Sing Song Art Journal (Part 3)

More from the Sing Song Art Journal. These next two spreads are so different from one another and yet so similar to my last post, it's almost spooky. Just remember that I start with Dylusions spray inks already down on the page and then I put on the earphones to see what inspirations come to me through the songs on my random shuffle.
Believe me, this first spread was a DOG. (Boy, that sounds familiar!)

It's Been Awhile:  This spread is a long story. Settle in.
The background wasn't what I liked. In trying to experiment with some colors, I ended up with a strange purplish color that I wasn't really fond of. You can see it along the center spirals but it looks uglier in person. Since I didn't like it to start, I used it as a "wipe off" page for my bubble wrap when I was doing the "Trio of Monarchs" canvas. So I got a bunch of orange dots throughout as well. The orange bubbles were acrylic paint so they were going to resist whatever sprays I put on it so unless I gessoed, those weren't going anywhere.

I must have stared at this page for a half an hour without a song to inspire me or any focal images that would even jump start a theme. Here's where I think I flipped to the next pages in my journal and sprayed some more backgrounds because I was at a loss.

Coming back to this spread, I decided that maybe black would be the answer. Black may make my colors seem better than they were and would certainly cover some of the crap. So I pulled out a little used stencil. This Dylusions stencil I mainly purchased for the border leaves and have been totally stumped as to how to properly use this abstract imagery in the middle. This checkerboard pattern feels very Alice in Wonderland to me and that's probably why I initially thought I'd be able to use it in more projects. (Ooooops.)

Ok, so...now what? Yup, totally stuck with the black pattern on there now. So figured maybe I needed some white? Why not try some drips? Sure, how worse could it get? Ok, so maybe it can get worse.
Flip the page and do something else, Wy. This is becoming a lost cause.

When I come back to it, I still see no potential but the earphones at least provided some words. One of my favorite songs (and a very explicit version) fills my ears. "It's Been Awhile" by Stain'd. It strikes a chord with this layout that seems like I've been working on forever! It's been awhile since I had a good idea, a good technique, a good color on this f***ing page! Just writing the words helped me out. It didn't propel me forward but it helped me out.

I again turned to work on something else.

As I came back to this spread, a familiar song filled the earphones. A beautiful melody called "Only Time" by Enya. I just love so much of Enya's music and this made the page call for time symbolism. So I added the stopwatches (stamps from 7gypsies) with a glue stick. Wrote out the quick quote and added that. Sprayed with a touch of Orange and called it done!
About time!

Strawberry Fields:  This spread was very green and I originally skipped over it to do the next page first. But when I came back to it, I had a Birds&Blooms magazine sitting on my craft table. On the back cover was this wonderful picture of a bleeding heart and amazingly, the green background of it matched my spread perfectly. So this spread began before I even had a song to inspire it. But the Bleeding heart was too good not to use and how many songs could be tied into that?! Right. Every singer has a song about heartbreak.

To prepare for the "heartbreak song", I began to spray the leaves using the Dylusions stencil on the opposite page. I figured I could make it mimic the bleeding heart and do the whole spread on the "heartbreak song". As I finished it and was drying the ink, a different song came up; The Beatles, "Strawberry Fields". Now I'm not a Beatles fan. I like some of their more popular songs but I don't know their music outside of what's popular. So I was surprised that I even had this on my shuffle!

But it's the Beatles, right? So I rolled with it. Strawberries could fill my field of vines and they looked like little hearts anyway. In fact, I used my heart punch to make the strawberries. (a heart covered with a maple leaf). They tied in the red/hot pink from the facing page and the page was done with just a touch of white gelato along the edges to fade it out.

After setting this aside for a bit, I came back to the bleeding heart side when this old Celtic favorite came up: Loch Lomond. Most people never know this song until they hear, "you take the high road and I'll take the low road". The version I have is one of heart break. Two lovers that will never be together again on the shores of Loch Lomond. (The low road in this song refers to death, in fact.) So I finished this spread with the words of the song and a good spray of Smooch spritz in blue in the upper corner to symbolize the water. So the corner has a nice blue shimmer like I picture a romantic Scottish Loch.

Now I said that these two layouts parallel my last post and last two spreads. They are similar in that one was mostly a mess until the end and one came together rather easily without all the layers. It's different than my last post in that I definitely like the Strawberry Fields layout better. Perhaps, it's the color, or maybe that it's just a couple colors as compared to a bunch.

I think I want to use more magazine cutouts in my layouts as well. I love the way they add a crisp focal image yet can also be manipulated rather easily to fit where you need them.

Still learning.
--Wy
"If all be told were turned to gold, if all we dreamed was new. Imagine sky high above in Caribbean Blue."    --Enya, "Caribbean Blue"