Art journal prompt: Alternative Mark Making

The Day 8 creative prompt was Alternative Mark Making. I mixed up a complementary color palette of red-orange and blue-green, and a few neutrals and worked larger on an 11×14 sheet of bristol coated with acrylic gesso. It was fun to make the marks with non-brush tools like credit cards, sharpened chopstick, popsicle stick, crumpled paper, and a mascara wand. One of my favorite tools was a little rolled up piece of canvas which made the round stamp shapes.

I also really liked little surprises where the warm and cool colors played against each other. So for me, this exploration hurts my eyes too much (I crave order!) but I appreciate investigating what those little moments are that work:

Today I read this quote in The Painterly Approach: An Artist’s Guide To Seeing, Painting And Expressing by Bob Rohm:

“For me, the painterly approach is more about the relationships of color, value, composition, texture and mood than it is about the subject being painted. It’s a process by which we interpret and express an idea or feeling rather than render a particular subject.”

It made me think that if I begin my art journaling time with an idea or feeling in addition to the prompts provided, it would help provide a direction without being limiting.