These Are Moments by Frieda Oxenham

After our trip to New York last year, the friend that went with me gave me the Through the NY Lens book by Vivienne Gucwa. Not only does this book feature stunning photographs of the city in all seasons but the words are beautifully written too. It inspired me to make this spread in the 8 x 8” Dylusions art journal.

When it was finished it didn’t look so much like New York but reminded me more of Venice (I suppose because of the colors!). I didn’t let that worry me. It means it captures moments from trips to both places. I used part of the quotation that is my favorite from the book. The entire quotation reads:

“There are moments that remain etched into time: moments that aren’t easily forgotten no matter how much time passes in the yawning gap between memory and dreaming”.

Here is the step-by-step tutorial for my spread:

1.      Using ordinary copy paper and an 8 x 10” Gelli Plate with Carolyn Dube's Buildings and Andrew Borloz's City Buildings add imagery to the paper by laying the stencil on the painted plate and taking a print, then removing the stencil and taking another print (the ghost print). Let dry.

2.      Using the above painted pages repeat step 1.

3.      Gesso 2 pages in your art journal.

4.      Use masking tape to make a horizontal line through the center of the 2 pages.

5.      Work on the top (sky) first, and using stencil Maria McGuire's Big Tornado add a variety of blue paints and remove it again through the stencil using a baby wipe. Do this till you like the look of the sky. Let dry completely.

6.      Now reposition the masking tape and work on the bottom (water) half of the pages and repeat step 5 with the large stencil of the Mary Beth Shaw's Private Collection 16.1 and watery paint colors.

7.      Draw and cut out some templates of buildings using plain white papers. I used one of my photographs taken in New York last year as inspiration.

8.      Use the templates to cut the shapes from the prints made in steps 1 and 2. Cut one and then flip the template to also cut out the mirror image. Cut out as many as you need to cover both pages and some extra to give you a choice.

9.      Glue on the building images from step 8, each one with the upright building in the sky area and it’s mirror image in the water, taking care to overlap occasionally to create a sense of perspective. I used an UHU glue stick for this step.

10.  Cover the mirror image building on the bottom of the pages with clear gesso.

11.  Take a deep breath and using a variety of transparent and opaque blue paints repeat step 6 on the bottom half of the pages.

12.  Outline the top buildings and some of the windows with black pencil (I used Derwent Sketching 8B)

13.  Print out a quotation on your computer, edge the individual words with blue permanent ink pad and glue them on.

14.  Edge the pages using Sapphire Silk pigment ink pad.

 (C) Frieda Oxenham 2017. To see more of Frieda's work, please visit her BLOG.