art heals

Two year anniversary of George's passing. Doing some healing art journaling.

some digi art journaling to start the new year

Finishing up my last journal with a focus on gratitude, I created this page for my new journal.

grateful; digital collage

I turned 70 on January 1st. A lot of "deep thoughts" going on about that. It's taken me some time to even say the word!

on being seventy; photo and digital collage

My (not so) love affair with Art Journaling

Once again, I'm faced with the fact that I love to look at artist's art journals but I do not love to create them. Let me be more specific. Pages with paint and collage and images and words do not come easily to me, nor do they particularly "speak" to me or "say" what I necessarily feel. I've done plenty of these pages, including several of Kelly Kilmer's classes. These pages take a lot of effort and rarely am I pleased with the outcome. These are not books I return to look through. Books I pull down from the shelf and look through are:

• Visual Journals (where I "record" my life)
• Doodle Journals - mandalas, creative doodles
• Travel Journals
• Art Journals that are more art-y than collage-y

So, with two recent books, I realize this isn't my thing. At least the Journaling by 5's book hasn't taken that much time due to the 15 minute sessions. And I have a full book (35 pages!) either finished or ready for the next stage. All done within a 2 week timeframe ... this would have taken months to do. So ...

What I like about this process: Working in one medium at a time ... paint, stamp/stencil, random collage, pen/marker work. Working on several pages at a time (although not in the same book unless I figure out what to put between the pages that won't stick). Timed sessions - gets you out of your head and into the process quickly.

What I don't like is: the timed sessions for "focal points" ... Actually I don't much like the focal points. I realize that I love to create backgrounds. That's what I really enjoy (backgrounds that I use to make scrappy journals). I also don't like ruining pens and markers trying to write on paint and medium. 

So, these pages are ready for me to do whatever is next. At this point, I have no idea where they will go (if anywhere). I will spend some time with this book, not considerable time. But there is the challenge of bringing it to a point where I feel good (or at least better) about it ... and feel a sense of completion (which is one of the BIGGEST challenges I have as an artist).

And I'll continue to enjoy looking at other artist's pages ... but I think I'll let this go. I'm ready to move on.

Banner Day

Yesterday was a BANNER DAY for me. It was COOLER and I had ENERGY and I MADE ART. I decided to do some of the 21 Secrets classes before the end of the year gets here and I've wasted my money!

Slow Journey

This was inspired by the class with Gina Rossi Armfield called 15 Minutes to Sanity. I selected a passage by Mary Oliver as the journaling (which is done before adding paint). 

What does it mean, say the words, that the earth is so beautiful? And what shall I do about it? What is the gift that I should bring to the world? What is the life that I should lead?

I selected the image because it was the only "animal" image I could find during a quick search. It turns out that the turtle represents the slow journey back to art. Back to bringing beauty into the world. Back to my gifts. While this took more than 15 minutes, it was a joyful time.

Autumn

This is from Connie Hozvicka's class called Flow. This piece felt very intuitive with several steps and layers. 

1. Light a candle
2. Journaling
3. Gesso
4. Play with paint to cover background (acrylic paint). Loved getting messy with finger painting :-)
5. Draw lines and shapes (pencil and black acrylic paint)
6. I painted the shapes white (acrylic paint)
7. Then colored them with water soluble oil pastels
8. For some reason I was led to paint over the background with white paint. Not sure why but I followed the voice.
9. Colored in the background with acrylic paints and oil pastels (really looks much better!)
10. Repainted the shape outline
11. Added texture and interest with stamping and stenciling.

I incorporated journaling as first layer from the other class and wrote about getting back to creating and finding ways to bring beauty into the world. I really like this technique - journaling as the first layer - even when the words are completely covered. There is something about the process of lighting a candle and setting your intention before creating ... something I have done in the past but forgot about. 

I finished this banner day making a colorful and tasty meal of grilled salmon, baked yams, and stir fry kale. Crushed and cooked raspberries as a sauce for the salmon. Oh so good!

It felt like a fall day today. I'm so tired of the heat. I hope this coolness lasts but the season for Santa Ana winds is approaching. I miss autumn here in Southern California. Perhaps we should take a trek up a mountain to see some color!