Another year of International Fake Journal Month completed, and what a fun month it was! My character, Sophie, and I had a great time working our way through a thrifted fairy tale book: covering the pages with gesso and then re-interpreting the "fairy tales" with fun (and often kind of creepy...) illustrations and matching them with the daily prompted quote from Roz's 2018 IFJM prompt list.
I was surprised to find how much I enjoyed working on a textured page. My natural instinct was to sand the gessoed page smooth before working on it; but, thankfully, Sophie would have NONE of that. Every day, it seemed, she would smear the gesso on thicker and with more texture than the day before: and we both loved the effect!
Working with mixed media helped me to get the effect that I wanted in the illustrations, as well as give me some idea of how they behaved on a primed page -- much differently than they did on a non-primed page. I also liked the fact that "Sophie" was consistent in her medium choices (the same Faber Castell Calligraphy pen for drawn "Sophie" and Sharpie fine marker for the "Raven", for example). By the end of the journal, we had a collection of pages that pretty much used the same color scheme -- and it made the whole journal work together as a whole.
In addition to repeating the same color scheme, it was also fun to repeat the same design elements throughout the journal: black/white stripes, black/white/pink harlequin, greyed bricks, etc. That also pulled the journal together into one cohesive work.
I admit that I was sad to say goodbye to Sophie today --- and couldn't help but make a few "follow-up" drawings. The first (at the top of the page) is the "The End" page of the Fairy Tale book; but, of course, Sophie's Raven finishes it with what he says best, "Nevermore".
The other drawings will be in my next post...
