Sometimes it's good to get back to your art journaling roots. This past week I grabbed a cheapo journal out of the bin and started at it. I'd written some rants and ravings on the first dozen or so pages and I wanted to draw on them, so I had at the journal with acrylic paint.

I started out with pages that had been written on in waterbased ink. I scraped a layer of paint over that, allowed it to dry, then added another color.

On some of these pages I doodled. Others I wrote.

After i got past the written on pages I collaged on pages from a telephone book. Once the gel medium was dry I tore the edges and pulle dup the bubbled areas. Then scraped more paint over those.

On many pages I stenciled.

The final layer is a smooth thin final coat of titanium white. Super thin, the colors and ink still showing through.

After all that I will draw and write on the pages with sharpie and a variety of ink pens. I might add more layers of paint, or stencils.

I've chosen stencils with shapes I cut and designed that have meaning to me. Mostly they are simple designs, gears show up.

Life happens and then stuff takes longer. This was the first weekend in a long time I was able to concentrate on the chipin camapign from the time I left work on friday until I went to bed on Sunday. It was pretty great to spend a full weekend doing art and art related things. I was in the zone.

An interesting observation of the Chipin Campaign is that my life seemed to do anythign it could to derail me. Couldn't get the weekend off that I wanted, then I was sick, then death. Its interesting how life seems to fight the good and then when you are ready for it, it comes at you in waves.

Anyway, I wanted to show some of the process of the art. Before I get to the good paper with my fine point pens I do some studiesw and practice pieces. These are quick studies done with whatever I have at hand on whatever sketchbook I have around. This weekend I was working in a Piccadily journal that I'd written in and then scraped ink across its pages. Honestly I'm loving the look of that as a background and many use it in the future for more art. So much texture, and it's definately back to my art journaling roots.

So before I even touch those fine point pens, I do a bunch of warm upsketches, larger than the final piece and usually in Sharpie or some other marker. I work fast and loose, moving my hand quickly from one side of the page to the pother, mapping out the lines and features of the face.

After I map out the darks I add in the lights, sometimes with white paint pen more often with white china marker.

Only after I've done a bunch of these do I move onto finer point pens and good paper.

Sometimes the best thing is to grab a few pencils and a sketchbook, and simply draw.