evolution of an art journal page

I like in-progress posts where I can see how an artist got from a blank sheet of paper to a finish art journal page, so thought I'd do one, because, for some reason or other, I took pics of this one along the way. The background is pale yellow with green smudgey marks from large bubble wrap.

My pages rarely have any meaning, deep or otherwise, and this one is no exception. I do not plumb the depths of my angst nor the heights of my joy when I do these. I simply cut out things that look cool or interest me for some reason, and try to make them into a whole. That said, this page is loosely inspired by an art journal page by Teesha Moore that has a winged figure on it.

Just cutting out likely elements and laying them on the page.
Her body is the upside down top to a large bottle of perfume from a magazine ad.

Rearranged them a bit, added a head piece. No gluing yet.

Changed out the left side scallops and added a building.

Changed out the wings, added 15 cents, and the square right edge.
Glued everything down at this point.

Looked bare at the top so found some more elements.

Added center circle to her head piece. Did a lot of pen work and it's done.
Somewhere along the way I stuck a piece of gluey newspaper
to it and made a mess on her face, head piece and square border. 

channeling Teesha

I still remember the first time I saw one of Teesha Moore's journal pages. I could hardly believe all the detail - tons of pen work, very cool lettering, bizarre creatures. I thought they were weird and wonderful. In fact, I still think that. I also knew I needed to try my hand at it. That was several years ago and I've made a handful of them since, but just lately have gotten better at sticking with the page until it's nice and loaded with stuff. That's always been an issue with me - quitting before there are enough layers or enough stitches or enough detail. But I'm getting better at it.

My art bud Rhonda was down for the day about a month ago and we each made one of Teesha's 16 page journals, then each started a Teesha-type page. I'm not showing that one today because I accidentally sat a sticky piece of paper on it and goobered up some of it. <heavy sigh>  So I'm showing the second one I did.

The initial inspiration was the seahorse. He was weird enough looking all by himself and I wanted to build a page around him. Found the mussel which made a great body, drew some seaweed type stuff, did a bunch of doodling, etc, etc. Still need to get better (bolder?) with the shadowing but I'm happy with the page. Double click on the image to see it huge.

Here's the link to all Teesha's marvelous videos on how she does her journal pages. It's basically a FREE art journaling class. Go make one.