Final pages of Marvel: Your Precious Life

Final pages of Marvel: Your Precious Life

I am feeling a great sense of accomplishment. This is the first visual journal that I've actually completed. Other pages can be found here, and here, and here. I'll post the picture of the bound book in my next post.

I spend a lot of time trying to find the "right" image to match my "topic." And I become discouraged when I don't find it. The muse has typically moved on by the time I go through piles of images. Then, when I make a selection, the image shapes a message, perhaps very different from the original thought. What I originally planned doesn't emerge. I suppose that is all part of the "mystery" of this form of journaling. 

I had the same frustration in another class. At the beginning of the session, we were to pick an image that represented our week and write a few words about it. My problem is that I am too analytical ... I look for images that "literally" represent my feelings. That is not conceptual ... nor artistic ... nor using imagery in the way it is intended.

During that class I just had to go with it ... and usually the image ended up being just the right one. No matter which image I picked ... it somehow was able to portray my feelings. Very intuitive. Very mysterious.

I feel pages in this book are contrived. They are meant to be decorative, interesting, arty. They are meant to not only deal with images, but composition and design. Mixed media art with images as a focal point. The creation of the pages are meant to push me to create/design a well balanced page using color and texture and images and text.

So ... what if ...

What if I create pages using good design and composition - background, focal points, color ...

Create several pages ... create a signature of pages ... and then ...

Use the pre-decorated pages to journal. Either sequentially, or hop around to find the "right" page, a page that has a feel for what I want to express. It would be like journaling in a book created by someone else.

The advantage would be to continue to practice design and composition. Another advantage wold be to use my papers and images. It would be interesting to see if journaling on a "pre-decorated" page would be helpful to this self expression ... or not.

Hmmm ... I'll have to think about this.