Compromises

I haven't done anything in my art journal all July. Gradually I started to realize the reason I was avoiding it was a very compromised spread I had done in a hurry and thought I could live with it... I couldn't. So I redid the page, and now am posting for the Country View July challenge (On your travels) and the SimonSaysStamp Wednesday challenge (Anything goes).

The DLP prompts in July have been about ephemera. I'm no good at that, but I travelled to Italy in June, and so I took out some maps and brochures and thought I'd build something around them. I got desperate and was in a hurry and ended up just "smashing" them in and telling myself to let it be and go on. The spread was ugly and terribly chunky, and it really bothered me, so I decided to think again. There were things I wanted to save: the map with the routes in town that I'd walked or biked, the brochures of a jazz concert and the foam rubber lollies given to me by the daughter of the house where I stayed. I ripped of the lollysticks and covered the spread with clear and white gesso and started a landscape with watercolours. I adhered just the foamrubber, not the sticks (to make the page less chunky), and decided on more white gesso so I could continue the landscape over the broschures. I finished with colour pencils and paint markers.

At least the result is much nicer than what the spread was, and I'm burning to start a new gesso+watercolour spread, the watercolour works in a lovely way!