Ocean Journal

This 12 x 8 cm journal has been awaiting assembly and embellishment for a few weeks. Yesterday I pulled it out and completed it. The journal feels like a final glimpse of summer before autumn takes over completely.

Like the Summer Journal I posted in July (link below), the covers are made of heavy card and the pages of 180g watercolour paper. The basic colours are blue-greens.

The cover embellishment is a scrap of corrugated cardboard covered with gesso and then painted in various sea colours. I used watercolour crayons and touches of Lumiere. The photos don't show it too well, but it has the weatherbeaten look of wood that has been subjected to the elements.

After painting the pages, I also applied dashed of gesso and spread it thinly and randomly with a serrated spatula. The white of the gesso suggests sea spray or coral formations, the original page colour shows through in places on each page, thus binding the gesso visually to the page, and I've also added strokes of sea colours here and there to add depth in some places. The ridges are highlighted with gold to suggest sunlight on the water.

I bound the journal by running pale green paper-covered wire, transparent ribbon, sea-green feathered yarn, and a length of emerald green effect wire through holes I punched with a setting tool. I looped the binding loosely, so the journal can be opened flat to write entries. A few tiny shells strung onto the wire round the binding off.

July Summer Journal
http://artangelix.blogspot.com/2006/07/summer-journal.html