Finding the Bones

Several ideas were in my head for this next art journal spread, but I finally settled on recording some of the things I’d learned in my holiday adventure with watercolors. In the past few weeks, I’ve made several groups of cards with watercolor, pen, and pencil. Now the holidays are over and I’ll be returning to my usual practice of drawing and painting with acrylic. But I want to remember the watercolor fun.

You can find out more about making the cards in my last blog post here.

Memorializing the Fun

Here's where I started. Fortunately, I had photos of the sheets I ended up cutting into cards. I decided they’d make a good background for my spread, so I made two copies of one of the photos on my inkjet printer, fixed the ink with Krylon spray fixative, and then glued them to the journal spread with my go-to adhesive, Liquitex matte gel medium.

the very first stage in my new art journal spread

(The dark area at the bottom right is just my shadow from taking the photo.)

When I glued these pages down I made my first composition decision—to leave a narrow border of the white of the journal page. I might write in it later. I wanted the edges to be uneven so I tore off about ¼” all around.

So far, but what’s next?

Finding the Bones

I figured I’d use paint to push some areas of these background images back. It's always nice to have an uncluttered - or less cluttered - place for the eyes to rest. But to do that, I’d need to know where. And to know where, I’d need some idea of what collage pieces I’d use and where I’d put them.

One collage piece I considered was a small round painting that I’d done in the style of the watercolor cards. I’d initially put it in a sweet, round frame. But I now considered that I’d preserve it better if I used it in this spread. I also considered using a few of the cards.

the first stage is complete - the bones of the spread

But I dismissed the card idea for now. Instead, I looked for other images to use in the collage. As it turned out, a few rose catalogs had just arrived. Browsing through them, I found images that I thought would work because of their colors, size, and shapes. I also found a rectangular image of several pale pink roses from my favorite catalog, the David Austin Roses catalog for 2026. It had a nice frame of white around it, just like my spread overall!

I experimented with various positions and when I was happy glued them down.

So much for finding the bones of my spread.

Time for Pondering

 

I’m very happy with it at this stage. I like the colors, the little images, and the composition. But there’s still quite a ways to go.

Sometimes “quite a ways” involves a lot of time and a lot of work and fiddling, but other times “quite a ways” can be accomplished with just a few nudges and tweaks. We’ll see how it works out this time. But for now, I’ll set my spread aside until next weekend, keep looking at it, and let the possibilities swirl around in my mind.

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