Art Journaling with the July Stencil Club Stencils

Hi - Jessica Sporn here to show you some art journal play with the July StencilClub stencils by Mary Nasser.

If you don't know Mary's work, she is very inspired by maps -- something I love as well.  So I was very excited to receive her stencils.  

I covered two pages in my altered book journal with an atmospheric wash of white gesso and Teal paint (Golden Fluid Acrylic).  I used a cardboard strip to spread the paint, and added the white and teal in alternating "scrapes," so they wouldn't completely mix together.  

I decided to focus on the right hand side of the spread, and rubbed some white paint around the imprint made by the 4 x 4 stencil (my favorite).

Then, thinking back to a recent blog post by Mary,  in which she highlighted the work of Federico Cortese, I painted paths around all the circular shapes, finding circles within circles.  You can see that blog post (part of a Friday series where Mary highlights other artists) here.

I used different colors of Golden Fluid Acrylic paint and matte medium to glaze the different areas.

Then I doodled in the white "roads" and some of the colorful blocks.

I came back in with the globe from the 6 x 6 stencil.

In order to "calm" the page, I glazed over the color blocks again, this time with Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold.

I added scribble journaling, and came back in with some of the delicate marks from the 9 x 12 stencil, which look like writing or symbols when they are out of the context of the globes.  I also used my Portfolio Pastels for some heavy duty shading around the white globe, to make it really stand out.

A quote by Anais Nin finished off the page:  "Had I not created my whole world, I would certainly have died in other people's."  Isn't that a good one?  Create YOUR perfect world.