WOIW: Oneness

The word for Word Of Inspiration Wednesday this week in the Kraafters Kommunity is ONENESS. What an unconventional word! Not one I had used before for sure. In fact I had to look it up to confirm the spelling and that it is actually a real word. Of course it is, and I for one can very much identify with its meaning.

Oneness for me means unity of mankind. This is more poignant now than ever around the 100-year anniversary of the outbreak of World War I. You would have thought that we had learned our lesson from not one but two world wars, less than a generation apart. Sometimes I wonder if there's something inherently wrong with us humans. We need to learn to evolve beyond our individual interests and learn to live peacefully on a planet that we share. I don't have the answers but while I was thinking about this, John Lennon's song Imagine kept playing in my ear and inspired this page.

This time around I remembered to take photos of each step, so here's the evolution of my layout.

I started by applying a layer of gesso and a layer of Liquitex Basics primary red (which looks pink if you ask me). When this was completely dry, I stamped all over the page with various texture stamps using black archival ink. I didn't think too much about this as I knew it would mostly get covered up. The operative word being "mostly" as I did all this for the little random bits that will still show through all the layers later.

When all this was dry, I applied a layer of blue and purple paint and removed some of it with a kitchen towel while it was still a bit wet, allowing the underlying layers to peek through.

 In the next step, I brayered a little light blue acrylic paint all over the page to further distress it. The best way to do this I find is to apply just a thin streak of paint on your brayer to cover patches of the page, not the entire surface. Move the brayer horizontally and vertically to get criss-cross lines.  I also added some white acrylics paint with my home-made silicone stamps in random places.

Next, I attached my motif of the earth and wings. These are just computer printouts from the Internet. Previously, I had painted the wings with gold acrylics and drawn the outlines with a black paint marker. Finally, I added some more stamping (black script and white texture stamps) and shaded/ outlined the picture with a black Pitt brush marker. I attached my quote and outlined the words with a Stabilo All black pencil.

I hope you enjoyed my step-by-step walkthrough. Here's the final page, followed by some close up photographs.