Artistic Restraint...

Artistic Restraint? As soon as you tell me I can't do something, I want to do the complete opposite! So completing the prompt for Journal 52 this week did not come easily.

One colour, one shape...

Colour, that's the easy bit - shades of blue. Shape - circles. But I wanted a third element. For me, artistically things work better as odds, not evens. The placement of three items is more aesthetically pleasing to the eye, your brain sees it differently to evenly numbered items. With evens you want to group or pair them together, they have to be symmetrical and evenly spaced. Odds means more freedom as you automatically can't pair them up! So I had a to add a few lines in too, to balance the page. What do you think?

I started by die cutting a range of circles, used them as a template and dribbled distress ink around them and up the page in lots of rivers of colour. This took an age to dry! Then I used the holes from the circles I cut as stencils and added others using different shades of blue. Then I die cut circles from patterned paper, distressed and layered on top. Then out came the pens - scribbling around the circles and adding the lines on top. The straight lines weren't quite enough to balance the page, so I added a few 'zig-zag' lines around three circles (see, the odd number again!) and added a title around the larger circle. A few gems stuck on, sprays of blue ink and white paint and I'm done. I think. I keep coming back to it as I'm not quite convinced...

Head on over to have a look at some other great examples and inspiration. Have a great week!