"Be True" Art Journal Portrait

Hi! Happy Tuesday. How is your week going? I think I am ready to get it started now after the post Superbowl bloat caused by too much food! I needed Monday to re-coop. :) I did find time to work on a two page spread in my art journal yesterday. My little man was a busy bee taking apart some toys with a screwdriver. Lol. I think I have a future engineer on my hands. He LOVES taking things apart and putting them together. Anything that occupies an almost 4 year old is a little slice of heaven!

So on with the pages!! I already had these two pages splashed with some color in my journal. Like many of you, I use pages in my journal for excess paint or to clean off brushes. So these pages had smeared paint and some extra book pages glued down. Doing this allows for a great jumping off point. Plus it is a little less intimidating than a blank page. I really liked the purple and blue that was already down on the page, so decided to go with that color palette. I don't use a lot of purple, but have some really pretty Americana colors I wanted to use. 

I sketched a face that I saw in the background and decided to add some very basic shaped flowers. Loose and fast is my painting mantra lately, so I kept repeating that in my head. :) Since both pages had the blues and purples I decided pretty early on that I would use both pages together. Let me just say a little something about the Strathmore Visual Journal...I am in big, fat juicy love with it. No holding back. They need to hire me and let me swoon about it for hours. Ha! I know some people may not like the fact that if you are doing a 2 page spread like this, that the coil can be seen. Do you know what I mean? When you make your own journal, alter a book, or purchase some like this - the pages are continuous. No coil ring thing...just a crease. I don't mind it at all. I love that the paper can handle just about anything. What about you? What is your favorite journal??

My goodness, I can get sidetracked! OK. Journal. Focus. :) I added acrylic paint, various stamps, and stencils to add texture. Another great find for me were these chipboard letters by Tim Holtz. The chipboard is pretty thin and bends a bit which is different from other chipboard letters I find. I picked them up awhile ago on sale at Joanns. The great thing about these letters is that I can alter them and make them any color I need.

You can see in the bottom left that I was trying out some larger, thicker white letters. They are really sparkly - so that almost got me (who's with me!? Sparkly loving girls please raise your hand). But, I stuck with my initial idea to alter the Tim Holtz letters. I used gesso to make them white. Added some purple Stickles to give them just a little glimmer. Then added some darker purple acrylic paint around the letters to give them some contrast. In the picture it is hard to see the letters, because I made them close to the background color. I really like the way they look though.

I wrote, "Be true to who you are."

So true.

Don't change for anyone you lovely person you.

Be your gorgeous self - AND shine! :)