Art Journal 2020: Memento Mori

Welcome to #JournalArt2020! This is a blog series of actual art journal entries that I am doing this year.
Since this is my first time doing art journaling, it may not be as pretty as you see on YouTube, but these entries are personal, that I can assure you. I decided to keep to my theme of Living in Balance, and started the series with Stoicism, as I am a practitioner of the philosophy.
Enjoy!

I started with two facing blank pages. Both of which were glued together with gel medium and allowed to dry overnight.
The pages are a dark beige colour, but the colour of the paper does not matter because I was going to paint it.
The first layer was done with white gesso to seal the paper and prepare it for painting.

I left the right-hand page mostly unpainted - the gesso is visible here.
I painted the middle of the spread with grey acrylic (I mixed white and black).
Then I roughly painted about 90% of the left-hand page with black acrylic paint.

The rough textured look was the look I wanted.

I used this drywalling fibre tape as a stencil with textured paste next.

I found the tape in a local Builders Warehouse store. The tape is quite sticky, but I soaked it in water, then dried it so that it won't stick to the page. 
It was still sticky after soaking it, but it worked well because it was damp and I could peel it away.

You can see the dried textured paste on the left-hand page where I used the drywall tape as the stencil.

I added the black and grey washi tape to the bottom of the page on the right-hand side, before adding another stencilled piece.

I used the flower stencil on the right-hand page with the same textured paste and a pallet knife. It went over the washi tape at the bottom. This was intentional.








I then finished the entry with more washi tape, stickers, and painted the flower with acrylic paint. Lastly, I added the text in white on the left-hand page, and black on the right-hand page.

Left-hand page text reads: Memento Mori (top)
Remember we will die (bottom)

Right-hand page text is a quote by Seneca: "It's not at all that we have too short a time to Iive, but that we squander a great deal of it. Life is long enough, and it's given in sufficient measure to do many great things if we spend it well. But when it's poured down the drain of luxury and neglect, when it's employed to no good end, we're finally driven to see that it has passed by before we even recognise it passing. And so it is - we don't receive a short life, we make it so."

Memento Mori: final art journal entry #JournalArt2020

Materials:

• white Faber Castell brush pens
• black Faber Castell Pitt pen
• white gesso
• acrylic paint: black, white, yellow, red, green, blue (purple was mixed with red and blue)
• stickers: butterflies, clock, stars, skulls, bones.
• washi tape: black/grey/white, flowers, leaves.
• fold back clips to help hold the pages down while working
• paint brushes - small round

Until next time!

💜 Linzé