Stacked Journaling in a New Way

Well, I sure hope you're all not utterly sick of seeing more Stacked Journaling, because I have been developing it steadily over the months and I love the current direction it's taking in my painting and mixed-media work!

A few weeks ago, I began composing SJ art letters by squeezing paint directly onto my substrate out of a bottle that employs a fine, metal tip screwed to its spout. This gave me tremendous freedom not only to be able to use all of the various paint mediums at my disposal, but also to be able to write in many different scales, from very large to very small. 

One afternoon while composing a Stacked Journaling letter in this manner, I began to get frustrated with the paint I was using: I'd thickened it too much and it was getting blobby and heavy on the canvas. I grabbed a piece of deli paper, carefully placed it on top of the painted SJ, blotted with the lightest pressure, and lifted the paper away. POOF, I'd discovered Monoprinted Stacked Journaling. It was as if someone had hit me with a sledgehammer and my heart started galloping in my chest.

I've been obsessively using monoprinting with my painted SJ ever since.

In this piece, a 16" x 20" stretched canvas, I layered multiple monoprints of SJ in white, lemon yellow and golden yellow Neopaque paint on top of a painted background of soft yellows. A polishing of violet textile paint came next, and finally, one last bold stripe of monoprinted SJ in magenta brings the piece into focus.

To create the monoprints, I Journaled in paint onto strips of parchment paper, turned them over, and carefully pressed them onto the canvas. Using parchment allows me to wrap the SJ around the edges of the canvas, giving it an even more finished look. Here are those lovely, leftover parchment strips hanging on my design wall (I wish I could actually reuse them in my work, but being parchment, the paint will never adhere to the paper.)

In a wonderfully mysterious way, the Stacked Journaling plays hide-and-seek with the eye, fading in and out through the transparent layers of paint. The text, while perfectly obscured for privacy, still nonetheless reads as very deliberate and directed text (which it is), rather than as simple scribbles. 

I think it's about time to take this technique to something larger, like a gallery-sized canvas or a couple of yards of fabric!

Happy creating!