Picking up where I left off yesterday, today I wanted to share a quick recap of the projects I did as part of the bundle of Junque Journal classes I took online with Julie Fei-Fan Balzer. The second of the two classes is called "30 Days in your Junque Journal," and I did a pretty good job of keeping up, I think! Especially since I was traveling during the class.
So let's just dive right in, shall we? For most of the class, I didn't copy Julie's sample pages exactly (there was a video for every day of the 30 days,) but I tried to stick to similar theme and composition while I was getting the hang of this junque journaling thing.
First pages... Julie had a face, I had to have a face! Since I was still pretty new to faces at this point, I pulled out my "Eve, A Modern Woman" stencil by Andrea Matus deMeng and used that as the foundation for the page. Note my super fancy low-tech redaction technique here... I write a fair amount about work in my journal, but I want to make sure that doesn't get out in public, of course! (I blurred that stuff for the rest of them, as you'll see.)
Next up, there was another face on Julie's, so I opted to try something different by using Jessica Sporn's Krishna Deity stencil in the background. (Julie's background papers in her book had lots of more interesting stuff on them - things she'd drawn, samples and stuff like that, whereas my pages were pretty plain. So in an attempt to make them even half as cool as hers were, I added all kinds of stuff before applying the techniques from the class. Extra work? YES! But I'm glad I did it... love the results.)
The third spread I kind of followed and kind of deviated... I loved the idea of adding the earth - that was my deviation. The lettering was pretty copy-cat of me. I drew the earth, the leaves were a hand-carved stamp, and the flowers were the Imaginary Bloom and Nonsensical Bloom stencil and mask sets by Rae Missigman.
Fun intermission spread! I followed Julie's instruction to use a reference photo and draw my own face with markers and paint pens. The quote on the right was an insert in a Studio Calico kit I got sometime last year.
This next spread is one where I started to deviate a bit more from what Julie was doing on her pages... and I love how it turned out! I started with a Dina Wakley stamp, along with some techniques that I'd learned in her classes last year. The light bulb is a stamp I made from a stencil in the April 2014 StencilClub kit. On the right, I used a tag I'd made with the April 2015 StencilClub kit, as well as some hand-carved stamps.
This next page was kind of fun, even though it's not much to look at... I used scraps of paper where I'd cleaned off extra paint and tested out some new pens. Also some test stamping with new hand-carved stamps.
Next up... another slight deviation. Julie had a big face on her page, but I decided I really wanted to use this funky drawing. In one of my art classes at SAIC last year, we were working on our final piece based on inspiration from the museum. I'd sketched a very cool African tribal mask and wanted to kind of combine it with a Picasso painting I loved. This was a concept that I whipped out on the paper covering the table, and I loved it so much I cut it out and kept it.
Another face... I drew this one free-hand on some book paper.
And yet more following along closely with the lesson... I used purchased and hand-carved stamps along with some doodling. The arrows were from the Pointing it Out stencil/mask by Rae Missigman. You can also see lots of fun stuff peeking through from the base pages.
Yet another face as I followed along closely... hand-drawn from a reference photo:
Almost there! I started deviating again (I was watching lots of Teesha Moore videos on the Artstronauts site.) Lots of collage and the quote is another insert from a Studio Calico kit.
Last but not least (okay, it's kind of least... lol) I followed along with Julie pretty closely on this one (shapes were all me, though.) I was traveling at the time so I didn't want to get too fancy!
So there you go! 30 days in my Junque Journal... hope you enjoyed it! As I'm sure you've seen on Instagram, I've continued to work in here, so I'll have another update soon with more of the pages I've done since the class finished.
These are great...a combination of art and writing. I see Julie's influence but it's still all yours. Beautiful!
Posted by: Janet | August 13, 2015 at 08:10 PM
I'm so sorry Gwen - I don't know how I missed this post! I love your journal pages, and love using how you used the Krishna stencil.
Posted by: J Sporn499 | February 22, 2016 at 06:01 PM
haha... no worries Jessica! It's almost impossible to keep up with all the stuff getting posted out there. And thank you so much!
Posted by: Gwen Lafleur | February 24, 2016 at 08:28 PM