It's All Perspective by Susanne Rector

"What seems ordinary is often extraordinary; it's all perspective." 

Hi there friends,

My name is Susanne Rector. I’m new to the Artistcellar Design Team and am super happy to be on this one! 

Originally from Germany, I’ve been living in the Los Angeles area for the past 30 years. I consider myself a multi-media artist, loving to art-journal. Art journaling to me is a great way to release some ‘penned-up’ creativity. It’s a fun way to start a little project, which doesn’t ‘have to be’ anything!

So, with that in mind, I sat down one afternoon and opened my art journal. 

I was at my new Tiny House Trailer, which I’m restoring right now. So I don’t have a lot of art materials there. Looking through what I have available, I pick a few things:

An assortment of brushes, a small travel pallet of watercolors and a few NeoColor II water-soluble crayons. Of course I’ll have some water.

Staring at that white page - we all know how that sometimes goes - nothing inspiring comes to mind … YET! So, let’s just make a background and see where it will lead us. I’m choosing to use the neocolors and scribble with them all over the page.

To soften the background scribbles and give me some ‘tooth’ for the next layer, I use white Gesso to activate the neocolor crayons.

I feel like intensifying the background and using my watercolor, staying in the same color space, I add more color and let it dry.

I have these wonderful stencils from Artistcellar which feel really inspiring right now. These are the 6x6 Water Series stencils.

Using some acrylic paint and the stencils, I added some loose texture to the background.

Having some texture on my page, I now look for some collage items in a magazine I have. I come up with a few I like. 

I especially like the girl with the blowing skirt and the mirror image of her - that feels like it wants to be on that page.

I position her and affix her with Matte Medium and let everything dry.

Next I use the Sea Foam stencil again. This time I add some dimensionally with some Modeling Paste or Texture Medium, which I apply through the stencil.

And letting all that dry again.

Time to do a little painting. Here are the colors I have available, so I’ll use them. 

My paint process is simple - I follow the light and dark shades as outlines in the collage.

I add some dry-brushed paint to the texture medium as well.

And find some words that feel right for the page. I have a Tim Holtz words collection sticker pad available to me, so I choose some from there.

And there you have it - a lovely afternoon practice of Art Journaling.

XOXO Susanne

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