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.”

Reflected Light

I don't usually go in for posting pictures of my house, but I loved these two, which I just took today. It's the living room, awash in sunlight reflected from the snow on the ground outside. It is probably the brightest this room ever gets. I like the picture because it makes the room look all cozy and warm, which it is. Also, in the second one, you can see two of our four cats. Domino is on the back of the couch, soaking up sun, and Phantom is curled up on the other end of the couch, next to the dark, wine-colored cushion.

Oh, and the little squares taped to the wall on the left in the first picture are paint sample cards. The room needs to be repainted because of a bit of remodeling work we had done in the dining room and kitchen, which left large areas of white plaster. These rooms are all connected, so are usually painted the same color...traditionally blue, since I love the way artwork stands out so beautifully against blue walls.

Merry Christmas and a Joyous New Year

...This time of the year is spent in good cheer,
And neighbors together do meet.
To sit by the fire, with friendly desire,
Each other in love to greet.
Old grudges forgot are put in the pot,
All sorrows aside they lay:
The old and the young doth carol this song,
To drive the cold winter away....

(Verse from a traditional English song, eighteenth century)

Sketchbook Self-Challenge

Okay, I am biting the bullet, or, I guess, taking the plunge? In any case, I have decided to join this journal challenge. With a theme only once-a-month, and with over a dozen artists sharing their work and methods for the rest of us tagging along, I thought it would be a fun and rather inspiring game to play. I've never done anything like this before, but have always been curious as to how it might feel to be a part of a shared experience. So, heart-in-throat, I commit to sharing my ramblings and artwork with the other artists brave enough to do the same.

Part of this challenge is to post some of my journal pages in this blog, then post a link in the Comments section of the Challenge site. That way anyone can click into the link and see my work, and I can do the same with the other participants. So you will be getting a sneak preview of the pages I submit, listed under whatever the theme for that month turns out to be.

As a show of my good intentions, I have added the Challenge badge to my settings, as a sign of my commitment. Of course, if at some point I chicken out—which judging by my personal journal keeping history, is a possibility (see previous post)—I will remove the badge.

Wish me luck.

Edit: Just discovered that the photos will be posted on a flickr site, not linked to Comments. But, I am all signed up and ready to go.

http://sketchbookchallenge.blogspot.com/p/how-challenge-works.html

Scattered Journals

I love the idea of journals. I love to read historic journals or diaries, which probably has something to do with the basic human urge to stick our noses into other people’s lives—especially from the safety of our living room couch. I really love the current trend for art journals, although people have been adding drawings to diaries and journals for centuries.

Some of the new art journals are visually stunning, but since they don’t have any entries in writing, won’t have much meaning to someone looking at them decades down the road, other than, “Wow, ol’ Aunt Marge sure had a way with shipping labels, paint, and glue.” To me, there should always be writing in a journal. Even if it’s only one word, used to describe how you felt that day, writing will have more meaning to someone thumbing through the pages years later. Even if it’s only yourself.

So, as stated, I love journals. The problem I have with my own is, well, faithfulness. I start them with great enthusiasm, write and draw in them, add collage pages, photos, etc., and then slowly the intervals between entries gets longer and longer. Doubt sets in. I keep asking myself, “Who the hell is going to care about my less-than-exciting day?” Months go by and nothing gets written. Or, I see a really stunning art journal, look at my scribbling, and think I’ve just wasted a perfectly good sketch book.

Stashed away in bookshelves, or sitting in Documents on my computer, or languishing nearby, are dozens of journals I’ve started and then abandoned. There are small note books, large sketch books, and old, cheap lined notebooks. One of my favorite computer journals was a conversation between myself and one of my fictional characters, who played devil’s advocate. I called it Conversations with Rune. That got to be quite interesting, arguing with a character I created, who argued back.

Some journals I pick up periodically and add to. Currently I am on fire with a small ringed sketch book, using it to makes notes about a book idea I have, or recording how my leap back into horses after a twenty-five year hiatus is going. There are other things in it, because, as per my history, this book was started years ago, then abandoned.

Essentially, my journals end up a mishmash. They have no continuity, no cohesiveness. Years can go by between entries, and by that time my life circumstances have changed. What does that say about me? That I’m scatterbrained? That I can’t focus on a project for long periods of time? That I am easily sidetracked into doing other things? Or worse, that my life is too boring to write about? Maybe. But I prefer to think of it as showing that I keep trying. That I’m willing to go back, start again, and see if things work out. It may also be that, due to the fact that I don’t exactly live life in the fast lane, there are periods of time when there is nothing interesting to report. I don’t think entries like, “Went to the grocery store and bought a loaf of bread, a bottle of wine, and some fancy cheese” would be of riveting interest to anyone—unless I was held up at gunpoint on my way to the store.

I also try not to be intimidated by the journals of artists I admire. It is wrong to compare my work to theirs. Sometimes that’s a hard thing not to do. But instead of envying them, I try to learn from them. Find out what techniques they used, what materials. If their journals have a certain format I like, I adapt it to mine. I have bought books on journaling, which are fun and inspiring.

I love journals. I like writing in them, putting artwork in them, and adding photos, ticket stubs, menus from a favorite restaurant, or any other bits of flotsam I like. When my husband and I travel to events, I keep everything from ferry tickets to gas receipts and it all goes in a travel journal. Well, it would. I confess, I have bags of stuff from events still waiting to be added to pages. Eventually I’ll get around to them. In the meantime, I have updates on my horse training to add to my current journal, ideas for jewelry (tiaras, maybe?), sketches for my book idea (it involves a map), and I have added a lists page, of thing I want to do—mainly because my memory is like a sieve, and if I don’t write an idea down, I won’t be able to remember it the next day.

And I have this Blog site, which is another type of journal. And as you can see by looking at the dates of older posts, much like all my other journals, weeks or months can go by before I add another entry. But I soldier on, I have fun, and eventually I will end up with scattered records of my life. However, I think a scattered record is better than no record at all.

Equine Madness and the Art of Staying Young

I’ll say it straight away. I love horses. Always have, always will. When I was a child, I drew horses, pretended to be a horse, and when I could coerce her into it, hung an old bridle and put a McClellan cavalry saddle that used to belong to my grandfather, on my next youngest sister, and turned her into a horse (that never lasted long).

I didn’t get my first horse until I was in my thirties. Tristan was a five month old Arabian and completely untrained. I had never trained a horse before. It was a classic case of the blind leading the blind. However, over the nineteen years we were together, we learned from each other, eventually trusted each other, and managed not to kill each other. We also had a heck of a lot of fun.

While I still had Tris, Poet came along, a half Arabian, half quarter horse filly I watched being born to the quarter horse mare I briefly had. Poet (full name Poetique NRG) came at a time when I was going through a lot of life issues, and when Tristan died a few years after Poet was born, most of my enthusiasm for riding died with him. Poet, and my husband’s mare, Roxy, paid the price by becoming not much more than spoiled yard dogs. We loved them, and they were well cared for, but rarely ridden.

Three years ago we decided to downsize (we have twenty acres), move into town, travel more, and get out from under the chores of keeping horses and also a very large garden. So, although it nearly killed me at the time, I found homes for those last two mares. I cried for days before their new owners came to get them, and cried for weeks afterwards. Then, one weekend, we held a giant garage/tack sale, and for two days I watched strangers carry away twenty-five years worth of horse equipment, right down to our last hoof pick.

The only thing I couldn’t bear to part with was my old Stueben English saddle. At first I added it to the other saddles we had put out. But as I walked away, I totally lost it, and burst into wracking sobs. Not just for that saddle, but for that whole period in my life when horses were the most important thing in the day-to-day existence of both myself and my husband. We did trail rides, poker rides, Mediaeval horse games where both the horses and ourselves were dressed in costume, and I did low level dressage just because I liked the discipline of it. That saddle stood for all that, and a million more emotions I couldn’t explain, even if I tried. A part of my soul was being ripped out, and although I felt sure it was the right decision to make—after all, I was one year away from sixty and figured my riding days were over—in my heart-of-hearts, I probably knew it wasn’t.

We went on a fifteen day cruise through the Caribbean and the Panama Canal. I loved it. Seeing the canal had always been on my “bucket list.” Cartegena Colombia was stunning, and I’d love to go back. Then we came home. We did a few four-day weekend trips, and still did our pirate reenacting, but didn’t travel as much as we thought we would. At the same time, the housing market tanked. Our house didn’t sell. No one even came to look at it. We changed realtors, hoping. Same results. We just couldn’t compete with all the foreclosure and short sales. After two years, we gave up.

So, there we were, still in the same place, with a big garden and an empty barn. Then fate stepped in. My husband and I attended a local Renaissance Faire. We watched a young woman do mounted archery, and met a man who headed a small group called Company of the Warhorse. He was there giving a demonstration of the type of Medieval horse games we used to do twenty-five years ago. As we talked (he from the saddle, me on the ground) he asked if we had horses. I explained that we used to, but because of the whole age thing, I had thought it best to stop riding, giving my patent rationalization, “Cause if I fell off, I don’t bounce so good as I did when I was thirty.” He looked me up and down, and said, “You look perfectly able to me.” That was the spark that lit the fire.

Finding his web site, I e-mailed him that we would be happy to be ground crew for him at his next event. We did that, and had fun, but that’s when it really hit me. I hated being on the ground. I wanted to be on a horse, having fun. The spark flared into flame. I wanted horses again. And why not? I was fit (okay, maybe a bit out of shape), healthy, and eager. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t been on a horse in probably seven years, and for my husband closer to ten.

I had the bug. My husband, always more cautious than I, got the bug as well...with reservations. When we told people we were getting back into horses, some looked at us as if we were insane. Others thought it was great, if that’s what we really wanted. The catch? Other than my saddle, we had no tack, not even that proverbial hoof pick. What we did have was a barn that had become a storage unit full of junk. Undaunted, I started trolling the Dreamhorse web site. That’s where I found her. My new mare, Delight, an Arabian and saddlebred cross.

And, fate stepped in again. When we went to pick up Delight, we were told of another horse for sale not far away, so we went for a look. That’s how we ended up coming home with two horses instead of one, and Little John (a BIG quarter horse) became my husband’s horse. We were excited, and scrambling to pick up the basics like halters, grooming tools, stall bedding, and feed (now that the junk was out of at least three stalls), and my husband managed to buy back the custom Australian saddle he’d sold to a friend.

Then we had to ride. That’s when the “new horse issues” set in. These were horses I hadn’t raised and trained myself, and both were twelve years old, and pretty set in their ways. Delight had been shown, and LJ, for the last three years, had been used as a schooling horse. Both have interesting habits that need work. We have riding skills that have atrophied, but are slowly coming back. In the end, with time, I know all will be well.

What I do know is the first time I walked out to the barn, saw those two happy faces, and heard the “Oh, goodie, it’s breakfast time” nickers, I burst into tears. I knew in that split second that we had made the right decision in bringing horses back into our lives. That empty part of my being was complete again. Yes, they are work. Yes, they can be a royal pain in the ass. Yes they are expensive to keep, and have a knack of getting themselves into trouble. I don’t care. For me, it’s all worth it when the bond starts to form, when they follow you around the pasture, when they watch you do chores, when you rub their special grooming spot and they groom you back. And I love the fact that I am back on a horse, and feel happier and fitter than I have in years.

Oh, and did I mention Delight and I have the same hair color? Ol’ fate can be pretty funny, doncha know.