Dreams By Anna Brim

July 28, 2017

Dreams By Anna Brim

Dreams. For me they play a massive part in my creative life. Dreams have been a recurring theme in many of my journals and I even had a 'dream' journal! I think for a large part it is because I am a creative that I am a dreamer and because I am a dreamer I am a creative. If it wasn't for constantly dreaming and letting my mind wander and go with it, I wouldn't be thinking of the next thing. I run a monthly sticker subscription kit aimed at creative planners and I also teach via my Patreon account. Every month I have to think up new things, I have to create new art for my stickers and for my Patreon collage sheets. If I wasn't thinking and dreaming I would have nothing to put out into the World.

People often ask me how I come up with these new ideas and themes. It isn't hard for me because I let myself be open to my surroundings and what is happening around me. I open my eyes, I absorb it all, I take photographs and I think. I am forever taking photographs of random patterns or colours I like no matter what they are on. I have loads stored on my phone and when I am struggling for inspiration I flick through them.

My head is often in the clouds or I am deep within myself following a new chain of thought that happened to wonder in. My head is a busy place and it is full of random thoughts and ideas. Sometimes they drive me crazy and I have trouble to switch off. I have to meditate a lot just to calm my brain down enough to chill out before bed. Or I have to listen to something just to stop my brain from chattering away.

To me my thoughts and day dreams are like big colour pops. They bubble away and come to the surface with a big splash. I kind of liken them to a paint ball crashing against a wall with all the paint going everywhere. That was my inspiration for my journal page which I will show you how that was created....

So firstly as this journal page is about me I wanted to add a photo of myself. I wanted to show how my thoughts crash around in my head and become my dreams (or do my dreams become my thoughts?) I found a random selfie from when I had my hair cut, printed it, cut it out and stuck it down on my page.

Next up I drew a couple of pencil lines for where I wanted my thoughts to be. I used masking fluid to make a few marks. I love using this stuff (probably too much) and if I can squeeze it in I will find a way. (I have a tutorial on using masking fluid coming to my Patreon soon!)

I added watercolour to my thoughts in a rainbow-ish way, letting the colours blend with each other.

I then painted in the left over white space with distress stains. I squeezed them so they were really inky and smashed them down on the page. That's what makes them do that 'splat' effect which I am sure you will agree is totally yummy! I also used black watercolour and let the inks and watercolour paint hang out and mix, you know, whatever they wanted to do!

Once everything was dry I removed the masking fluid. I then added a really light and I mean super light coat of gesso to my watercolour thoughts area because whilst I loved the colours it was just slightly to bright for what I wanted so I just wanted to push some of that colour back a bit.

I found some die cuts and ephemera that had been in my stash for ages and added them to the top of my head to look like thoughts coming out but also to hide the triangle shaped head I have lol! So once that was all in place I went ahead and wrote my journaling in the thoughts section. I then used my Posca paint pens to add little random doodles and that was it. Done.