The Start of Winter Break

Last weekend my dad made the announcement that he would be retiring on June 1st.  He plans to go into the office once or twice a week, but other than that he and mom hope to do a little traveling, making many weekends 3 or 4 days long.  Mom has been collecting travel articles from the paper.  These articles are about road trips around Arizona and now they plan to take some of these trips.

Of course, I decided they would need a travel journal of sorts.  At Arizona Art Supply, I bought an 11" x 14" sketchbook.  I knew I wanted to include an image of an old car from a magazine on the cover.  I looked through some Newsweek magazines from 1970 and came up with a few options.  I selected the VW Beetle because it was a front on shot and I could include a photo of mom and dad like they were in the car.  Even though they never owned a Beetle, I selected it anyways!  I thought a lot about the title for the book, tossing around several ideas.  "Explore the Road" came to me just yesterday while I was waiting for Rainy's plane at the airport.  It was short and it had a good sound to it!  I used masking tape to block a border around the sketchbook and to outline where the road would be.  I used stick on letters as a reverse stencil, then worked in various shades of yellow, orange, and red oil pastels over the cover of the sketchbook.  I made the values a little lighter towards the bottom that at the top.  Once the pastels were in place I removed the tape and the letters.  I applied a layer of matte medium over the entire front cover to prevent the oil pastels from smudging.  When the medium was dry, I applied another layer, this time securing the VW Beetle in place.  I like the way the complementary colors (blue & orange) help the car show up even better!

I actually started the inside spread before I did the cover.  It seemed like a lot of white, so I used 2 different stamps, a checkered stamp in brown and a leafy pattern in green to break up the whiteness and plainness of the spread.  I collaged in place a variety of small images or stuff that I had on hand like the stamps and the December calendar.  I cut the cacti from an Arizona Highways magazine and the map of Arizona from a map of the states.  I used an old-style letter maker to write Bill and Nancy Haug and their address.  I also added low-relief objects like the St. Christopher's medal and the key.  It was a spread that seemed to come together as I worked on it.