This week I went a bit overboard and made four new pages (oops?...)
You can see their making process here or on my YouTube channel:
The idea for these pages was to show our guy's (the journal owner) reaction to the letter we found last week, but in different ways. The first pair of pages shows the reaction in an indirect way, through things like composition and imagery.
This journal is not a diary, so he's not going to sit down and write what he feels, but the letter upset him. We all have days when something personal bothers us and we just can't concentrate on work and everything seems to go wrong. The journal owner was having a day like that, so I used a messier composition, as if he kept dropping things, so the overall composition suggests things falling out of that pocket on the bottom left page and spreading out.
The pocket connects visually to the folder we had in last week's pages because it has the same decorated edge. I've placed two cards with impressed leaves in it, this was the focus technique for this video. I learned it from Lydia Fiedler a couple of years back when she showed it on her blog, Understand Blue, she used it to make cards and it is great for card-making because you get two impressions so can make two cards in one go, and really - have you seen the detail??
These two little cards were made with Coleus leaves, on the left is a Duck-leg Coleus and the one on the right is Coleus Blumei. Apparently, there's an ongoing discussion on whether the name Coleus should be used, because these plants are no longer considered a separate genus, but I'll stick with the familiar name. Coleus plants were known in the West in Victorian times, but I couldn't find any meaning attached to them, maybe they were too new. They had medicinal use in India since old, but that didn't seem to catch in the West. I used them mainly for the decorative aspect here, the leaves have strong colors and patterns that come out beautifully in this impression techniques. I go into the process in detail in the video, and give some tips for getting better results.
Under the cards is a selection of ephemera spread out as if they fell this way. It's a combination of pieces we've seen before: field labels, post stamps... I also stamped a lot of random numbers around, these are part of his work, but at the moment everything is a little bit overwhelming and he just can't concentrate so it all jumps around in his head (and on the page).
The right page continues this idea, and some of the numbers reappear and connect the composition, but the focal of this page is the torn specimen baggy (the making process of these baggies was shown in the first video of the series).
The second pair of pages takes a more direct approach to expressing our guy's inner turmoil. The overall composition is simple, and brings out the details of all the stains and wrinkles, but there's definitely more to these pages.
The left page has a flower impression that was made in the same technique as the leaf cards we saw before, I just used flowers this time - lobelias to be exact. The idea here
is that the page originally had a pressed flower in it, much like the tags we did last week, but here the protective page got torn and the flower itself lost, so
all we’re left with is the impression of the flower. I adhered a stained and torn
piece of vellum to the page, all that's left of the protective page, and because it’s
impossible to know what flower it was form this impression, I added a label on
the vellum.
In Victorian flower
language lobelia stands for malevolence and arrogance. When I found that out, my
first thought was – why? It’s such a cute flower! My second thought was – I bet
Tolkien knew...
As for the why, apparently lobelia has a toxin that causes you
to vomit, and in the past it was used just for that in medical treatments. It even got some - ah - colorful names because of this, like 'puke weed', 'gag root' and 'vomit wort'. And let's face it - even if it’s supposed to help you, vomiting is never fun so lobelias got stuck with
bad associations…
In the context of this project, the lobelia might indicate our writer's feelings toward some of the people he left behind and the events that made him leave. It seems that he figured at this point that he won't be able to focus on his work until he replied that letter, so he started jotting things down on an empty page, and
it’s pretty clear from all the crossed lines that he needed to get some things
out...
I wrote this in a waterproof pen so I can ink and
stain the page as much as I like. I started with the oldie but goodie wrinkle-ink-iron technique Tim Holtz showed years ago (and again in one of his recent demos), then added more stains, distressed the edges and finished with adding some nice big creases.
I hope it's readable enough (it's definitely better than my actual handwriting...), it's interesting to think about what was crossed out and what was left as acceptable for the replay. We learn our guy - let's just call him J. - has a sister, Margret, who sent him the letter we found last week. She's about to be married, and it seems she wrote the letter asking her brother to change his mind so he can be at her wedding. But J. feels that his presence will not be welcome and, though he probably wouldn't say it to her face, that his sister doesn't understand or really sympathies with his situation.
We'll never know what the final letter looked like, it was either sent or never written, but this draft might be more telling. What do you think will happen next? What do you think started all this? I'd love to hear what you think ❤
Till next time,
xx
Naama
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