Those ugly pages and what I do with them

Yes I still make ugly messes in my art journal. But you don’t often see them. And the main reason for that is because when I personally make a mess I don’t consider it to be a mess.

I consider it to be ‘still in transition’. You see as an artist who enjoys texture as much as I do paint I am always trying to get more of it. And in the case of this painting I was testing out a bottle of one step crackle. I am not sure if I got a bad batch of the product, if it’s ability to crackle has a shelf life, or if the product is simply not as advertised. But for whatever the reason I was not getting a decent crackle effect out of it.

In frustration I drizzled a bunch of it out all over the place onto my open journal and let it dry. Ending up with thin areas, medium areas and really thick areas. Most of which did not crackle. Frustrating to say the least.

But although this was a mess of a page and what many might have considered an ugly mess to me it was just a page in transition.

Siting down to watch a movie I had my favorite cheap ball point pen and was flipping through pages in my journal. Just adding details and doodle to various pages. And sketching. I came upon this page and started sketching a woman. A bit of a challenge to sketch over the raised and inconsistent textures. But I love a challenge!

Later I finished the page with paint and stencils and all of my various favorite journal materials.

But I wanted to show that no page is ever ruined or an ugly mess and everything can be ‘in transition’ until the point where you, the artist, considers it complete.