Recent Art Journal Pages

I started this page ages ago by impulsively scribbling down the Shakespeare quote. A long time later, I used gel medium to glue down torn strips of a photocopied page of a story I'd written. I still had no idea what to do with it. Much later again, I decided to try out my new acrylic spreader medium on it. When mixed with acrylic paints, it turns the medium into a transparent glaze. I used it with navy blue and a little silver, and sponged it liberally all over. Then I went over the quote a few more times with greylead and purple pencil to make it stand out a little more (but not too much - I wanted it to have a shabby, mundane look). I was tempted to add more elements, but I decided to leave it there, with a slightly minimalist (for me) look. The gel medium I'd added previously and slopped about without really thinking about it created an unexpected batik effect when I added the thinned navy paint over the top.
The page went from one I felt very ambivalent about to one that I really quite like.

What A Piece of Work. Photocopied text collage, gel medium, pencil, acrylic paint in spreader medium.
This page really has two different topics, but I bound them together visually using my new aqua blue acrylic paint. I don't really like the composition of the collage - that's something I feel I need to work on. I do like the drawing and juxtaposition of the heart element with the writing. This is when I started to realise that it would be fun to collect receipts and other scraps that I would otherwise have thrown away, and use them as mementos of a particular occasion.

I Want A Holiday / Visit from Mum. Magazine image, wrapping paper and ephemera collage, acrylic paint, metallic rub, pen.
As you can see, I'd been using this page to practice calligraphy. I didn't want to waste the rest of the page though, so I used the striped paper scrap to separate it from the rest of the page. I'd started out laying down light blue paint vertically; I added the dark blue oil pastel horizontally to suggest the ocean. The sails are a nod to the Sydney bay paintings of Brett Whiteley - I wanted to convey a sense of space, sunlight and heat. (I've obviously been yearning for the Spring that the local weather hasn't yet been providing this year.) I added green glitter glue to suggest the ocean swells sparkling in the sunlight.
I don't normally use quotes in my journal, but I added a few lines from a song that's been stuck in my head a lot lately.

Into The Blue Sea. Paper and ephemera collage, acrylic paint, oil pastel, felt-tip pen, glitter glue.
Here is a shot of the outside of my journal. I've only used about 10 pages, but it's starting to look obese already. That's inevitable when you're adding thick paint and glued-in papers to nearly every page. I've starting thinking about cutting out some of the central pages to even it out a bit.

On The Edge.
I did this page earlier today. It's in a new journal that I've started which is for when I want to concentrate on practising drawing with little to no paint, or I want to document something in my life, like the meal that I cooked on Thursday night:

Dirty Rice. Pen, watercolour.