Art Journals

I had signed up for an art journal online class a month or so ago.  Yesterday I finally sat down and began the class.  I loved it!  I was reminded why I love mix medial art and art journals.  It's a way to use up all those cool pieces of paper and different paint mediums.  I didn't want to use a "journal book" so I dug through my vintage ledgers and found the perfect one.  Not a lot of pages and no writing in it.  I think who ever found it before me ripped out the ledger pages that were used.  I can't blame them since the handwriting was probably awesome.  

In my class she recommends painting the pages with white gesso to give all the paints and papers a good base to adhere to.  I didn't have any gesso so I made some.  

Painting gesso on the pages.

In the class she used various papers and images to glue on to the pages after the gesso layer.  I didn't have any gel medium either! I'm not a fan of mod podge, which I could of use. So on her next video she used oil pastels and pencils.  Here's my page and once I get some gel medium I'll add images.  Once process she used was taking tracing paper and tracing a sketch of the image and gluing it to the page to use as the basis of the painting.  Real cool method.   I have an idea to use a photo of my mom and her friends when she was young  with the tracing paper.  Another idea she gave was to use a color pallet you don't use too often.  I'm drawn to blues so I may challenge myself to oranges and pinks.

This is the pages so far.  I can't wait to add my images and papers!