Collaborative Art Journaling

©Anne Rita Taylor 2016

One of my collaborative painted pages

There are many ways to make art with Mixed Media - layering paint is one of them. When you Google: Mixed Media, you get 65 million results! Paint, ink and collage on canvas is the most popular form of art journaling.

Nicole's sample page

Last Saturday I went to a Meetup group with a price tag - $20 - Whole Hearted Art with Nicole Bray. Nicole’s blog showed she was knowledgeable about art and I thought it would be fun too. 

On Laura’s page I wrote “PASSION” plus drew the daisy.

Also I understood the word “journal” to mean writing. I brought a sample of my art journaling for show & tell - there were four us - and they were surprised that I wrote in my journal.

An art journal page of mine from 2009

In this three hour workshop we painted first in either primary or secondary colors for 5 minutes, switched our pages with our neighbor who then painted in the opposite warm / cool colors in our pages.

Laura finishing a page

I was having fun and also was perplexed, my pages seemed over-worked. It was actually fun to throw caution to the wind, playing with Nicole’s stencils. She explained about the color wheel and the use of thirds on a page for a pleasing arrangement.

Valerie painting her page

Besides instruction, Nicole provided brushes, acrylic paints, stencils, and she gave us each a piece of 11 x 15 inch water color paper. She had a great hand-out for us: 18 Must Have Mixed Media Supplies. Plus I found out about a nice circle maker and cutter by Orbis too.

Nicole's page after collaboration

We finished by painting another layer; we could obliterate the entire page if we wanted to…  Or we could find a face, plant or animal to emphasize. --- Please let me know what you think of the layered painting process. Do you use paint layering in your art journal pages?