Experimental Journal

Acrylic gelatin print on canvas
9.75” x 11” album cover

Looking through some of my collage and journal-making books, I felt like doing something quite different. I remembered a blank “Just-the-Pieces” album I’d put together with the gelatin print cover. The pages are sturdy black cardstock, intended to hold photographs. Last year,

Andrea Platt demonstrated some wonderful drawings she did on black paper using colored pencils and gel pens and-–YES!—that’s what I decided to try!

Appropriating part of a magazine cover having a wonderful array of blues and greens, I cut and glued that to the first page and began playing with the colored pencils. It is truly amazing how the black page is so utterly different and how it becomes part of the design.

I used green, blue, and white colored pencils with some gold metallic gel pen highlights. Nothing was precise or planned but the squiggles and lines and blips were mark-making of the highest form of fun! It was very relaxing, too, just doodling in different colors and allowing the strong black background speak for itself.