February 2020 - Haiga - by Riikka Kovasin
Hi there! It’s Riikka here today sharing my project with the monthly theme, color and technique.
Doing a haiga was new to me as I usually do the steps other way around – first make the picture and then find the words to go with it. To be frank, I didn’t do a haiga this time either as the lines I added to the page are more of a short story than a haiku.
Like the technique suggested, I first cut some words our of a book. To avoid spending the whole afternoon thinking about the lines, I randomly chose three pages, cut the first phrases out of them and then added some more words from the pages to fill the story. The first line I got was the first in the story as well – “King held up a hand”. That was the source of inspiration to the whole piece. From that line I knew I needed to have a king and a hand in my page.
After arranging the words into the story, I then started my work with the page. I thought it would be funny to use the rest of the pages as the background, so, I adhered them to the journal using Soft Matte Gel. On top I then layered black gesso, red Impasto paint (because of the theme color), white gesso, red pastels, red wax through a stencil, watercolors, pencil work… As you can see, I really was having fun and just playing. After I had the background to a point what I wanted it to be, I then made the layers on top.
First, I added a die cut bottle on top of the background. Why? It was already on my table, it contrasted with the red and made a cool element anchoring the cluster down. I added some random stamping on top to blend it just a little to the background and added a touch of pastel as well. The main cluster I built with a letter card, stamped hand and a piece of bookpaper. The king is a sticker from the Art Daily Vintage Photobooth sticker album, and his crown is done using stamps and scissors. To embellish the page, I added a strip of tape and a rusty gear – and another stamped hand!
Like I said earlier, I usually work vice versa – starting with the focal elements and continuing with the text. Usually I then make some kind of dada poetry with just random words or a really short story like the one I did here. While I love to work with old book pages in a language I don’t understand for the background to avoid some words popping up in the piece and distracting, I usually pick English for the text part or sometimes Finnish, too. Novels are perfect for this as they have a) a lot of pages to find the words and stories and b) vivid language which then is easy to be transformed into a short story!
Thank you for stopping by today! Now, go find an old book and start making stories!
Xoxo Riikka
If you feel inspired by this topic, if you'd like to join us with your acts of Daily Art - we are waiting!
You can drop your link with project here, on the blog - using the In Links tool or tag us on Facebook and Instagram - we'd love to see your projects!
Check our on Instagram and Facebook for. more of inspirational ideas... give yourself permission to play and join us!
Doing a haiga was new to me as I usually do the steps other way around – first make the picture and then find the words to go with it. To be frank, I didn’t do a haiga this time either as the lines I added to the page are more of a short story than a haiku.
Like the technique suggested, I first cut some words our of a book. To avoid spending the whole afternoon thinking about the lines, I randomly chose three pages, cut the first phrases out of them and then added some more words from the pages to fill the story. The first line I got was the first in the story as well – “King held up a hand”. That was the source of inspiration to the whole piece. From that line I knew I needed to have a king and a hand in my page.
After arranging the words into the story, I then started my work with the page. I thought it would be funny to use the rest of the pages as the background, so, I adhered them to the journal using Soft Matte Gel. On top I then layered black gesso, red Impasto paint (because of the theme color), white gesso, red pastels, red wax through a stencil, watercolors, pencil work… As you can see, I really was having fun and just playing. After I had the background to a point what I wanted it to be, I then made the layers on top.
First, I added a die cut bottle on top of the background. Why? It was already on my table, it contrasted with the red and made a cool element anchoring the cluster down. I added some random stamping on top to blend it just a little to the background and added a touch of pastel as well. The main cluster I built with a letter card, stamped hand and a piece of bookpaper. The king is a sticker from the Art Daily Vintage Photobooth sticker album, and his crown is done using stamps and scissors. To embellish the page, I added a strip of tape and a rusty gear – and another stamped hand!
Like I said earlier, I usually work vice versa – starting with the focal elements and continuing with the text. Usually I then make some kind of dada poetry with just random words or a really short story like the one I did here. While I love to work with old book pages in a language I don’t understand for the background to avoid some words popping up in the piece and distracting, I usually pick English for the text part or sometimes Finnish, too. Novels are perfect for this as they have a) a lot of pages to find the words and stories and b) vivid language which then is easy to be transformed into a short story!
Thank you for stopping by today! Now, go find an old book and start making stories!
Xoxo Riikka
If you feel inspired by this topic, if you'd like to join us with your acts of Daily Art - we are waiting!
You can drop your link with project here, on the blog - using the In Links tool or tag us on Facebook and Instagram - we'd love to see your projects!
Check our on Instagram and Facebook for. more of inspirational ideas... give yourself permission to play and join us!
If you feel inspired by this month’s theme – Haiga Visual Poetry - please feel free to add your project to inlinkz below:
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