Unfinished journal page- a lesson in patience

Hi Everyone, 

Niamh here from down under! I have been playing lots in my journals recently doing the #100 days project, giving myself 7 days to explore a technique, then moving onto the next one. This has worked really well for me, creating short, sharp bites of art. But when I move back into my larger journals, I have found many of my pieces feel 'unfinished' - which is where this page came from. I thought I had finished this page (check the video out below to see) - but when I came back to it, it still felt unfinished. Luckily I found the perfect quote that not only 'finished ' the page for me, but summed up how I felt about the page as well!!!

I started this page by glueing down some brightly coloured collage papers. I then added a thin coat of fluid neon pink acrylic paint over the top. I used the Magic Garden Stencil and wiped away the excess paint to get a print over my page. I then darkened the edges of the collage and added some blue to help the contrasting colours pop. 

To add a little 'white space' to the page, I stencilled some gesso though the soulful scribbles flourishes stencil in patches around my background. I then added my focal image of the create face stencil, anchoring it to the edge of my page using a dark navy paint. I also extended the image using the soulful scribbles stencil again for the body.

I wanted to add some texture into the darker areas of the page, so I used parts of the Unfinished stencil in black gesso, but it got a little lost. I then added some highlights with a paint pen to the letters, but didn't really like that, so sponged some of the navy paint over it again to blend it in. I ended up liking this as it is much more subtle now than it was originally.

 Finally I stencilled the large words 'unfinished' over the piece with the unfinished stencil. This was because I really was unfinished - usually I know when a piece is done. This page had a large 'blank' area to the right of the image that was bugging me. After leaving it aside for a day, I found the perfect quote, that not only finished the page, but captured my struggle with it too. 

Here is a link to the full step by step video for you to see my process in action. Click on the links above to go to the stencils used in this project. 

Until next time,

Niamh

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