The April First Entry in My 2016 Fake Journal

The finished April 1, 2016 entry.

While I was able to start my fake journal for 2016 on April 1, and continue it, I’ve yet to post about it. Life has been very packed. Finding time to squeeze the project in has been goal one.

Click on any image to see an enlargement.

Today I’d like to start posting the images from the project. I’ve been torn as to whether I should post explanations about my pieces here or on my regular blog—by explanations I mean some step-by-step process discussion. I’m still not sure and at this point I simply want to get some posts up. I think there will be a little bit here and a little bit on my regular blog. We’ll see.

Keeping with this year’s theme of “Shift in Place” and my suggestion that people not do any prep, or do minimal prep (take stock of what supplies they have on hand for example) I waited to jump in on April 1. I did buy and cut boards and I knew my character would be working mostly with pencil and watercolor on cold press watercolor board.

You can read my thoughts about this minimal preparation here.

Stage 1: the background
with the pencil sketch clearly visible.

We are now 19 days into the project and frankly I still can’t tell you much about my character. I didn’t shift a whole lot from myself. She has similar interests—particularly in sketching portraits (people or animals). 

What I can tell you is different is that she is good at setting time aside for painting in her life. The project is about taking time. I think I needed that in my life right now.

This brings up a lot of discomfort for me. I like to work in the bits of time I can find. I push myself too hard. I don’t make time for projects that require a lot of extended work because I’m too busy with other things (as we all are). But in recent months my attitudes have been shifting as I look at how I’ll be spending my free time going forward. And also as I look at how teaching online is working with the rest of my life. 

Stage 2: Light Washes of Watercolor
and some background adjustments.

Knowing the why or how of something doesn’t always lessen the discomfort. The first week of this project I was pretty grumpy. I think that came from the realization that there wasn’t enough time in the world to give me the time I needed or WANTED to spend on the project I wanted to do. That made me grumpy.

But Dick pointed out I’m always grumpy at first, until I start to settle into the character, to hear the character in any odd moments. Then things start to feel more “normal” and I grumble less. I even get excited about various pieces. Right now in week 3 territory there’s the inevitable shifting of boundaries and testing whether something needs to evolve, we’ll see how that goes.

Stage 3: I start to put in light
washes of watercolor.

I laugh about the early weeks now. But I still don’t know this character at all because she doesn’t keep a journal like I do, she simply paints. She likes to play with space, and she is a really big fan of masking tape and frisket.

I know I struggled a couple days over whether to use ink or not but then I realized when my friend Tom came over to sit for a portrait for this project that there was no question that my character would have used the PPBP with watercolor because she uses what’s efficient and works to the scale she wants to do and the time frame she has. So except for the fact she sometimes uses pencil and that she glazes and glazes and glazes, we aren’t that different.

We’ll see how it all pans out. 

Stage 4: I have to do something about
the background color in the hair
so I use some white gouache.

In this post I’ve started with the final image which is Derwent Drawing Terra Cotta pencil on Arches Cold Press watercolor board, with watercolor, and then corrections in that Terra Cotta pencil. (The light blue in the image is Montana Acrylic Marker.)

I thought you might enjoy seeing the steps as I moved along.

The REAL ROZ is a bit perturbed at how the likeness got lost from the pencil to the painting. And so my editing eye had to have a little chat with her editing eye, and so it goes. This will need to be an ongoing discussion.

Stage 5: More glazes.

What follows are the remaining stages that I took photos of. I wasn't great at stopping at set points to take a photo. I just took them when I remembered. 

I did realize that working on painted backgrounds as I did in my regular journals wasn't going to work for this project as it created too many issues with the watercolor. I have been more careful going forward. 

The images show a color shift because I didn't have the best of lighting conditions to shoot them under. The final image, appearing at the top of this column is an accurate scan.

I'm unclear why Blogger is arranging images with the text the way it is, but I don't use this blog enough to know the ins and outs. I hope you'll bear with me.

Stage 6: the final stage
before I added
by sketch materials
(collage) and
did drew in the notes.