Human after All page

The Documented Life Project 2015 has as it's March theme: Doodles & Mark Making. For this week the art challenge is: As a layer element, and the Journal Prompt: Surviving the Elements. I think I have fulfilled the brief with this page. The size is 7.1/4 x 8" (to fit into my Michel Design Country Diary) and I began by gessoing the page and then I sewed on one of my photographs showing a snowy hillside with trees. The next step was adding acrylics and using stencils and stamps in multiple layers. I then started the mark making  and doodling in the shape of little circles whenever I could find space for them.

 I also used a patterned roller (see the dark blue marks above). My thoughts strayed to the 4 elements: earth, air, fire and water. I already had earth (from the picture), air and water (in the shape of all those bubbles which could be both, as well as the snowflake stamp), and that led to punching out the 3 starts from a gelli plate printed piece of paper to represent the fire element. One word of advice: free machining on paper is not as easy to do as on fabric!

I then added more marks using marker pens and watersoluble oil pastels, as well as the free machined scallop shapes which were filled with metallic white paint so that the element of metal was also added to the mix. This is hard to see, I know, as the camera just doesn't seem able to pick it up.

I also used the same paint to added some randomly stamped circles to the page. The text was the last thing I added to this page. It's an entirely personal addition as a result of a tragic event that I found out about last week, which is all I want to say.

Sometimes the fact that I blog so much about my art, with pictures, means that I self censure the words I use on my pages as I want to keep my private life exactly that: private! But on the other hand art journalling is all about channelling your feelings onto the page. In order to solve that dilemma I have chosen to add words to my pages (not just this one) that have meaning for me and recall  (to my own mind) what I wanted to express but without spelling it out. This is at times a fine balancing act but most of the time it works.