Pity and Mercy

Sméagol

Efemera from UK Stampers says:

"This week's prompt is BOOKS

1 List your top five books...what and why?

2 Use a quote from one of them on your page

3 Use an old book page as your background"

I imagine my favourite book to be a favourite of quite a few people.  'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy by J R R Tolkien is such a hugely rich book in terms of characters and environments that you almost can't imagine that it is a work of fiction.  It feels so real you can almost feel the pages of the book breathing and I feel equally passionate about the Hugh Jackman movies.  The other books I chose, I chose for similar reasons.  The 'Harry Potter' series by J K Rowling, 'The Liveship Traders' trilogy by Robin Hobb and the 'Dragonlance Chronicles' by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman all have wonderful fantasy backgrounds against which important stories, that might otherwise be too cruel, can be read by adults and by children also.  I have added 'The Unlikely Ones' by Mary Brown as this is the first fantasy novel I read, at about nine or ten and I still own the book.  My mother liked the beautifully drawn cover and I was drawn in by tales of sickly dragons, disabled heroes and heroines and a knight in rusting armour.  

If I could have added more books, I would have dipped into my other favourite genres:

Horror and ghost stories - 'The Stand' by Stephen King and works by H P Lovecraft and Henry James

Sci-fi - 'The Player of Games' by Iain M Banks

Short stories - Kiss Kiss by Roald Dahl and just about EVERYTHING that Daphne du Maurier has ever written

Anyways, back to journalling.  I couldn't bare to part with a single page of any of my books, so I took a photograph of a page from The Two Towers and printed it out.  I drew Sméagol/Gollum having looked at some of the pictures on the internet and coloured him with Letraset Tria markers and Steadtler triplus fineliners, discovering as I did so that I could do with a wider selection of skin tones.  I should have started using coloured pencils at that stage, but I didn't want to change the texture/look of the drawing.  The quote is one of my favourites in the book, forcing the reader to examine their own feelings towards Gollum, who was once Sméagol, and remains a creature still worthy of pity and mercy.

I filled in the names and authors of the other books around the drawing.  I could have been neater, but against the typeface, I wanted a slightly more "scruffy" look.  Lastly, I doodled lines in similar colours to the background paper, to make the quotes, title, image and background paper more unified.

Ingredients for Pity and Mercy

Background paper - free with magazine

Staedtler pigment liner 03

Pentel Chinese Calligraphy brush pen

Pentel white gel pen

Staedtler triplus fineliners: light grey, dark grey

Letraset Metallic markers: silver, red gold

Letraset Tria markers: whites WG07 and WG10, skin tones O518, O618, O527, pink R327, brown O225, blues C555, C919, B138, raspberry R354, green G356, black XB

Purple

Grandma

 Wider view of pages

Efemera from UK Stampers says "This week your prompt is COLOUR

1 What is your favourite colour and why?

2 Use this as your main background for your page

3 Add a doodled border to your page"

Grandma was my mother's mother.  Even in her eighties she was one of the most beautiful women in my life.  In her heyday, and standing at 5ft 7ins, she was as graceful and glamourous as any model or film star of that era.  She loved horror movies and the colour purple, and I have inherited both of these traits from her.

I took a photograph of a photograph I have of her.  Since my favourite colours are both purple and green, I chose background paper with both of these represented.  I used a corner punch on the paper and the photograph.  The rose, the wings, the title font and the chain and squares on the opposite page are all stamps.  I stamped these in a light colour and then re-coloured them all with Letraset Tria markers and gel pens.  The leaf doodles to the right of the photographs were hand drawn in the style of the rose and coloured in the same way to maintain consistency.  

The title font is made up of Woodware's Francoise Read "Francoise Alphabet" clear stamps.  I love this font and actually have three sets of the stamps to ensure that I can (nearly always) set up a whole phrase in one stamp, rather than having to stamp the letters indiviudally.  I have used gold dots everywhere, but these have not shown up especially well in the photographs.  As the page was important to me, I used the remainder background paper on the opposite page, onto which I added the poem about Arthur (a photograph of the original script).  To me, these pages honour people whom I have loved and lost.

Ingredients for Purple

DCWV Floral Prints background paper

Photograph of a photograph of Grandma

Woodware rounded corner punch

Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz angel wings stamp

Hobby Art Surrey Stylised Rose

Distress Ink in "tattered rose"

Woodware Francoise Read "Glasgow Glass Elements" clear stamps

Woodware Francoise Read "Francoise Alphabet" clear stamps

Letraset Metallic marker in gold

Letraset Tria markers: pink O518, purples V528 and V245, greens G136 and G356

Zebra Jimnie gel pen in silver

Gold glitter gel pen (make unknown)

Pentel white gel pen

Staedtler triplus fineliners in dark blue and purple

Secret postcards

Caught stealing an egg

Art Deco lady

My younger son's school is fundraising at present and has used the Royal College of Art's idea of having a secret postcard sale.  Ideally, they'd like known artists or celebrities to contribute cards, but were asking anyone who could pick up a pencil to have a go.  These were my contributions.  They lady should/could have been more delicate, but the markers bled slightly more than I was expecting on the postcard paper.  By the time I drew the fox, I was anticipating this, so I used a Chinese brush pen and rather than trying to include more detail, I just tried to make fewer lines work harder by varying the thicknesses.  My inspiration was Art Deco postcard work, as those artists gave such expression in few lines and fewer colours.

Ingredients for Caught stealing an egg

Pentel Chinese calligraphy brush pen

Letraset Tria marker in orange O567
Pentel white gel pen for highlights in eyes; other white areas are just the white of the card

Ingredients for Art Deco lady

Steadtler triplus fineliner in brown

Letraset Tria markers: red R766, blue V245, orange O567 and skin tone O729

2012 Art Journal, Week 6 - Friends

Friends

 Efemera from UK Stampers says:

"This week your prompt word is FRIENDS

1 Who, when where?

2 What is your most memorable 'friend' story?

3 Use some kind of stencil decoration on your page"

The stencilled panel at the top left started this page.  It reminded me of sunshine on grass and an occasion when a friend invited me over to stay in Holland and work on a horse therapy farm for a week.  When I look back, I still see it as a bright gem attached to some very dark cloth.  It enabled me to give some perspective to the events that I was going through at the time.

I wanted the page to be reminiscent of hard work outdoors in bright sunshine, with slightly scorched grass, dry sand schools and slightly skittish horses with snorting noses and warm, dusty flanks.

Ingredients for Friends

Sunflower stencil (origin unknown)

Anita's horse stamp

Blade Rubber Stamps horse stamp

Sunflower stamp (origin unknown)

Distress ink in 'spiced marmalade' and 'vintage photo'

Letraset Tria markers: greens G136 and G356, brown O346, orange O567

Letraset Metallic markers in silver and gold

Zebra Jimnie gel pens in silver and gold

Beware the Weeping Angels

Weeping Angels, scariest Dr Who baddies ever?

My youngest son is a HUGE fan of Weeping Angels.  If you haven't come across them before, they are Dr Who menaces who first appeared in the episode Blink, back when David Tennant was around.  Essentially they work by plunging you in the past to live out your life there, whilst they steal the energy of your potential future.  This isn't really what makes them so scary.  

They are terrifying because they can only move when you aren't watching them. "In the sight of any living being, they literally turn into stone.  And you can't kill a stone.  Of course, a stone can't kill you either, but then you turn your head away.  Then you blink.  Then, oh yes, it can...  Don't even blink.  Blink and you're dead.  They are fast, faster than you could ever believe.  Don't turn your back, don't look away, and don't blink!"

A visit to possibly the loveliest store in London Blade Rubber Stamps (opposite the British Museum) saw me spending far too much and buying some new rubber stamps.  The main feature of this card is an Aubrey Beardsley angel, from Blade's own collection.  It was obviously crying out to be a Weeping Angel, so I made it one.  The torn wallpaper message is also a reference to Blink, where the heroine of the episode is warned by finding a message under ancient wallpaper in an abandoned house.

Inside the card - really duck Sally Sparrow, duck now

As cards go, this one took me a while.  It was difficult to get the different elements to gel.  As soon as I put the message on the front, it stood out too strongly and stole from the angel.  I used Tria markers on the angel image and background to try to link the pieces with colour, but the angel still seemed to drift into the background.  I solved this by using Glossy Accents on the angel to make it stand out.

Ingredients for Weeping Angel
Beardsley Angel stamp - Blade Rubber Stamps
Distress Ink in "chipped sapphire"
"Wallpaper effect" paper free from a magazine, matted onto black/gold tissue card offcut (and black/gold tissue paper inside)
Letraset Metallic marker in green
Letraset Tria markers: pink R327 and green G136
Pentel Chinese calligraphy brush pen
Zebra Jimnie gel pen in silver 
Inkssentials Glossy Accents