Gaia - the Earth Mother

by Lisa for Louise

As usual, Louise has made a beautiful journal that is full of lovely imagery!

As usual, I forgot to take progress pics!

It took me a while to come up with something for this journal: I'm not very spiritual but I like the idea of it all.  So maybe I am a bit?  Anyway, I found lots of great inspiration on Pinterest which I have saved. 

So my idea was to paint my depiction of the Earth Mother.  I used Dylusions paints, some of which have seen better days and were either drying out or looked like... cottage cheese.  Gross.  But adding some matte gel medium to the paint helped with a more even coverage. 

Her hair is the greens and browns of trees, with collaged bits of flowers and greenery cut from magazines.  I also added some strips of National Geographic paper treated with Orange Power!  Then finished her off with a bit of aquarelle pencil to make her look a bit more grungy.

On the other side of the page, under the flap, I drew the Earth!  I quite like how it turned out, and that Australia is central to it all... 💚

For the other side of the flap, I extended her hair using watercolour that was then whitewashed, and added saying I found on Pinterest that I really liked.  I used a Tombow for the larger words, and despite spraying this page with a protective coating, twice, it still smeared when I sealed it with gel medium.  Not happy!  So I decided to go with the flow and smeared it more on purpose.  Yes, truly, it looks this way on purpose! 😄

Here's a close up of the words: 

For the inside flap, I found a lovely poem that I thought suited my Earth Mother.  I stamped with a cheap but good set of stamps I found at Kmart recently, then wrote in the rest.

And here's the fully opened spread!  Hope you like it Louise, it took me ages to put it together but I'm pleased with the end result!

Happy arting all!

Cheers, Lisa xx