State of Emergency

The title for this page came from the fact that I was listening to Bjork's Joga on continuous repeat the whole time I was drawing.

Once again, I found an old sketch to redo and refashion. I took three days to complete it and am pretty happy with the result although let me tell you, the process was flippin' fantastic too. I redid the girl in acrylics, then her face with colored pencil. The background though was where I got stuck. What to do? Keeping that in the back of my mind, I decided to tune into Blade (The Artistic Biker's) Ustream when I began to doodle Mehndi designs with my micron pen. I got so lost in the process that I didn't even realize I had spent two full hours just doodling various designs against the teal background of my newly painted muse.

A prompt for your own page: When you journal, take your sweet time. Take not one but two or three days to complete. Do it in stages. Fill every corner with something small, new and interesting. Then let it sit for another day or two. Then look at it, does it feel done? Then it probably is.

The Good. The Bad. The Second Chance.

One of the things that I had to learn with Art Journaling is the fact that not everything has to be pretty or even finished. I can stop mid page, decide I'm not feeling it and move on to the next. This is liberating, this is creative freedom. In my mind, art journaling doesn't have a destination in mind, just a journey to take you on. Lately, I've been looking over some unfinished sketches and abandoned ideas and making them into something new. Old thoughts creating a new creative path.




The above page was done over a year ago. I was experimenting with my water soluble crayons and antiquing technique, throwing a quick but utterly uninspiring sketch up there for good measure. Then, I was done. I moved on. Over a year and a half later (by my estimation) I was flipping through that old moleskine (now about two/three years in the making) and found many old sketches and abandoned pages that I was beginning to see with new eyes.




Imagine if I just said, "Well, can't do anything with this. It's been over a year and what's done is done?" Yeah, I can't either. I'm very happy with the result and am now looking into recreating a few more pages just for the fun of it.

Lesson to take away from this: It's not over until you say it's over. Don't limit yourself just because you put it away. Find inspiration in old ideas and refashion them into something new. You'll be glad that you did.

I really need to

Work on my blog and my networking. *sighs* I am so not cut out for this.



1. artjournal_07_20_10, 2. 07_18_10, 3. artjournal_07_17_10, 4. 07_05_10, 5. 07_07_10, 6. artjournal_07_10_10, 7. artjournal_07_09_10, 8. Painted papers 4

Illustration Friday: Giant

Illustration Friday strikes again. I began with one of my photographs of a small black bug on a flower. Then I was bored so I drew the girl. I guess the whole point is, who is truly the giant? Is it the flower, which the girl uses as a hat, the girl, who dwarfs the bug or is the bug a giant of some unknown? Everything is perspective.

I really need to work on my noses and the right eye is a bit wonky but that's something I need to work on.

Contrast

The pain pounds above my left eye. It throbs insistently, trickling slowly down the side and filling the well below the socket. I am working but really I'm not here. I'm floating, my mind sort of resting against the possibility of sleep. I've grown so very tired. Which is nothing new but still irritating and annoying all the same. The weather is just barely beginning to warm up. There are soft murmurings of spring everywhere. Bright cloudless skies where your arms can expand and warm themselves against the sun stretch out as far as the eye can see. If you put on a fleece jacket and sit very still, you can close your eyes and hear the sweet breeze beckon the sleeping flora out of their shells. "Come out, come out" she sings and their sleepy little heads begin to peep out of the damp rich earth that has protected them from the cold heartless hand that is winter. The world around me is slowly awakening - the rebirth has begun.

Journaling when you don't have much free time..

Journaling has become very difficult for me these past few months. I always seem to have some crisis to advert, some knee to patch up or some bill that needs to be paid. (They're persistent little things, aren't they?) When I can finally sit down, I find my brain just not wanting to engage. It rather sit idle, waiting for sleep to set in.

I tried to break myself out of that mode by making it easy to journal when I did have time. In this I found a new way to unwind by preparing things for eventual journal entries. The added benefit to all of this was time spent with my husband. I would gather all of my supplies and place them on the kids old plastic table sit on the couch and work. He enjoys the fact that I am sitting with him and not whining about what he's watching (sport, blech)and I get to spend time with him and not have to whine about what he's watching (sports, double blech).





I bought a pallet of tube watercolors from Ocean State Job Lot (If you have one in your area, check it out, they have a decent small art section.) They are not the "best" quality but they come in a lovely array of colors and are suitable for working in a journal. I love running two colors together in big drips. Most of the time I do analogous colors as they appeal to me more (more about that can be found here).




I also found myself printing out a lot of my photography. I'm an amateur shutterbug with more pictures on my hard drive than I know what to do with, so why not use them as journal fodder?

I bought a package of 4x6 photo paper from the Dollar Tree. While the paper isn't the actual best quality (obviously, it cost $1) I find that it actually works with what I am doing. I don't do things glossy and perfect, I'm rather messy and matter-of-fact about things. So having pictures that look a little worn around the edges melds in with the rest of the page instead of sticking out like a sore thumb.

The left page by the by was done with Crayola crayons. They're colorful, cheap and you can buy yourself every single color you can imagine (and some that you can't). Everyone and I mean Everyone should have a box handy.






Another way i created backgrounds was with the Portfolio brand water-soluble oil pastels. I would place the color on where I wanted it and then take a finger to smudge it into the page. To avoid the sticky nature of the pastel, I would lightly brush over it with water and then wipe some of it away with a paper towel. Between the finger smudging and paper towel I was able to rid myself of a lot of that problem.




And can I say how much I love the Luminere paints? I bought this blue/green/gold color at Joann's Fabric and fell in love. They give this gorgeous sheen to the pages.




Anyway, that's it for now. Hopefully I will be back to my creative self in no time. ;D

*hangs head in shame*

I've been ignoring you, little blog and I apologize! My fingers have been busy creating art, working on new journals and etc, etc, etc...

I have so much to share, so if you're tuning in, I suggest you go do a load of laundry and come back so you give your browser time to download all the images. All set? Great! And away we go!

I decided to try out some new techniques. There is a young lady on the net who goes by the name of ink_smear. She has these lovely melancholic journal pages that I just love. Unfortunately, I cannot be melancholic to save my life. I'm not sure why but my angst ends up being too bright and colorful to be anything more than a passing whine on the, "get over it" train. Nonetheless here is my attempt. I was feeling pretty blah that day.




See what I mean? GREEN not any green mind you, oh know, bright spring green! *sighs* I give up, I'm going back to my happy little world.

Anyway, in that fiasco, I ended up messing up some of my moleskien pages and they fell out. Well, I just taped that sucker back up with some packing tape and we were back to new.



Link to YouTube Video

Taking a break from the journal, I decided to make an attempt at using my own photography in my artwork. I have more pictures than I know what to do with and I was sure I would be able to find some use for the ones that don't make it to the album.

Again, experimenting and while I semi-like the results, I still found it too piecey. Need to find some cohesiveness in my work.

So, I decided I needed a larger canvas to journal on and went to borders where I found some amazing "scrapbook" journals by their Paperchase line. The paper is what I like to call, "paper bag brown" and are thick making them perfect for visual journaling. I've been so inspired by the size and look of the journal that I have been on a journaling spree since the 2nd. Here are all the pages up till now: (click on the thumbnail to see the larger image)





Whew! That will teach me to procrastinate posting again!

I couldn't draw a stick figure

Ha, proved myself wrong, didn't I?

Opening the door...

Rotten Apples

I hate this page. Nothing works, the colors are horrible and everything I did to save it just made it worse. Nevertheless here I am displaying it, if anything for the simple point that art is a process and sometimes you make really crappy art. I salute you, horrible page. You've shown me what not to do the next time around.







For the last few days, I've been in a very "paint splatter, makes no sense, what is going on here?" type of mood. What's pretty cool is that the pink// sky blue one got a note from Linda Woods. If you don't know who she is, she is the author of two books that I just love, "Visual Chronicles" and "Journal Revolution" (which is the book I bought for my father to get him on the journaling band wagon.) While my mantra has been that I am doing this for me and that I share because I enjoy doing so, it is nice to have someone whose written a book on the matter give you a thumbs up.

PROJECTS!!

I have a few projects in he works that I hope will just help me with my goal of being creative on a consistent basis this year. One of the things I'm going to do is create a mini studio in my basement. I have a walk-out basement with a huge amount of space that I really do not use. I'm going to create a work space/studio for myself there. I'll be working on saving my money to create it (No CREDIT!) and hopefully having that space all to myself will help me set time for myself.

The other thing I have going on is creating a pretty room for my daughter. She's asthmatic and isn't allowed to have things like mosquito netting, drapes, etc... in her room to reduce the amount of allergens she is exposed to.




So, we're going to create a special place for her so that she feels she is getting her "girlie" room without compromising her health. Part of this is creating a series of mixed media paintings on a little mouse girl that I've drawn and she seems to love. I'm sketching out ideas in my journal and perhaps when we finally move into our own home, I will be able to make one of those paintings a mural on one of her walls.





So much to look forward too, I can't help but be excited.

The right frame of mind.

I have been reading this book called, "Drawing on the right side of the brain, which was highly recommended by an artist friend of mine. It is fascinating and validates some of the feelings I had about not being able to, "see," what I wanted to draw.

In that book, they discussed how children easily tap into the creative or visual side of the brain but eventually our creativity is destroyed by a careless remark or uninterested teachers. Which I find to be true and sad. There are so many variations of art and some art is there to celebrate you, not to hang in some museum gallery. Plus, who is to say that your art in another thousand years will not be considered something of great worth or value? Art is subjective, art is expressive, art is well, art.

With this very enlightened view (and with the blessing of my artist friend) I went into a local chain discount store and bought up 10 8x10 canvases (at $1.99 a piece you just can't beat.) I think I will encourage my children (or in this case my daughter since my son is too busy reading about dinosaurs.) to paint, paint, paint! Paint it, marker it, glue it I just do not care! At the price that the canvases were going for, I say why NOT allow your children to freely express themselves and then hang their artwork. Validate their creativity! Why delegate the refrigerator as the place to put children's art. I say, give it the respect it deserves and hang it in their rooms, hang it in your living room, heck, let the newest piece have a place of honor on a pretty blank wall in your hallway! Think of what message you are sending them:

You are valid, your art is valid.

And that is my wisdom for the day.

More Pages from my Moleskine

New year, new journal

So we begin the new year with my lovely moleskien. I need to paint on canvas again and stop finding excuses why I cannot. Sometimes art isn't about doing something gallery worthy but just painting because you need to just put it down on canvas.