 Welcome to Journaling with Movement Part 2. This week we are going to explore vertical movement. Again, I am using my moleskin day planner diary thing that I found at Goodwill. It already has writing and things in the background. I love that. I'm not concerned about covering up the background of said journal. I was inspired by this page, by this flower that I found in one of my issues of Flow magazine. I love the shape, the form, and the color of the paper. So the first thing we are going to do is we are going to take some Dina Wakeley media paints and we're going to try to at least closely match that color of blue. So the first thing I have is my little gladware container of white paint. It's random colors of white from different sources, mostly empty tubes and bottles that I couldn't get the white paint out, but I knew it was in there. I shove it all in that container and that's my white. It's a little bit off-white, but anyway, there's a little bit of Dina Wakeley's elephant. And then I also add in some lapis and a little bit of turquoise. And I add just a little bit at a time. You can always add more, but you can't take it back. And I do it until I get the mixture right. You see here, I said turquoise, but there's none in there. That's because the turquoise I realized as soon as I started mixing it, it was too cool, too gray. I needed to warm it up just a little bit. So I grabbed the tube of turquoise and put that in there and that was pretty good. So to spend some time mixing paint is not hard. Again, it doesn't have to be exact. And if you want to bypass this step, of course, if you have an image you're using and you want to get a color that's close, you of course can go buy a color. There's a lot of different craft paint brands out there and art journaling paint brands out there that have a lot of different colors. And you can just go buy a bottle of paint that's the right color. But if you have a lot of paint already, like I do, it doesn't take much time to just experiment a little bit and practice mixing some paint and just have some fun with it. The mixes that don't turn out, take a gift card and spread them on another journal or a scrap piece of paper. I really am a brush mixer. So I was being a little bit frustrated there with the palette knife. In the art world, I think you're either a brush mixer or a proper palette knife mixer. I'm a brush mixer. I admit it. I realize it's still too cool. So I add a little bit more of the turquoise and you see when I say a little bit, I really do mean a little bit. I am not adding much. And I'm mixing it up and then I'm going to actually put a little dollop of it on the piece of paper out of the Flow magazine and see how close I am. I'm not expecting an exact match. I just want it to be a little close. I think it's a little too dark. So I actually get the turquoise out again. I think I add white too as I'm watching this. I don't remember. I thought I added some more white to it, but I could be wrong. The little dish I'm using is from the Japanese dollar store. It's just a little condiment dish or sushi dish. Yep, see, I'm right. I added some more white to it. I know this white is not white white. Like I said, it's different brands, different colors of white. There was some, I think, titanium buff in there. Anything that was sort of white got stuck in there. And I just put it in a little gladware container with the lid on there tightly. It's fine. It lasts fine. So I realized the color itself is pretty good, but it was too dark. And it looked too dark on the paper. So I lightened it up with a blob of white. I tried that on there and I decided, you know what, that's pretty good. That's close enough, which is good enough. So now that we have the paint ready, we are going to rip the flower out of that page. And remember that we're thinking about creating a page that has vertical movement from the top to the bottom, or if you want the bottom to the top, depending on what image you're planning on using or drawing on your page. In this case, with my flowers, I want them to go from the bottom to the top. I want to use this flower from the magazine for at least one of the flowers. So I'm ripping it out. I don't care about it being fussy cut or perfect edges. I like the look of torn paper. So we're going to use that to our advantage. I just don't want it to have a big margin of paper. So I'm ripping it sort of close to the flower, not too close, but a little bit. And then we'll get that glued down on there. I'm putting my one finger in, you can see in place over the drawing as I am tearing so that I can make sure I don't tear the drawing in half because I'm not the most gentlest of souls on the planet. I don't want to wait for anything to dry. So we are using a glue stick to stick this down. And I am very inspired by this page, like I said, by the page of the magazine. As soon as I saw it, the flower inspired me, the color inspired me, and it was one of those things where you look at it and you're like, I know exactly what I want to do with that. I don't always plan things out that way, but in this case I definitely did. Now I'm taking a plain old big ballpoint crystal pen in black, my favorite art journaling pen, and I am going to mimic the flower that's in the page from the magazine. And I'm going to draw a series of them across the two pages vertically, making sure I have a movement going vertically in an interesting fashion though, across the page. These are flowers and they are doodles. Flowers in nature are not perfect, they're not even. They are uneven and interesting. So don't worry about things not being perfect, just have fun with it. Flowers are, in my opinion, one of the easiest things to doodle or draw on your page. They don't have to be realistic flowers, they could be a fantasy flower. I'm using sketchy scribbly lines, just being free with my marks and darkening up them where I want to add a little bit more interest by pushing harder on the pen and adding more marks. Then I'm going in with a little bit of the paint and I am carefully putting some of the blue paint on the petals of the flower I just drew. I'm not wanting to cover up any of the pen marks or all of the paper in the background. I'm just wanting to suggest that blue color in those flowers from that flower I tore out of the magazine. I decided my brush is too big so I was switching to a different brush. If I'm not mistaken, these brushes are stippling brushes. They're one of my favorites for scrubbing in a thin coating of paint onto a page. Because this is a moleskin daily diary thing and it's not intended for what I'm using it for, I do recommend if you're using a book like this that you be careful with the paper. Don't get it too wet and practice with your different materials. Some things are going to bleed through and some things won't. I like using the big ballpoint pen because for a lot of surfaces and a lot of papers I can make marks that I think are interesting that I am attracted to without worrying about bleeding through to the back side because the big does not bleed through generally. So I'm continuing to draw my flowers across the page. Because I'm doing it and as I'm creating more flowers and more sketchy marks on the page, I'm loving the paper, the composition more and more. And I really love creating vertical movement in my pages. It's one of my things at the moment. I do a lot of horizontal movement because it's easy. I find the vertical movement a little more challenging to make something that is interesting and cohesive and in this case this particular one really, really came out good I think. While I'm doing it I'm sort of glancing off to the side at my little tray of scraps that's laying on my table and I have some quotes there. I have different pieces just to see if there's anything over there I think that might fit. I do eventually find something. So just because the movement is going to be vertical doesn't mean all of your lines need to be straight. It just means that you want to have the viewer of the composition have their eyes travel from the bottom up to the top of the page or the piece of artwork. In this case because not only are the stems for the most part going that way but the flowers are different heights. So as they're looking at the small one, the medium one, the big one, they're traveling up the page. That's what you want. You want the eye to travel across the page, up the page, from corner to corner. Maybe dance around the page like music notes. So think about how you can add movement to your art journal pages and how you can incorporate the idea of movement in your art journals into your work. It's really my favorite way to journal. I'm not concerned with covering up the background as much as allowing it to suggest the shape and form and function that I want it to. I really love working on these old planners and old books much, much more than a brand new journal with blank paper in it. I think this is more fun. I think you might too. So I am going to continue to draw flowers and then add my blue paint. If you get any blue paint on the black pen, you can always let the paint dry and then go back in and put more black pen over it. Or you can grab a baby wipe really quick and wipe some of that paint off. The ballpoint pen shouldn't smear, especially if it's dry already. It shouldn't smear, but it shouldn't smear at least not easily. I've never had that problem with it, but I don't want to wait for things to dry, so I do think at some point I get paint somewhere where I don't want it and I get a baby wipe out. I always want to draw something right over the seam, right over the fold. Why is that? So this particular flower, I want it to be behind the others. But I want it to, of course, help me with my movement going up. So I am drawing it going sort of semi-diagonally the other way, but I'm making sure that the lines I'm drawing are behind the other ones that I've already drawn. So think about when you're drawing your flowers or whatever on your page, think about the composition and drawing your things so they look like they're layered on the page. Maybe not three-dimensionally because I'm really not into three-dimensional realistic drawing, but at least two-dimensionally. So it's suggested that it's a three-dimensional thing. Because of the nature of this paper, I wouldn't recommend using any sort of black ink to darken up your lines. That would definitely will bleed through. So you see me just adding more of the black ballpoint pen. That's easier and it's not going to show through the paper on the back side. So now I'm going to add the blue paint. I really love this color of blue. I don't know what the deal is with that blue color. I might have to mix more of it up. I really love it. Or take the whole journal with me over to Michael's and see if there's a craft paint that's this color blue. I do think it's on this flower somewhere where I get some paint on some of the black lines and I have no patience. I have the patience of a nat on a good day. So I didn't want to wait for anything to dry. I didn't want to be bothered with getting out my heat gun. So I just got out a baby wipe and wiped off some of the paint off of the black ink. Yep, there we go. And it didn't completely take it off, but it took it off enough to make me happy. And I'm going to go back to anything that I think I missed that needs some more of the blue paint. I love that blue. And I initially started creating this page thinking I would do other things on it that I would add other stuff. And then I realized as I was making it, you know what, I just like it the way it is. So I start to clean up and I'm looking at the page thinking it needs words or something. And then I realize I have words or something finding life balance. It fits on the page. I don't know why it does. It just does. And of course the backgrounds of the words are kind of a blue color, not the same color, but it just works. It's cut out of a magazine, a different magazine. I don't remember which one. And so I'm cutting the words apart and we are also going to glue those on the page. I am going to use a glue stick again. You don't always have to use gel medium or fluid matte medium. I like glue stick. Glue stick works fine. I also like staples and sort of industrial things to put things into my journal. So don't feel like you have to just do things one way, do it your way, have fun with it and create something that you find interesting. I want you to explore the idea of movement in your journals, movement on your pages. Have some fun with it. Find if you need to some kind of little image or drawing out of a magazine or book that inspires you to create your page like I did here out of Flow Magazine. If you don't know what that is, I will put a link in the description below. You can buy them at Barnes & Noble by the way. And it's a great inspirational magazine for paper lovers. So it's intentionally for paper lovers. I do decide that the magazine needs some white dots or something, but I don't want to add tons of color. I want to keep it in the color tones or color family that it is already. So I take my paint pen out and it's working. Thank God. Yahoo! I'm so bad about messing up my pens because I don't wait for things to dry. But anyway, it's working and so I create some white dots in a vertical pattern. So again, it helps with the motion of the page and track things up the page from the bottom to the top. And it helps emphasize that vertical movement in my page. And I really, again, I love the way this one turns out. So I want you to experiment this week with vertical movement in your art journal pages and have some fun with it, enjoy the process, and see where you can go with it. And above all, besides liking, sharing, and subscribing, and leaving a comment if you have one in the description below, go out and have a great day. Do something nice for yourself because you deserve it and I'll see you later.