Week 50: Black & White Space to Breathe
Welcome to Week 50 of the 52-Week Art Journal Journey. I’m Melinda and I’m here to encourage you to reclaim your creativity and establish a healthy habit of creative self-care through my simple form of art journaling, with one small art and journaling prompt each week for one year.
This week we’re going monochrome. Black and white. You’ll need a shallow baking pan. I find the disposable metal ones ideal. Inexpensive and reusable. Some people use shoeboxes and other shallow boxes.
You’ll also a party paper or plastic cup, and something we’ve never used before: marbles. I used six. I also used a plastic spoon, though if you don’t have plastic, you can rinse off and wash a metal spoon from your kitchen.
Our final supplies for this step are acrylic paint and several sheets of paper. As I do in 52-Week Art Journal Journey prompt videos, I’m using acrylic craft paint. Because it doesn’t need to be expensive to reclaim your creativity. And printer paper, which needs to be torn or cut in half. You want your paper to fit in your pan without raising up on the edges so, your marbles stay on top not roll under.
You may need a little water, depending on the consistency of your paint. I did.
Squirt some paint into your cup. If you can’t swirl it a bit in the bottom of your cup, add a tiny amount of water.
Put your marbles into the paint, and swirl them around to get them thoroughly covered with paint. How you get your painty marbles onto your paper is up to you.
I like to use the spoon to initially create a well-defined splat. I wanted to recreate the effect I’d gotten when I did this activity at the library where I work. Different paint; not quite the same results. But it’s all good. Running with what I got.
It’s the process we can get lost in.
If you have time, play around with it and experiment with different ways of dropping and rolling your marbles on your paper. Don’t worry about making messy art. It’s fun.
This week’s small art is best with different types of papers, so let’s have some more mark-making fun.
I used the end of a small plastic paintbrush handle dipped it paint, pushing it as I did with the twig in Week 47: Last Leaves of Autumn Watercolor. I love the natural branch-like quality it can achieve with the unpredictability of how the end will move held so far back.
I then used by trusty orange juice bottle cap as a stamp. There are so many things around the house that can be used for fun mark-making and textrue-creating.
Masking tape made some good stripes, though my peel did not make for good video fodder. I let it sit too long.
I had fun using my still painty spoon similarly to the paintbrush handle.
After you have a selection of collage papers, and they’re dry, it’s time to decide how you want to stripe your papers. I tore three styles of half-sheet patterns into three strips for vertical stripes, the ended up using four sheets for two two-page spreads of horizontal stripes.
As always, if you decide to share your small art on Instagram to encourage others to reclaim their creativity and practice self-care, tag me @better.with.art. I’ll still be active on @melindavanry with art inspiration and my art, my art jewelry and other items I’ll be offering for sale. And I invite you to click my handles to follow both.
Not on Instagram, but on Facebook? You can find me here.
I’ll be back next week with the second-to-last 52-Week Art Journal Journey prompt. In the meantime enjoy some relaxing monochromatic play. You can also click here to check out past prompts for more art inspiration.
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Week 46: Autumn Watercolor Woods
