Jump In... Guest Post...Welcome Lisa!

                                

Hi, I'm Lisa Hayes and I run an Australia store called Lulu Art. Since I started my business in 2013 I've barely had a spare minute to work on my own art so this year I promised myself I would take time every week to do something creative and the Documented Life Project seemed like the perfect platform to work from!

The DLP prompt for Week 2 of DLP (Documented Life Project) had me excited right away. It was all about beginnings and I immediately saw this sunrise in my head and wanted to have a female figure jumping up in the air so I sat down right away and figured out how to get the image in my head on to my page!  We also had the challenge set to use gesso on the page as well.

I started with covering my entire page with white gesso which I do before every single journal page spread so it strengthens the page and less likely to have different products seeping through to the other side of the paper.  Then I put a couple of coats of black gesso in a strip at the bottom of the page.  I followed this with a background using Dina Wakley paints for the sunrise. I used Lemon, Tangerine, Ruby & Lapis to create the coloured background just painting them on in layers with a fairly dry brush. I used the lemon mixed with a little white gesso to create the sun coming up and brushed lines out gently around it to create the rays.  

Next I created the clouds by putting the brush into both the white gesso and lapis and dabbing up and down to get the fluffy effect. You can keep dabbing away adding a bit more white here and there for highlights until you are happy with the effect.

The grass is very easy and done simply with a rubber stamp.  You could use any stamp you have of grass or flowers and stamp it all along the horizon. I used the same stamp but just used it lower then higher, some close together, some further apart, so it wouldn't all look the same.

The writing was created using a very large white Molotow marker which has a chisel tip.  You could just as easily draw the lettering with a pencil then fill in with white gesso or white paint.  I then took a finer tip white pen, a Uni-ball Signo, and gently put some dotted lines around the wording.

                                           

The silhouetted lady was created by finding an online image I liked (got to love Google!) and printing it out. I cut around it then covered it completely with black gesso.  This gives it a great solid black coverage. When it was completely dry I stuck it onto the page with matte medium.  Then she was finished!

This was one of the quickest pages I have done. Quite simple and fast but still very striking. It's definitely my favourite so far out of the three I have completed.

Good luck with your journal adventures!

Lisa xx