of a former painting. Plus a small photo applique on canvas. The photo is my mother-in-law as a child.

Page 1

Page 1 has been completed. It began as a trial for some new water soluable pencil crayons. I layed down the light colours, added water to see the effect. I was somewhat disapointed as I had anticipated more of a meltdown of the pigment. So-be-it, work with it, its an experiment. I added additional colours and scrubbed a little more for a bit more melting. Still not the result I had anticipated. So-be-it, keep going.

My next experiment was to try out some acrylic inks, black and silver. Simulating a few tree images by blowing the ink into position. That worked as I anticipated for a forest in a sunset imagery. Or is it a swamp at sunset?

The Cover story

My cover has a bit of a story behind it. Next to the spine of the book is a layered construction reflecting a spine. The spine being a key to the human skeleton holds in it an element of structural importance. In this I incorporated bits of maps. Maps/Travel has, in my life, held a very important palce. The bird symbolizes the freedom of flight. Flight is how I managed to travel to a number of places in this world. The stamps are of course from different parts of the globe. The handwriting symbolizes all the postcards and letters I have written home to my family to let them know where I was and what I was up to. The snippet of headline & newspaper are from an article printed in an Australian newspaper from the year when I traveled to Australia and was trapped in the centre of the Australian desert by a torential flood. The lace is my Museum icon. I love to visit museums and art galleries when I travel. Museums tell the story of the place where I am.

Now on to page 1.