Spiral Journal Spread 10: Believe

What a train wreck this started out as! Here's my process for this page. I've been using blank journal pages as off sets for extra paint or reverse prints of stencils just to get some back ground in. This spread actually started out with some smudgy reverse lettering left over from this spread. Initially I had hoped to keep it, but oh well!  I started out dropping some paint on each page, purple, and then spread it around with an old credit card.  From that, I completely lost my stenciled reverse letters. 

I laid down some scraps from my "sidekick" from Orly's class; you can see a couple pieces of that across the top left, that purply gold scrap... That wasn't working for me so I grabbed the nearest stencil I had (picked up at The Ink Pad while I was in NYC!) and some deep blue paint and tried a little of that around the edges.  When I lifted the stencil and saw how messy it was, I just spread it out with the credit card. One little bit of coolness that came out of that is what appears to be a silhouette of a man near the middle right bottom.  See him? 

I needed to lighten that up, so I grabbed some white gesso and some punchinella scrap that was laying next to me and lightened up the sides (are you getting the picture that my studio is an absolute disaster with scraps of stuff everywhere? they do come in handy though). I added some spray mists in greens, yellows and blues and finally started liking it.  At that point, I had to believe it was all going to work out, and I added just the "Believe." The yellow flower in the top left was from a rose stencil and yellow spray paint (which I sprayed inside...I'm typically too lazy to go outside if I'm just planning on doing one little spray).  I let all that sit for the night and then came back to it last night.

I did a little black pen work, added in some shading on the yellow rose with some oil pastels and added my flower on the left. That flower, here, is cut out from one of my mounted photos that I scratched at a show. Find a use for everything!  :-)  What started out as a train wreck ended up as something I'm really happy with.  Believing it will all work out is not only a good lesson in art; I've found it's also one of the best lessons in life.