The very beginnings of this art journal spread sat on my worktable for several weeks before I got back to it. I wanted to finish it, but was uninspired as to how. No ideas came to mind.
But then once I got into it, it began to grab my attention, and, in the end, I’m happy with my Dog Park.
I think what had me stalled was how I started. I’d just finished another painting and I had a fair amount of paint left over on my palette. That wasn’t unusual and it had never bothered me. I’d just go ahead and through it away. No problem!
But this time, I remembered something I’d seen Laly Mille do in several of her art journal videos. If she had paint left over, she’d just smear it on a blank spread in her journal, viewing it as the beginning of another piece. Why not try that, I thought? So I spread the various colors around the outside, like a frame.
But then what to do? No inspiration came. The colors were nice. I thought they were pleasant, maybe bordering on cheerful, but not really joyous.
Eventually, I ran across a few magazine images of happy dogs and the idea of a dog park came to me. I dulled the painted frame a bit with a wash of gesso. Lightening the colors allowed me to do some journaling in that area, and as I did so, I began to remember all the dogs I’ve have in my life—all now in heaven. So the piece took on a sense of spirituality for me as I wrote all of their names around the edges. And then I began to see that the dog clippings reminded me of my actual dogs, so more so and some less so.
The beagle looks so much like my Liza Jane, and the black and white dog in the lower left reminds me of Rhudy, the lover and enforcer of rules!
I really hadn’t used colors reflecting the joy and energy in a dog park, so I tried to add that sense with the stamped dots from bubble wrap and the banner hanging across the top. The tassels are fun too. I also added gold touches, such as the interference gold area coming down from the top and the gold dots forming halos around all the dogs’ heads.
Although I didn’t take to Laly’s technique of beginning a spread with paint left over from another, the banner taught me that using leftover paint can be quite useful after all. I’d used the same paint I put around the wide edge of this spread to paint a small piece of mixed media paper, and it’s that paper that I cut the flags from.
The pink scrap is one I painted from my leftover pinks from this piece, and I used it to cut out the little hearts from which the banner is hanging. So I think I’ll continue this practice. I’ll keep some small pieces of mixed media paper nearby, paint them with leftover paint, and store them for opportunities like this one.
By the way, working from magazine clippings is something I really enjoy. It’s like solving a puzzle—finding connections and getting ideas from things I already have. Save those magazines! That’s my advice.
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