Art Journal Pages & Mushrooms

No, the two are not related. But photographing both was pretty fun.

It's been cold, foggy, and raining for the last month. This kind of weather makes me crazy, and not in a good way. I have also been dithering back and forth over what new beading project I want to start, which means I haven't started anything. If I didn't sit down and create something, I was afraid I would start banging my head against the walls. So, I turned on my sunlamp, pulled out my art journal, and played. I did a total of four pages, and had a great time. Here are three of those pages. Can you tell I was thinking of Spring? I wanted COLOR on those pages, dang it! Bright Spring colors.

I like doing collage in this journal because it's quick gratification. I have another journal/sketchbook for more serious work. This one is all about a few paint washes, cut, paste, and quick notes. 

And now for the mushrooms.

My husband is creating horse trails in our back ten acres. He will rototill the path first, then he lays down a layer of horse manure that we pull from the stalls. The manure breaks down and makes a nice soft footing for the horses. When out feeding the beasties one morning, I noticed dozens and dozens of mushrooms growing from the manure. It was like a fairy road of mushrooms. I even found some growing on tree trunks or in old rotting stumps. So I went back to the house and grabbed my camera. I kept wishing my camera would allow me to get closer shots, so I could pick up more detail, but this is the best I could get.

I don't know what kinds these are, but none of these mushrooms are a variety you could eat. All of them would cause great, and very nasty, and probably fatal reactions if consumed. So, no mushroom omelets from these guys.

I had a lot more photos than this, but at least you get the idea. By the time I was done it had started to rain again, so I had to duck back inside. Within about a week, all of these were gone, except a few of the tree mushrooms. I hope they come back again next year. By then I hope to have a book on mushrooms, so I will be able to identify the different kinds.

Journal Pages 3 & 4

Never fear, I am not going to inflict every page of this journal on you, but these first pages, as I start, have all been quite fun, and not dark, brooding, or depressing at all. This comes as some surprise to me, as I usually go into a funk at the start of winter, and don't come out of it until the sun comes back, sometime in May. And if you wonder why I live in a place where it rains half the year, I can answer, "Because for my husband, his funk starts in April or May with the coming of the hot summer, and doesn't go away until October, when the rains come back." Well, they do say opposites attract.

For the last year or so I have been in a Turkish/Persian mood. I think seeing a photo of a beautiful patio with hanging colored-glass Turkish lanterns may have started it, but I'm not sure. I have since bought a large etched-brass platter that came with a folding wooden stand, so I use it as an end table in the living room. Suddenly the cushions on the deck took on more color and pattern. A few months ago we drove up to Eugene, OR to cruise through the Cost Plus World Market store, where I bought a few very small colored glass lanterns, for out on the deck. I also came home with a jar of apricot and cilantro tagine sauce, which I used to cook a chicken with in the crockpot.It was wonderful!

It's all gotten a little crazy, and so far I am still on a roll, having borrowed two Moroccan/Turkish cookbooks from a friend. I now make my own hummus and tagines, want to have my hands henna painted, and have long been addicted to couscous.

Which is why my journal pages seem to be more about exploring than anything else. I guess while the fog rolls in, the rain pours down, and the dark settles in over the house, I can dream of Egypt, Morocco, Turkey, or anyplace else on the planet where the sun is shining.

 

The cowboy was the last thing I added to this collage, other then the title of Modified Plan. That came from the fortune I saved from a fortune cookie, "Be prepared to modify your plan. It will be good for you", which seemed to fit the whole idea. It's as if the cowboy and the intrepid lady on the motorcycle are trying to get back to each other. Maybe she packed the wrong map?  I think the cowboy's horse knows the way, but he's not telling.

I am tossing this in as well. It is the start of the scarab necklace I am going to make. The scarab was part of a broken necklace I found in a box of junk jewelry I bought a few years ago. I've been thinking about the scarab for quite a while, wondering just what I wanted to do with it, and now I think I am ready to play. Playing means things could change—a lot—between now and when it's finished. Photo is a little dark, but that will be the story of my life until I get off my lazy butt and make a photo light box. Oh, and that's not a hair in the photo, that's a line of marker bleeding through from the other side of the paper the piece is on. That shadow...yup, that's my fat head.

 

And apologies for the sudden shift from left-centric text to centered. Blogger decided that, and for the life of me I couldn't get it to stop!

 

Journal Pages 1 & 2

Okay, so the Introvert Chronicles is up and running. Well, it's started, anyway. With the weather still rainy, I have the perfect excuse to play, not that I really need an excuse. But if it's sunny and warm outside, I feel guilty about staying inside.

These first pages are pretty simple, and I hope to keep most of the rest of the pages the same. Might not always happen, but that's the plan.

Page 1 is the back of the cover, which is only heavy cardboard. Not something I can slap paint on, so the whole thing is collage. Again, LOVE Pinterest. A never-ending cornucopia of designs, maps, photos, etc., etc. I just make sure I don't use the artwork of someone else. Only vintage stuff, or copyright free.

Page 2 was my first time in ages playing with watercolor washes, using an old set I discovered while cleaning out art supply bins. I probably bought the set back in the 80s, but I brushed the spider webs off, and so far the little cakes of color still work fine. The page is about a documentary we watched recently on bees called "More Than Honey." It was very interesting, but sad as well, to know how fast the bees are dying, worldwide. I talk to all the bees in my garden..."Hi, it's just me. No worries."...and I have never been stung.

I do like the way the hieroglyphics seem to be just as busy as the buzzing bees.

So that's my start of the Introvert Chronicles. 

Introvert Chronicles

Now that my horse event season is pretty much over, I can go back to drawing, painting, sewing, embroidery and beading. Also, journaling. As I have stated before, I have a love/hate relationship with art journals. I love them, but am not very faithful. Over part of the summer I did a quickie, small-page, slap-and-dash journal that was fun...but still has empty pages. Event season just got too complicated and I just got too tired to play with it.

A while back I popped into Michael's craft store, and they had all of their art journals/sketchbooks/drawing pads on sale. Buy one, get one free. Seemed like a sign, so I bought one 6"x8" sketch book and got another one free. I had already purchased a bigger sketchbook to use for drawings, but these smaller versions are perfect for an art journal.

The covers are bright yellow heavy paper. Not something I could paint over. So I cut up an old collage I had done at the end of last winter, and that I didn't really like (I had just slapped stuff on paper to get back in the groove of playing with paint and collage, so it was never meant to "be" anything), cut out a corner of it which I thought worked with the title I had decided on, "Introvert Chronicles."

Haven't done anything but the cover, yet, but am looking forward to filling it with whatever catches my fancy, or with whatever angst I am feeling at the time. I might post some of the pages, if they aren't too personal or depressing! Mainly I hope to fill it with a lot of ideas for beading and embroidery as well as drawings and more collage. My main concern is to keep it from getting WAY too serious or complicated ,which usually happens, and is usually why I've walked away from so many other journals.

So here is the cover of the Introvert Chronicles. I still don't like the bright, in-your-face yellow coming through, so may end up trying to paint it and hope the cardstock doesn't crinkle. We'll see.

Tales of Abandoned Art Journals

I love the idea of art journals. I love the art and creativity people display in their art journals. I greatly admire those who can stick with their journals year after year, and fill a wall of shelves full of artful books. I wish I could...but...I can't.

Oh, I have good intentions. I start them with enthusiasm, vowing to myself that this will be the year I actually fill a whole book. Out comes the ephemera I have collected for just such an occasion. Out come the pencils, pens, glue, stickers, stamps, clip art, words of wisdom, and whatever else I have close to hand. Everything goes gangbusters for about a month...maybe two. Rarely three. Pages get filled with all kinds of things, and I think, "Wow, here we go, it's actually going to work this time!" Then I get sidetracked, loose interest, don't think I have anything worth writing about, and think the previous artwork is total drivel that no one is going to be interested in, especially if it doesn't even interest me. The artwork gets less and less, and the writing about my day, which for the most part is pretty boring, is all that's left. Then I abandon the thing altogether. I have quite the collection of half-filled journals. The only one I did manage to finish was during a time I call The Year From Hell, but since it is so full of angst and bad memories, I have seriously considered ceremonially burning it.

About six years ago I got involved in an art journal exchange. Actually, over a period of three years the group did three exchanges. It was a disaster. People dropped out halfway through. Some artists went whole hog on pages, others decided a few stickers were enough, and the whole-hoggers felt cheated. Books weren't passed on time. Books got lost or were kept by one of participants who then dropped off the map. I was lucky and got all three of my books back, but many others were not, and it left a really bad taste in everyone's mouth, including mine. I swore I would never do another journal exchange, even if I was threatened with Sharpies shoved under my fingernails.

 You will notice that two of these journal from that long ago exchange have lots of dangly things from the spines. That was sort of my trademark with these, and as the books went around, other participants would add more, which was really fun. However, my last journal has no danglies, mine or from anyone else, because one of the participants decided that all those danglies got in the way of his "fine art" drawings, removed them, and threw them away. I was NOT happy when I found out, and that act of snobbery was the final nail in the coffin of me ever doing another exchange.

A few years back I joined the Art Journal Challenge web page. Every month a theme would be posted and you would do journal pages to illustrate that theme. Wow, how could I miss? A challenge thrown out there, lots of folks joining in to keep me motivated, and a companion site to show what we all had done. Did that work? Uh.....no. I did awesome, complicated pages for about two months, then...well, you know.

Many artists keep art journals as a form of therapy, idea reference, sketchbook, or as inspiration. Maybe all of the above. I have done them for the same reasons. I have some journals that have a few pages done one year, then the next pages may be something done a year later.  In some cases this goes on for three or four years, then stops, with only half the journal filled. A true testament to my inability to stick with it. And I hate to admit it, but when I see so many people out there doing journals, book after book after book, I have this snarky little voice in my head asking, "What are they going to do with all of those? What is their family going to do with all them? Are the day to day workings or doodles of most of us all that interesting? Really?" I suspect that is a sacrilegious question with most dedicated art journalists. You do it for yourself, they will say. And judging by what I saw on Pinterest when I did a search for Art Journals, there are a ton of people out there "doing it for themselves."

So, to prove that I really do have good intentions, even if they don't last, here are a few pages from my abandoned art journals. What I have discovered over the years, is that I do better with the smaller sized journals. The two large ones pictured are still half full of blank pages.

 The left page of the last one is a print of a collage I did years ago titled The Astronauts Courtesan. On the right is a photo of one of the exchange journals spread out so you can see the back and front. It was a pirate themed exchange, hence Capt. Jack Sparrow on the back and the schooner on the front.

These last two small journal pages are experiments in various imaginary writing types and styles, and forms of maps, all done as ideas for a book I am currently writing titled The Map. The last page on the right is based on old English strip maps. The black lines are the road, and you follow it from top to bottom, then jump to the next strip and keep going, reading it left to right.

Will I ever start another journal? Oh, probably. Maybe a small one. You know, hope always springs eternal. What I really need to do is go back and fill the blank pages of the journals I have previously abandoned. Will I ever manage to finish them?  Possibly, but...don't hold your breath.

One More Page + Thoughts

I wanted to post one more picture of the journal page that unfolds, showing how it opens up. I'm not showing the whole thing, because what is written within is private to me, but just a way to show how I'm playing with this challenge.

My thoughts for this journal, besides taking part in the challenge, were to try experimenting with formats in such a way that it would give the pages some cohesiveness. Other journals of mine look pretty haphazard. I made cardboard templates for the main rectangle, and for the L-shaped border. That way I can quickly trace around them on the pages, or on other, decorative papers I want to use, and then glue or tape those in. I use a lot of double-sided tape! I should buy it by the case.

I'm having to do a lot of the artwork on other, heavier paper, as the paper in the spiral-bound sketchbook I bought is too thin. It doesn't hold up well, especially if I add wet medium, like watercolor Crayon or watercolor pencil. Also, since I do my personal journal writing with Sharpie pens, the ink bleeds through to the other side of the page. So, the collage work and writing are done on a base paper, then glued or taped to the journal page.

Next time I'll be more careful as to the strength of the paper before I dive into creating a new journal. But using this one is another challenge, and that's what this year is all about.

2011—A Year of Challenges

After deciding to participate in the Sketchbook Challenge, I got to thinking about the word Challenge, and how I had already set for myself a few challenges in the coming year. I never make New Years Resolutions because I always break them. Challenges, however, are a different story.

So, for the first page of my journal for 2011, I used that as a theme, to give a “heads up” as to how my year will hopefully go. I’m not going to post all the pages in this journal, only the ones directly related to the Sketchbook Challenge, mainly because this isn’t going to be a special book meant only for that on-line participation. It will be my regular journal, where I record all the exciting and not so exciting goings-on in my life. Not a thrill a minute read, I assure you.

What are the other challenges I have set for myself? Well, the first is getting back into riding shape, and working with my horse so that we can become a team. Considering how out of shape we both are, this will probably take us all summer. Winter weather in Oregon doesn’t help things. By January our place has standing water everywhere, and the areas where we work the horses are mostly mud the consistency of cooked oatmeal. Many, many rainy days are a real pain in the butt. So, I get in what work I can, and pray for Spring.

Next on the list is to get more professional with my Etsy jewelry site. I make the jewelry for fun, and to give to friends as gifts. If I happen to sell a few pieces, that’s just gravy and helps pay for supplies. For the last year I’ve mainly toyed around with beads and wire and found elements. And that’s okay, but I’d like to take things up a notch, weed out the pieces that have been on the site for too long, and add new things that will be different. Not sure in which different direction I’ll go, but that’s also part of the challenge.

Writing more. I definitely need to do more writing. I have a novel waiting for the last three or four chapters, and another story idea I want to start on. My writing got put on hold for a variety of reasons, but it’s time to get back to it. The story keeps calling me, and making me feel guilty for ignoring it. I don’t do well with guilt.

To finishing landscaping the bare areas left by the construction that took place over last summer is a big challenge. There is still a path of cardboard laid down from the driveway to the front steps, which doesn’t look too attractive, but keeps mud from being tracked into the house. Hardscaping—brick retaining walls, gravel paths—need to go in before the plants, so some heavy manual labor is in my future.

Also included on the list is a major re-landscaping of my enclosed garden. I’m talking about ripping out overgrown shrubs, digging out roses that have never done well, and wrestling into submission the giant hop vine that ate part of the garden fence. Lots more manual labor.

That’s the short list. I have many more things I want to accomplish in this “Year of Challenges.” So, when I post pictures of the journal pages each month, I’ll also update you with how I’m doing with my other challenges. That is, if the hop vine doesn’t eat me, and if I can still type after all that manual labor.

The Sketchbook Challenge theme for January is “Highly Prized.”