Hello Friends!

It has been quite a while since I worked on my Van Gogh journal! Our oldest child is visiting for a few weeks before going back to work another trails season for the summer. So we have been visiting, and I wasn’t feeling real artsy until yesterday! Then once I got going, I ended up creating FOUR more spreads! (I was on a roll!) So I will be posting the other three page spreads over the next few days. I only have three more spreads to create now, and this journal will be done! I will have mixed feelings about finishing it, though. But the next journal I plan to do will be about Degas. I will be creating all of it on my own, though, since I don’t have a book about him like this one that I am willing to rip pages from to make a journal.

For this spread in this journal I was feeling happy! I used some washi tape of flowers and birds, stamped a few turtles and blue circles with a sponge, embellished the painting of van Gogh with a bird’s wing and painted over it a little. Then I added some flowers I cut out and painted. And I glued down cut out copies of grasses I had drawn years ago on my badger pencil drawing. I used acrylic inks for everything except some fluid acrylic paints for the blue circles. I also added a thick blue ribbon in the binding for a bookmark. There will be a picture showing more of the bookmark tomorrow; it shows up better on the next pages.

The painting of Van Gogh here was not done by Vincent. It was painted by Francis Bacon in 1957. It was part of a series of six paintings he dedicated to the subject of Van Gogh. This particular painting was inspired by Vincent’s painting The Painter on the Road to Tarascon which he did in 1888. However, it was destroyed in World War II, so Bacon never saw the original and worked from a reproduction. This painting is called Study for a Portrait of Van Gogh IV. Also, I think he did other paintings in Vincent’s style.

I have never read about or studied any of Francis Bacon’s paintings, so that’s going to be my next art research project! I won’t be dedicating a journal to his work, but now my curiosity is peaked, so I am interested in finding out more about him.

I hope you are all doing well! We have had both of our vaccinations now, but are still practicing social distancing and wearing our masks. Stay well my friends!

Have a wonderful day! 🙂