Circle journal - Beate's journal

The circle journal is still going on - though suffering a little delay through holidays, illness, and bad weather - and I am now in possession of Beate's journal. Beate's theme is fools and divinities.

I thought I'd take photos to show the process by which this page came about. At first I wasn't sure whether I would be doing the fools or the divinities spread first, so I just started to play.

First, some punched out circles - these are from a French book - randomly stuck down across the bottom of the page. I loosely drew around them with a soluble graphite pencil and joined them together to give a flowing line. A layer of gesso then went over the top of the whole spread.

Acrylic paint was then applied with a baby-wipe. I still wasn't sure where this was going, but wanted more depth and texture.

So I stencilled some circles in gesso and applied a coat of clear gel medium tinted with purple lake acrylic ink to the upper part of the page only. 

Some drips of yellow acrylic ink and more circles, this time with watercolour pencils. I also went over the water-soluble graphite from the first layer. A wet brush over the blue circles and they start to look a little like bubbles. But it still feels as if it  needs more.

Some stencilling in purple and I'm getting the depth I wanted. At this point I have decided that this will be the 'fools' page and what wording I want to use. 

I'm not that confident with faces, especially when it's for someone else's journal, so I drew this one on to tissue paper first before sticking it down with gel medium. That also let's me get the placement that I want without stuffing up :) After punching out the flowers for her hair, the circles were calling out to be made into flowers so I painted in some petals.

The wording is a paraphrase of Proverbs 17:28. As a church we're reading through the book of Proverbs in January, one chapter a day, so it was the first place I went with the theme of fools in mind. There's a lot of material to choose from.

So there it is - the first spread in Beate's journal and a couple of close-ups. 

And completely off the point, but it is very difficult to stencil when you're in a week of 40C+ temps and the paint dries on your palette faster than you can use it! Just thought I'd share my frustration :)