Art · art journal · Moonshine 2020

April 2020 Full Alder Moon in Libra

It’s been quite a while since I made any art. Stress, illness, and numbness have all taken a toll on my creativity. However, a member of an art group I am in mentioned that we could view this time, this full moon, as a portal into a new world of our own creation rather than trying to return to our previous normal. This resonated with me instantly. Over the past month, an image kept returning to me over and over again with a full moon split and an opening in between. This mention of a portal finally solidified that vision and motivated me to start making art again so that I could put the image down on paper.

So, for my full Alder moon in Libra art journal spread for Effy Wild‘s Moonshine 2020 course, I created this full moon portal using black gesso, metallic watercolor, traditional watercolor, Golden fluid acrylics, white and gold Posca pens, and Strumpet Stencils.

It felt good to get back to making art. It felt good to get lost in the process and give my racing mind a much needed break. Moving forward, I’ve made a commitment to #the100dayproject to draw a face every day for 100 days. I posted my first face here on the blog earlier today. I’m hoping that making this commitment will help me get back to my daily creative practice.

Art · art journal

Full Pink Moon 2019 Art Journal Spread

I’ve been participating in Effy Wild’s Moonshine course since January. I love how it’s helped me become more aware of the moon’s cycles. I’ve noticed that since I’ve created a ritual around creating at new moon and full moon each month, I receive visions tied to them each month. When a vision comes to me, which usually happens a few days before new moon and full moon, I try to get down a rough sketch, and then I just let my mind work for the next few days on how to translate what I’ve been shown onto paper.

Below is my full pink moon art journal spread. It is a bit different than the vision I received. In the vision, I saw a woman curled up inside the center of a fully-bloomed rose which was encased in a full pink moon. For this spread, I covered the page with gesso. Once dried, I sprayed it with water and added several different colors of Brusho crystals. I then created a moon mask with cardstock and painted the remainder of the page with black and payne’s gray acrylic paint. I sprayed gold and white acrylic ink on the background once it was dry. I then applied a stencil from Sarah Trumpp with gold acrylic paint to add texture to the moon. Adding the curled form in the center was difficult. I ran into a lot of issues with pens that would not write on the surface, and so it took several tries to get her to a place I was okay with. I traced her image onto the moon using carbon paper, then tried to outline her with white which didn’t work out very well. So, I painted the image with black acrylic, and then tried once again to outline her with white. It still didn’t work out. I took a baby wipe and wiped most of what I had done away, and then added the same stencil image with gold acrylic as I had added to the moon. That left her looking a bit snakish. So, I took a gold gel pen, outlined her, and then started to outline some of the markings from the stencil, and that created an image that I was really happy with. Since this moon was a full pink, willow moon, I added willow leaves with a stabilo-all white pencil, so they would be less prominent than if I had used a gel pen. Overall, I really love how this spread turned out.