Mixed Media Art Journal Page with Vintage-style Birds

Hi lovely readers and followers,

I am close to completing the final pages in my vintage-style-themed art journal and it's getting quite fat, hence the three clips to hold the pages down! This spread is similar in style as the previous one, except for the bird images which were a free download from The Graphics Fairy. There are plenty other birds in various styles available over there.

I intentionally kept things simple with less layering and focussing more on composition and shapes.  I painted the background with beige acrylic paint and dropped in some ink in raw umber, then let it flow down the page. 

Once the background was dry I adhered bits of collage papers in browns and creams. I mixed a pale mint with a light gray-blue and applied it randomly all over the spread. Then I brought in some subtle colors with more collage bits and pieces and stamped a botanical image on the right side.

I made some splatters with watered-down, light green paint and shaded the edges of the pages with my Stabilo All pencil, which turns a nice grungy black when water is added.

I like how bits of the brown collage papers peek through the gray-blue paint and the pop of color from the bird images. When I printed these they came out in rectangular format with a white background. I only wanted the colored bit, so I cut the images along the blue edges. I considered going around the images with more paint, but then decided to just leave it as is.

As I am writing this it is snowing again. The sky looks like the paint in my artwork! I am off to make myself a steaming cup of tea and hoping to see a sign of spring soon...🌸

Thanks so much for visiting and I hope you have a cozy Sunday!