This journal has been a long time coming. It began nearly two years ago when I received a package from Europe with these yummy large cell pieces of cardboard. I fell in love with their thick open structure and the way they sounded when you handled the pieces. They have this wonderful almost hollow crispy paper sound. I knew immediately I wanted to save them for an art journal but had no idea how I would bind it. They went into my cardboard storage and sat for a year and a half. One day I was perusing YouTube and caught a video by DeeDee Catron of UmWow Studio (see video below), in which she uses a tab binding technique. It was at that moment when sudden inspiration struck. This was the binding method I needed for my chunky cardboard pieces. As a result of finding the binding method, content ideas began flooding in and journal creation began. I must preface that also at this time I was re-honing my face drawing skills (at that point it had been like 25+ years since I had drawn a face). I do not really know what led me to focusing on the music of Linda Lewis. I could have been the sound the cardboard made, it could have been the contrasts I found between Linda Lewis and the cardboard, it could have been what I was listening to when inspiration struck or even a little bit of it all. I’m really not sure, but it was where I was lead.

A BIT OF BACKSTORY

When I was young, approximately 7 years old or so, I was on a visit with my family in St. Louis, MO. So it was probably around 1974. My Dad was with me on this visit so a lot of our time was spent visiting with his friends, who were very diverse musical types. I was consistently exposed to a varied type of musical styles including jazz, R&B, funk, soul, blues and more. It was during one of these times when someone introduced me to Linda Lewis and her album Lark. I specifically remember telling my Dad that he had to buy it for me. I still have that album today. Linda Lewis is a tiny British woman with a huge vocal range and she completely captured my musical attention. Her voice is one moment comforting like a little girls and then can go all emotionally rough and gritty. It was these contrasts that I tried to bring to this journal.

THE CREATION

During the creation I listened to music from a variety of her albums. (You can click on the album image below to hear her music). I began with taking a variety of digital images from the web and altering them. Here is a look at some of what I did. With the sample below I took the original image and initially turned it to black and white. My next step was to then add a sepia tone to it. Finally, I printed it onto tea-stained paper that had writing on it.

Next, I printed a couple of images out that I painted directly over the original image. This process was a lot of fun. Finally, I used printed images of Linda Lewis as a reference and drew a few by hand. I used this as an opportunity to practice my face drawing skills and again used a textural medium for her hair. Below are samples of these processes. I have a lot of work still needed on my faces, but it was good practice and above all I had fun.

I created a whole YouTube series of the making of this art journal. You can click on the image below to go to my YouTube channel. The Lark Journal was also selected by Stampington & Company to appear in their Spring 2021 issue of Art Journaling magazine.

Click on the image above to go to Stampington & Company and view more details about this issue of Art Journaling magazine.

The Lark Journal | A Personal Journey