The Living Years

Hi there. Hope your weekend is going well. This is my TCB weekend: it's been too long since I've art journaled. I usually try to play at Art Journal Journey and missed last month. So it's been on my mind to not miss another. I had already planned a handful of spreads and gathered materials, so I chose to finish up the one that was the furthest along in process: a lyrical tribute to Mike and the Mechanix 1988 song, The Living Years.

The song is about generations and generation gaps -- between parent and child, father and son. It's a ballad and tells a story. And from the first time I heard it, I considered it very special with a poignant important message. Just a few lines in my journal couldn't suffice. Had to be every line, like a beloved poem, in my Book of Wisdom journal.

 

(Click on any image to enlarge.)

SUPPLIES:
Collage Sheet Images by Collage Stuff, Crowabout, Teesha Moore
Paper Snippets from my scrap stash
Die: Spellbinders Frame, MFT Jumbo Fishtail Banner Stax
Stencils: Joggles Scalloped Rows; Tim Holtz Dot Fade; Stamplorations Confetti Circles; Tim Holtz Splatter; TCW Bricks; Sheena Douglass Grunge Tree
Other:  Rub-ons, Stickers, black vintage photo corners from my stash; Posca Paint Pens; Acrylic paints; Distress inks; Fiskars Heritage corner punch

I took some process shots to share of the background as I created it, because I used several stencils with acrylic paints after gessoing my paper and painting a base coat of blue. First stencil up was Joggles' Scalloped Rows in brown.

I followed that with Tim Holtz's Dot Fade Layering stencil and yellow paint, then Stamplorations' Confetti Circles in more yellow paint. Then TCW's Bricks stencil in red paint, followed by Tim's Splatter stencil in more red paint. Above photo is after those steps.

Once all that dried, I used a black Posca Paint Pen to trace trees in front of the brick walls using Sheena Douglass's Grunge Tree stencil.

I colored in the tree trunk and branches and then dotted on leaves (and smeared a bit of paint on purpose, too), all with my Poscas. The tree on the left symbolizes the Spring/Summer of Life and the right hand side tree is of course the Autumn of Life (for the father/son generations in the song). The brick walls also represent inability to communicate as in talking/arguing past each other, not being able to see the other's point or understand them. I lucked out and was able to work intuitively on this, so I'm not for certain, but I think the scalloped brown rows reminded me of Arlington cemetery...the rows of graves. What a cool background, huh?

So by this point it was time to cover the background up with my collage of images and lyrics. I chose a story of images to complement the story in the song. This was the last leg of the spread that I worked on yesterday and did not take that terribly long. When I finished, I wondered why the heck I had left this spread hanging in process for so long. One more spread done with favorite song lyrics for me to remember - yay!

CHALLENGES:
1.  Art Journal Journey September Challenge: Dots, Stripes, Plaid or Patterns
2.  Creative Fingers Challenge #170: AG
3.  More Mixed Media September Challenge: AG + Opt. Browns
4.  Crafty Creations Challenge #397: AG
5.  LTCCB # 38: September AG
6.  Creative Artiste Mixed Media Challenge #53: Anything Mixed Media Goes
7.  Simply Create Too Challenge #153: AG / No Twist
8.  ABMTTC Challenge #99: Always AG
9.  Stamplorations Summer Mixed Media Challenge: AMMG + Stencil

10. Pixie's Snippets Playground Challenge #360: AG with Snippets -- Yes, Please include me in the draw and Thank You!

11. Outlawz Festive Friday Sept. 6-19: Anything Goes theme

12. Paint Party Friday: Week 27, Year Nine -- my background is all acrylic paints

Thanks so much for dropping by to check my art out! Until next time, Keep It Krafty! XOX