Art Journal Page #5

Ho boy, it is now 4 a.m. and I have not had some sleep yet...the kids and I had our first Illustration Friday after dinner (well actually they did, I continued working on the journal page I started during last post and just finished).

Finally convinced my youngest son Teo (11) to join our Illustration Friday.  He is very reticent about drawing and has convinced himself that he does not know how to draw and therefore refuses to even try.  I am glad I have been able to get him to sit with us and give it a shot.  I told him that there was no ugly drawing and that we were here doing this just to have some fun and bonding time together.  I think I have managed to get him to feel better about it because he ended up drawing 3 things!  Will post that tomorrow when Enzo is done inking his illustration.

I documented what I did for my art journal page #5 by taking photographs just in case anyone would be interested in my process.  This is what it looked like last time I posted:

I wasn't sure I wanted to add any more collage to it so I started doodling on the body of the horse.  I don't have any set doodle style in mind when I start out but I like to cut up or tear up any images from magazines that catch my interest, patterns on fabric, or save photos of artwork or anything that inspires me.  When something particulary jumps out at me, I then start to create my own interpretation of it.  For the body of the horse, I saw some nice fabric pattern and decided I wanted his body to look like I cut up the pattern into the shape of the horse.  Used my Rotring 4.0 pen with white ink to make the pattern drawings.  The Rotring pens are a little tricky to use with the watercolor painted background but they still work, not as white a line though as I would have wanted.

Started creating these mandala like flowers...hmmm...decided not to fill the body with it.  Since I had cut out a photograph of the fish and stuck it in the middle, I decided to add some radiating circles like in a fishpond, I think it adds a bit of interest and variation on the doodling.  I wasn't sure I wanted to put an eye on the horse and so put a star there...had nothing really in mind just did random doodles and ended up with that effect like the horse had blinders on him.  Then I saw another pattern I liked and sketched it in behind the horse.  Yet another pattern emerged and I penciled this one in before inking it with black and outlining it with my gold gel pen.  Layering the patterns under or on top of each other.  Sketching, painting, coloring with colored pencils, just adding, adding until I feel satisfied. 

This had been a very rough week for our family and so I wanted to journal about it - this particular quote by Oprah jumped out at me:  "Everyone gets through tough times because somebody is there standing in the gap to close it for us." 

My final page:

Have you ever thought of who was standing there in the gap during your tough time? It may be something worth thinking about.