Hi everyone. It’s Bonnie here today with the prompt for Week 36 of the Art Journal Adventure. The theme that I have chosen for this week is Wing It. I followed this theme by including birds (things with wings) and also by winging it for the background by trying a masking technique to make clouds…something I have always wanted to try but never have until now. I didn’t follow a tutorial but just made it up as I went along.

The background began as a 7.75 x 9 inch rectangle of watercolour paper. I used that kind of paper in case the experiment didn’t work and I needed to blend out the Distress Oxide inks…Plan B. I chose Broken China Distress Oxide Ink to create my first sky layer, using an ink blending tool to add it above the cloud template and moving the template as I went. I learned that you have to plan a little ahead in order to create the overlaps where the clouds meet. I was able to correct a couple of oops inking where I didn’t want it by using a baby wipe to blend the ink away where I didn’t want it. I’ve had this template in my stash for years and never used it but you could easily create your own out of card stock. I did go back and add some Salty Ocean Distress Oxide Ink in a few of the deeper Vs of the clouds.

After thoroughly drying the Oxide Inks, I felt that I wanted a little texture and whimsy in those clouds so I used Aquamarine Archival Ink to apply Joggles Nonsense Latin Text to the background. Because I wanted this to be subtle, I stamped off onto scratch paper first and then stamped the second generation stamp onto the background.

Now it was time to create the stars of the page. Using Jet Black Archival Ink, I stamped three of the Dina Wakley Media Scribbly Birds onto 3 different backgrounds which I had created at other times. I love creating a bunch of backgrounds at once and will often experiment when playing with my gel plate or stencils. All 3 of the backgrounds were created with Liquitex Basics paint and various stencils on my gel plate. I chose them on the basis of colour, wanting brights, and then chose the specific area on which to stamp on the basis of pattern or detail. I wanted whimsical backgrounds for these scribbly bird bodies.

The birds were cute and I could have left them at that but instead I added shading using Inktense pencils activated with a waterbrush. Highlights were added with a Sharpie waterbased  White Paint Pen.

I wanted my birds to be dressed for success and I was picturing a black tie affair for these guys so I dug into my sprayed and mop-up card stock to find hat colours. A cone hat was cut for each and then each hat was then stamped with Jet Black Archival and either the Nonsense Latin Text stamp, Carabelle Studio Star Texture, or Carabelle Studio Quadrillages Texture Plate. I then cut strips of black and white checked paper to decorate each hat. Black bow ties highlighted with gray coloured pencil and white Sharpie Paint Pen were also hand cut. Now they are stylin’…LOL

I wanted the birds to be hanging out on a wire so I adhered a length of black trim across the lower part of the background, wrapping it to the back. The birds were popped up on foam tape except for their feet which were glued directly to the trim. The sentiment was printed on white card stock, cut into individual words, and matted with black. The words were also given dimension with foam tape.

Once the words were in place, I felt that the two bottom corners needed some attention so I added an evergreen stamp several times with Jet Black Archival Ink. It seemed to balance the design better. The final detail added was a simple hand drawn border done in black ink.

Here’s a look at the finished page. So now it’s your turn to play with the prompt, Wing It. You might choose to add something with wings, refer to a time where you flew by the seat of your pants, or you might want to do what I did and just wing it when trying a new technique. I can’t wait to see what you decide 🙂