I have been working ahead in my art journal so that I wouldn’t be behind with my posts. However, I got stuck on the 6th spread and ended up procrastinating a while. It feels like a long time since I painted this one. First impressions for me, I like it. I’m not normally a huge fan of orange, and this may be a little more bold than I am used to, but the beautiful thing about an art journal is that you can really play around with your range, and push the boundaries. When you are working towards a finished piece on canvas, sometimes the freedom for that isn’t there. But art is about developing a visual language, and muscle memory of the act of creating. So it’s important to allow yourself the time and freedom to develop those skills.

I really like the dove at the bottom of these pages, I believe I printed it and cut it out from The Graphics Fairy. I think birds always make such a lovely addition to nature-themed journal pages. Same with butterflies. And flowers. So I just included them all. Mushrooms aren’t as lovely, but there is something a bit whimsical about them, especially the red ones with white spots, so they got a feature too. I think the patterned neutral coloured butterfly paper opposite the coloured butterfly makes a nice contrast to the coloured robin and white dove. I think they really help your eye to travel all around the page.

I started this one out with clear gesso and then spray ink, instead of painting it a solid colour and that was a really fun way to begin. It also makes for a lovely subtle background to such vibrancy.

I think the bold stars that were drawn with sharpie add some nice value contrast, but still with whimsy and without being too harsh.

I think if I were to change anything I would tone down a bit of the orange, but maybe not. Maybe a bit of white spatter over the orange would help to soften it a bit.

What are your thoughts? And I’d love to see what you are working on in your art journal!