Under the Sea...!

by Lisa for Melissa

Melissa's journal is a hooge journal full of beautiful papers - I didn't really want to paint over it! 

But I did.  Lots of lovely sea creatures in this journal already, and I decided to go with some fascinating creatures - jellyfish.  Brainless, spineless, dangerous, but strangely beautiful!

I found heaps of lovely photos of jellyfish on Unsplash.  Thanks to Unsplash contributors Karan Karnik, Michael Jasmund, Octavian Rosca, Arushee Agrawal and Kanyon Bollinger for your pics that I've based my jellyfish on!

Firstly I painted my background using acrylic paints.  Whilst I love the colours of the Dylusions paints, I obviously don't use them often enough - sadly they dry out.  My Dylusions Polished Jade was on its last legs, so I mixed it with some other paints in colours of teal and phthalo blue, and sponged it on.  Funnily enough, because the jade was a lot thicker than the other paints, if didn't blend properly, creating a lovely background!  Win!

Next I drew my jellyfish onto the background using my General's white pencil.  It's a bit hard to see in this pic, but it's there!

I coloured my jellyfish using pastel pencils.  And the colours looked beautiful, but pastels are very hard to seal - so it was a bit stoopid of me to use them for a journal!  Sigh, I should have taken a photo of it at this stage.  Oops.

To seal the pastels, I sprayed the pages three times with a sealing spray.  And yes, it did work, but it dulled the colours considerably.  So much so, that it just didn't stand out at all.  A bit of swearing happened here, and then I got out my daughter's Derwents.  And proceeded to colour the jellyfish all AGAIN.  

Next I sprayed the spread again, and added gel pens for highlights.

I also came up with a haiku to add to my right hand page:

Undulating blooms

Glowing in the murky depths

Dangerous beauties

Doing this made me think of Pam... 💜

And here's the whole spread!  Hope you like it Melissa, and here's hoping that 2020 is a great year for all.  Happy Arting!

Cheers, Lisa xx

Memories of the Sea

My darling mama has had a bugger of a year, In March she was diagnosed with cancer and a month ago she had a stroke! Enough already!
Art to the rescue once again. 

Melissa's Under the Sea journal came into the hospital with me and mama told me a story of her favourite Sea memory and it was a holiday we shared about 15 years ago. I was her scribe and her assistant to create this page as mama only has one hand working I think she did very well. 

Diving Deep in Melissa's Magnificent journal

Melissa's Under the Sea journal is a truly beautiful creation.
 Her pages and construction are such a privilege to have around.

I took liberties and created 2 pages
 just because there are so many pages just waiting for play.

"Melissa's Journal -Under the Sea by Meg Atkinson"

Receive Melissa's beautiful hand made Journal- pictures don't do it justice!

I Started my entry using some sprayed and stencilled pages and decided to do an underwater view through an old diving helmet..... except in very bright colours

I wove some strips into the bars to create the look of a porthole and then proceded to fill it with fish

I stamped on sprayed Journal pages then cut the Sea animals out

Ending up with a porthole filled with bright creatures

and a bit of Glossy accents to finish the page off

It's a busy place under the sea

I was looking forward to creating a spread in this journal as I share Melissa's sea obsession. I grabbed all my blue paints...cobalt, cerulean, ultramarine and a light blue metallic. Using these with a dash of yellow to add some green I tried to create a sense of the many blues of the ocean...going from light to dark to mimic swimming from the surface down.

I was really happy with my sea so then I sat down and drew all the creatures I wanted living there. I used a mixture of coloured pencils and crayons to create the mermaids, cuttlefish, starfish, jellyfish, whale, sea ferns, various fish and the sperm whale...the sea of my imagination.

Thank you Melissa xox

Vintage Under the Sea

This is my Under the Sea for Melissa Guest inside her amazing book. I love creating underwater worlds, something to do with the gorgeous greens and blues and all the awesome critters and plants! Everything really, its an incredible part of our planet.

After adding a strip of white washi tape along the centre spine, I covered the whole double spread with clear gesso to preserve that beautiful oval frame and to make sure the watercolours and Distress Inks didn't go through the paper. It seemed to work well :)

Once that gesso was dry, I sprayed the pages with green and blue Tim Holtz Distress Ink Spray Stains (Peacock Feathers, Mermaid Lagoon and Twisted Citron), using a paint brush to spread it to the edges of the pages. Once dry, I spritzed it with water which made it look more washier (that's a real word), which was fine because it was supposed to be water!

Using blue Distress Ink Pads (Faded Jeans and Peacock Feathers), I stamped Darkroom Door Background Stamps (Polka Dots, Peeled Paint and Circles) without a clear block so I could press the rubber stamp onto the paper easier. Clear blocks are perfect to use when your surface is flat but get in the way when working on hills and valleys!

Using a much darker green Distress Ink Pad (Pine Needles), I stamped Darkroom Door Background Stamp, Weathered Wood across the bottom edge of the both pages, again without the acrylic blog... and then liking what I saw, I called it seagrass :)

With the ground and water basics done, it was time to add some creatures... more Darkroom Door stamps! I used the Sea Shells stamp set with Distress Ink Pads (Forest Moss, Lucky Clover, Walnut Stain and Pine Needles), using the acrylic block about half the time.

The above photo shows how the background once I'd finished, just before adding the bubbles, seahorses and their friends.

Its under the sea, so it needed some shiny watery elements... out came the Ranger Gloss Gel Texture Paste and the Dylusions Stencil (Holes, one of my faves). I applied the gloss gel through the stencil with a palette knife (Tim's of course!) then waited for it to dry.

Getting there... I wanted to keep the page with a vintage feel so instead of using black, I stamped the seahorses (Tim Holtz SeaLife Stamp Set) straight onto the page in a dark brown Archival Ink. The quote from Darkroom Door, "Believe in the beauty of your dreams" is stamped in black onto mixed media paper before giving the paper a wash of green and blue, edging in brown.

What to do when waiting for layers to dry? Stamp, colour and cut out your friends! Everything was stamped onto mixed media paper using dark brown Archival ink, then each one was colouring in watercolours, Tim's Distress Inks and Jane Davenport's Mermaid Markers. Once dry, they were all cut out with fine sharp scissors and had their edges inked with Distress Ink (Walnut Stain). This seems to help them blend into the page better.

This is the final page... you can't really see, but the bubbles are still there, all shiny and raised and the fish and a few other areas have spots of Glossy Accents on them. Everything is glued down with gluestick. The crab couldn't help himself, he just had to have a chew on the sign while his friend eyed off the seahorses with his newly drawn on eyes (black pen).

Hope you like it Melissa :) It was fun to create.

Thanks so much for visiting and reading this far! I do hope it helped you smile today!

Happy Creative Arty Crafty Day!

:)

Jenny

AAJS7 Sharon's Pages in Melissa's "Under the Sea" Journal

Hi Everyone

 

Here are the pages I created in Melissa's Under the Sea journal - always a great theme to create for!

 

 

Wait til you see this fabulously created journal by Melissa - it's amazing and it's big LOL!!!!!!

 

I initially had a different idea of what I was going to do but then I decided to change tack and create these pages.

 

I started by covering the pages with Gesso and added some muslin cloth scraps and sticky mesh with gel medium.

 

 

This next step is where I strayed from my original idea LOL!!!

I decided to do a Conservation - Pollution comparison of what each scenario would be "Under the Sea" and as you can see I have two contrasting coloured pages.

 

To the "conservation" side I added some white paint through a stencil to look like the waves and froth of the sea.

On the "pollution" side I added dribbles of black paint from the top of the page - could be an oil spill!

 

To finish off I added some "fishes" to each page - nice ink sprayed colourful healthy fish to the left hand side and some skeletal fishes to the polluted side.

Plus I added little tiled letters for each page as well!

 

 

 

Hope you like what I have done Melissa and it's a bit of a reminder to us all!!!

 

Sharon :)



Enigmatic Octopus for Melissa's Under the Sea Journal

As above, so below.

The oceans of the earth are just as vast and undiscovered as the oceans of outer-space.....

The Octopus floats in the tranquil embrace of the oceans...

Dark and mysterious..

The enigmatic quality of the octopus mirrors the mystery within each of us....

Before the journal arrived I had envisioned lots of colourful sea creatures, lots of collage and bubbles.

However this journal has aged papers, it's dark and mysterious, it should be full of the wisdom of the ancients and so I decided to go free hand and paint the octopus with acrylic paint mixed with a clear glaze to give it a translucent appearance.

I added lots of warm white dots so he didn't get lost in the background.

Finished off with a few fish and shell shapes.

Under The Sea

A little about my journal and my influences:

I didn't mean for my journal to be larger than life, but it just turned out that way. It contains many pages and I'm hoping it gives my fellow journalists plenty of choice about where they would like to place their art (not contain it), and a chance to create with maximum space. I have not yet contributed to my journal, I think I had cold feet and felt that I needed more time to think about how I was going to approach my contribution, but that is not the only reason, it's that I get to look upon in amazement at the work that will have been dreamt about and manifested by my fellow AASG RR7 members when it arrives at it's final destination. I really am looking forward to that excitement. Not only do I look forward to the excitement that will exist in my journal coming back to me, but I am also doing a 'dancing on the ceiling' jig just like Fred Astaire in the 1951 film 'Royal Wedding', at the thought of my first assignment in Lisa Jones' 'Book Page Art', I am loving how thick the pages are in her journal, it is very well thought out. I love her personal touches and the resources part of the book, I wished I would have thought of something like that. Although I am a little scared about how to start off, what I have learnt is that there are no mistakes in art, a quote by Miss Jane Davenport, I love her wonderful mixed media work, every day I find inspiration in her encouragement of others beginning and continuing their art journey. There are others, one such as Irianna Kanellopoulou who uses clay media to express or interpret her observations and perceptions in her immediate and surrounding environments, her art says a lot without her having to be vocal about it, it tells it's own story. Lastly, Andy Goldsworthy, who creates his limitless sculptures from earth: branches, twigs, rocks, stones, water, ice, snow, grass, soil, fibers. At the end of creating each of his amazing designs, he allows the earth to break the piece down and consume it, as though never existing at all, but only for a moment in time. 

How my journal came together:

I worked with a friend to create my journal, I really needed the help, as I had minimal journal making experience, I wanted the big guns, so my friend Nicole Judson Elmes deserves credit for this as well. I wanted it to appear ancient looking, and I wanted it to smell good, so the pages have been dyed with coffee and tea...yum! It is an A4 size with plenty of pages throughout, other's working in the journal can choose to do one or more pages if they want to. I wanted it to be big, but within the rules, so I decided on A4 size. The pages with the grungy frames are printed on beautiful parchment paper, the graph paper Nicole designed herself. We decided on a 4" double layered curved spine, to add strength. The inside covers were going have printed paper, but we decided on muslin for a better effect. We had to wait for the spine fabric to dry before adding in the signatures. There are around 256 pages, making it around 16 signatures. I decided on having plenty of pages/signatures so that when it came home, it wasn't the end, I want the dreaming up to continue as much as it can, I'm sure there are creatures under the sea that haven't been discovered yet, perhaps someone could design their own creature that has not yet been uncovered by humanity just yet............Happy creating.......

Janie Under the Sea

Janie O'Brien' spread in Danie May's Under the Ocean Journal. I didn't have a preconceived idea for my spread but instead fussy cut numerous pleasing pieces to suit the theme and placed them on the paper until I received a satisfactory result.

Sprayed the pages with a mixture of metallic Starburst inks and let air dry.

Next I added some pale aqua tissue and pasted down over page encouraging wrinkles.

Sprayed with darker blue, dried, then sanded down to reveal texture.

Commenced adding fussy cut collage elements.

selecting from collage elements and creating seaweed.

The finished product with a final metallic spray to give uniformity to the art and to absorb cut collaged items into the background.