24Steps Art and Design

Welcome to another wonderful art journal page post 🙂

I say this with a chuckle because the quote for the page is:

You don’t have to be perfect to be wonderful

Of course being wonderful is subjective and there may be various reasons why something is wonderful to you. In this case the page is wonderful to me because it is finished and a mistake was successfully corrected. I’ll explain more about that later . . .

I think the saying ‘count your blessings’ is relevant here too. So instead of worrying about what’s not perfect focus on what is good about you and there are bound to be plenty of things especially if you ask those who are close to you. Here is a really interesting discussion of imperfect but wonderful art. The same with an art journal page – it may not have worked out the way you wanted but there will be wonderful things about it that you can use in another page. It’s all a bit mix and match with art; you pick things from your own experience as well as inspiration from other artist’s work and put them back together in a way that expresses your ideas. So everything is wonderful in some way but you may have to apply creative interpretation sometimes . . . chuckle 😉

Imperfect but Wonderful Art Journal Page Process

I started off with an idea for a background full of tropical leaves and flowers which led to making a stencil on my cutter tool. I applied matt acrylic to the background of the page so that I could use distress oxide inks through the stencil – a glossy acrylic would resist the inks. I blended the inks through the stencil so that they were in bands from light to dark. I could have applied a second coat i think to get a stronger result here. Then I added a lighter coloured acrylic to the background as the dark green was killing everything off. The woman’s face was created with oil pastels which I love for their textural, painterly effects. But here I made a mistake – I painted the eye facing forwards while the rest of the face was more 3/4 and much too big and in the wrong position. Not to worry a handy dandy craft knife set came to the rescue! I chose a flat blade and scraped back the pastel making the eye. After this I repainted the eye using white Posca pen for the white and oil pastels for the test. I was happier with the ‘new eye’ although the face remains ‘imperfect’.

Other Wonderful Art

When I think of perfectionism in art the photorealist painters come to mind. In this type of painting an intensely realistic image is painted often using photographs for reference. I am in awe when I see this work. But . . . to me wonderful art is the more expressive kind with imperfections and ‘happy accidents’. There is an art movement called ‘disrupted realism’ which combines realistic painting with abstract elements or deliberate ‘errors’. I find it very interesting and you can find out more about it in this excellent book. Art movements aside, art journals are great places to find imperfect art. Those little mistakes, when you look back on the page years later are fully human elements in the page and I find they make the page more real. Often these mistakes are where the emotion in the page can be found. So to me you are not wonderful despite being imperfect but because of it.

Imperfect but Wonderful Art Journal Page Video

Below is a video showing the key stages of my page:

I hope this gives you some encouragement but also a bit of a different perspective on art that allows you to let go a bit. Hugs, Ceri xx



Tagged as: Tags acrylic, oil pastels, stenciling