filling a page

I really am liking this new coptic bound journal I made.  It lies pretty flat thanks to the sewn binding.  Here I did some stenciling and am arranging some border collage papers:

First a bit more stenciling, then I painted a few birds.  then a circle. . . . 

and a Rumi Poem.  Hard to see, can you find it?

A bird makes great sky circles of it's freedom.
A bird makes great sky circles of it's freedom.
How does it find it?
It falls.
and in falling, is given wings.
--Rumi.

Pages with pizazz

I like to start a journal page with color already on the paper, that empty page syndrome is then easily averted. 
Splatter and stencil are my favorite way to mess up the page before I even start.
and I want to show you another easy way to add fun to a page - using an eraser carved stamp as a border.
Here are three stamps that I carved from a white eraser.  (Use linoleum carving tools.)
You can make a pretty simple spiral, but by repeating it, you have an awesome pattern.
Another way is to stamp a plain white paper, and use a few different stamps to get a pattern.
Then add some wasabi tape to make the border more ellaborate.

Scan your little border and print enough that you can throw it in your collage bag and use bits and pieces on many future pages.
and you'll also save all your erasers to use over and over in the future.
even better, have an eraser carving party with friends and then share all your images.
One stamped image scanned can provide many many uses for papers you make from photoshop and your printer.

It's very addictive.

"I think of life itself now as a wonderful play that I've written for myself... and so my purpose is to have the utmost fun playing my part." 
--Shirley MacClaine

Developing a style

I am taking an on-line class called "Year of the Fairy Tale" with Carla Sondheim.  (There is a link to click to on to learn more about it over there on the right.)
I just finished the first lesson, and already I am so inspired and motivated, realizing that my drawing process can be much stronger and intentional.
I often sketch in my journal, and am almost never happy with what I draw.
I usually just start drawing right in my book, expecting my brain to pop out something perfect, then I am sad when I ruin the page with a drawing I don't like.  

Carla is taking us step by step through a process of how you develop an illustration style.  Her very first lesson already showed me things I never considered doing (and I have years of drawing training as part of my art degree): using sketching from photos on the internet to discover a face style, drawing first with your non-dominant hand to loosen up, doodling the face over and over to sort of crystallize what about that face is interesting, repeating that style until your inner eye knows what details it wants to focus on.  Her process helped me find a face I love to draw.  Repeating something over and over helps solidify what is important about the face.  Using throw away sketch paper, also, helps to not be so precious about results.  Something I had sort of forgotten in my journaling process.

Here are the three phases of finding a face to draw:

and in the same lesson, we worked finding a frog style - first just by sketching, and then exaggerating a feature we like.  In just a few sketches, I came up with a frog.  I couldn't resist adding some collage texture to my favorite sketch (Sorry, Carla, I am getting ahead of myself but I couldn't resist):

Her teaching style is so calming, and encouraging.
and did you guess that the first fairy tale she is using to teach us is "The Frog Princess"?

Another assignment is for us to go to the library and look at great illustrations, make notes of what we love.  Such a simple thing, yet something I don't ever do.

I am so happy to be in this class, as a teacher I rarely take classes these days.  I think that needs to change.  Inspiring teachers are such gifts, I am so looking forward to this year of learning from Carla.

“Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.”  
-- Bertolt Brecht

Making a Journal

The beauty of this video made me cry.
Please watch it if you have ever kept a journal, or ever want to keep one.
http://vimeo.com/76384265

Journaling in community

Today we had our monthly journaling group, 8 ladies sitting around a table, cutting and tearing and painting and pasting and writing.

We start with a check-in, we have a reading and a chalice lighting, we work in silence, then we share our work, practicing deep listening.  I always am amazed at how our ideas overlap, like somehow our concerns float around in the room and lodge in each others' brains. The beginning check-in tunes us a bit, like an orchestra, I suppose, and we seem to end up just vibrating in the same frequencies.

 I love this group, and I always am pleased with the pages that come out of it.
 If you can find a journaling group, try it, it's pretty awesome.

"Pilgrimage to the place of the wise is to find escape from the flame of separateness." --Rumi

Tea

I have been drinking tons of herbal teas.

I found at the local Pacific Ocean Market (an Asian grocery store) that their selection of medicinal teas is amazing - I am using the Blood Pressure Tea, and the Detox tea, along with my beloved French Verveine, which I swear, cures everything.  Saving the paper tea bag wrappers, of course, was inevitable.

So here is a page in my journal, this tea bag collage will be the background, and more will happen on top. Maybe it's time to carve a tea stamp out of an eraser. When themes keep reoccuring, I have learned to pay attention. Or perhaps this page will be my shrine-page to tea, and I will add nothing more.

Time to get get a cup.

"A woman is like a tea bag - you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water." --Eleanor Roosevelt

Exciting news for the new year for you and your art journal!

Anyone who's been reading this for a while knows I have a deep connection to the work of Carl Jung, and the idea that the archetypal world of myth and storytelling is a very powerful way to understand ourselves and the world.  Well, guess what?  There is an on-line mixed media art class being offered called "2014: The Year of the Fairy Tale."

The teacher, Carla Sonheim, is a very fine illustrator and online art instructor known for using innovative exercises and techniques to help students of all levels embrace a more playful approach to creating art. She is the author of "Drawing Lab for Mixed-Media Artists: 52 Creative Exercises to Make Drawing Fun" and "The Art of Silliness: A Creativity Book for Everyone."

Her work is really magnificent, and here is a chance to learn some  of her techniques that will help your art making rise to a new level.  I am taking the class myself, so you will see lots of her inspiration here in my pages as the new year starts.  Letting mixed media loose on the page, and allowing playfulness and experimentation in our work is really a key element to unexpected surprises, joyful work, and exuberance in our journals.  I know I tend to just settle into doing the same thing over and over, and boredom can overtake me easily as I work in my journal.  I am so happy to have this opportunity for some inspiration and direction from someone who does such creative, playful work.

 

copyright Carla Sonheim

Here is a link to Carla's Blog: http://carlasonheim.wordpress.com/

and here is info for "Year of the Fairy Tale" Online Class: http://www.carlasonheim.com/2014-the-year-of-the-fairy-tale/

Penwork

Yesterday I showed you a series of steps to get from a doodle or painting to a collage in your journal. Here is a bit of that page with some stamping and penwork added.

Media used includes:
gel pen
copic marker
inktense pencil
carved rubber stamp

It's very relaxing to put on good music or a documentary film on youtube, and just make swirls and dots and marks. Because why not have fun with your journal? 

"I never did a day's work in my life – it was all fun." --Thomas Edison

something to try in your journal

Here's a little tutorial if you are wondering what to do today in your journal.  (We all need a kickstarted some times.)  Start off painting or drawing a little picture.  I did a couple of watercolors of birds.

Scan the paintings, and print a bunch, you can put them on different backgrounds if you want, and print them in a few different sizes.  This will give you a bunch of images for collaging.

Cut and tear the images in several shapes and sizes.  Get out your spray mount!

Here I have cut and torn some of the birds, and arranged them in my journal. I like mixing square images and torn images.  I used some scrap from the tearing outs to make a bit of a border.

Now spread out an old magazine, and spray the back of the larger images first.  Attach them to your page, then turn the magazine pages so you have a clean background to spray on for the next set of papers.  Spray the smaller images and attach them to your layout.

These are my inktense watercolor pencils, I LOVE them.  See the spray bottle?  Once I get some color on the paper, spritzing with water really makes the pencil work pop.  This is why I journal on heavy watercolor paper, it can take lots of punishment.

I drew around this bird with red pencil, then activated the ink with water.  It holds the images on the page nicely.  I also tend to dray parts coming off the torn paper onto the background, and stamp over the edges.  All these help blend the images so they sit on the journal page nicely.

Next will be some penwork, words and doodles and detailing.  Maybe some stamping.  I'll post a photo when the whole page is done.

Happy journaling!

risk taking

"Art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take risks." -Mark Rothko

Reflection

It's a busy month, December, with craft shows to get ready for, making, wrapping, and mailing gifts, increased sales on Etsy, and all those holiday get-togethers.

I just spent about 6 days in bed, punctuated with a one day sitting at an art show I HAD to attend. Sales were good, and comments were so positive and encouraging, that I'm glad I did it, even if it meant a few extra days recuperating after. One thing I am learning as I get older, that it is the right thing to take good care of myself, even if that means saying "I can't" to some things I wish I could do. We tend to take care of everyone else so much that we lost sight of taking good care of ourselves. I recently initiated with a Crones Group, 8 fabulous women who celebrated being older, being in a wiser phase of our lives, letting go of the time of caring for others to focus on building our own visions and personal wisdom.

I am coming out of 25 years of raising kids, and it is a wonderful gift to be able to put my work and my health first. Journaling will be a part of this, even though my journaling takes a bit of a back burner to my December obligations, I am looking forward to some real solid journaling time to start the New Year.

I also teach a workshop in February, so I am looking forward to sharing some of those pages and techniques here. Hope you have a blessed Solstice, Yule, Christmas, Kwanzaa, etc. (or that you already had a blessed Hannakuh.) The time of darkness leading us into the New Year is a blessed time for reflection.

Your journal is there to help you with this.

"The upheaval of our world and the upheaval in consciousness is one and the same. Everything becomes relative and therefore doubtful. And while man, hesitant and questioning, contemplates... his spirit yearns for an answer that will allay the turmoil of doubt and uncertainty." --Carl Gustav Jung

go today in wisdom

"This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say. I don't plan it. When I'm outside the saying of it, I get very quiet and rarely speak at all."  --Rumi

move towards love

moving forward

I had some dear friends over last night, and one had very interesting things to say about moving art into the world. I have a studio full of work, art journals, prints, cards, paintings, jewelry, etc. I need to exchange some of the items for money. and I have been a bit stuck how that happens.

Some really powerful advice she gave me:
1. Visualize it. Imagine exactly how it looks and what happens to turn your work into cash.
2. Go out and connect, do favors for others, and they will do favors for you. Sitting in your studio wishing the art would sell will certainly not sell it.
3. On line sharing only goes so far. Human connection is made with humans, not humans on machines. 4. You do need the marketing materials (I do have them) business cards, websites, social media, but then, you have to MOVE those things also. Have a constant flow of these things out into the world.

Isn't that advice awesome? She has used these ideas in her own freelance work, and has more work than she can do.

and I do have work in an Holiday gift show December 6 and 7, I'll post more here in the weeks to come.

"When we harness the forces of harmony, joy and love, we create success and good fortune with effortless ease." --Deepak Chopra

today . . .

"When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence."  --Ansel Adams

Generosity

I had a marvelous vacation at Hatteras, NC, a peninsula of ocean land 30 miles out in the Atlantic from the mainland.  Besides reading, gathering shells, sitting on the beach, a bit of yoga, and eating amazing seafood, I got to do a bit of nothing.
 It was glorious.
The fullness of life is there for us; happiness is a choice.

I am committed to using my thoughts to always create positive energy for myself and anyone I am in contact with.  Our thoughts affect the very small events in our day, which can shift our own attitude, shift others around us, and thus shift the world.
Why not choose joy?

Are you jealous of the ocean's generosity?
Why would you refuse to give this gift to anyone?
Fish don't hold the sacred liquid in cups.
They swim the huge fluid freedom.
-Rumi

What is your journal for?

Life is so complicated, there are so many choices and pressures. I sometimes am so overwhelmed with all those plans to make, lists to fulfill, dreams to realize. I am so convinced that working in my journal really does help me get where I need to go.

I can loosen up and just explore ideas.
I can write out dreams and goals.
I can mess around and fantasize about crazy possibilities.
I can just take a break from all the striving and have some fun.

Keeping a journal can and should be a tool for all theses ways of exploring what and who and where and why you are here on this planet. So much of life pushes us to fall into an expected pattern, to drive us to be mindless cogs in a wheel of civilization that makes us consume, work to pay, consume, work to pay.
All of it a bit mindlessly.

I want to have clear intention in my life. My journal really help me create this. Everyday.
Try it.

“The Universe doesn’t give you what you ask for with your thoughts - it gives you what you demand with your actions.” --Steve Maraboli

Waiting

Sometimes, my journal is about words.

 I have been in a long fallow period, waiting to hear about a job (I did not get it), waiting to see where my work will take me. It takes so much trust to know you can just be, and not be making and doing all the time, and that it is okay to be with the space, to not struggle or strive or despair . . . that sometimes the long spaces of life just need to happen. To know that the cup must become empty before it can be filled.

I worked on a series of collagy-watercolory owls last year, I had 12 that I liked enough to be a calender, and a publisher, through my rep, is looking at them. and as I wait for an answer, there are numerous other things to do, but somehow I am still in the waiting mode. I applied for a job, had an interview, waited, waited, waited to see how much my life might change. For my art's sake, it was better not to get this job. I will pick up the watercolors soon (next week!!!) but for now, I think the waiting has been okay.

A philosopher, Meno, once asked: "How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?" Sometimes the hidden and mysterious take patience to discover, and all the busyness we think we are supposed to constantly inhabit can result in missing a subtle quiet whisper of what is to come next. My journal is the place I can release the words of wondering, insecurity about what I am to do, lists of maybes and what-ifs and intentions. and once I've done this, done the day-dreaming (and night dreaming) and setting intentions and goals and planning paths, I can sit and see what happens next.

I am waiting.

"Certainly for artists of all stripes, the unknown, the idea or the form or the take that has not yet arrived, is what must be found. It is the job of an artist to open doors and invite in prophesies, the unknown, the unfamiliar, it's where their work comes from, although its arrival signals the beginning of the long disciplined process of making it their own." --Rebecca Solnit

done at our monthly journaling group

"Oh soul, you worry too much. You have seen your own strength. You have seen your own beauty. You have seen your golden wings. Of anything less, why do you worry? You are in truth the soul, of the soul, of the soul."
--Rumi

Finding new ideas

This journal page is from Guillermo del Toro's concept art for a movie. Lots of creatives think by drawing, and an art journal is the perfect place to do this. The biggest hurdle is often worrying what the page looks like. Make a bunch of messy pages, add some ugly drawings, and you will be much freer in your work. and after you've filled a bunch of sketchbooks, look back through them, scan some pages, and collage into another book.

Repeat.

Seriously fun, and this always helps me come up with new ideas.

"The creation of an art collage from the soul is an inner journey that allows your soul to speak to you. Your soul's voice can be heard through the images, feelings and insights that surface..." --Kathleen Carrillo

 "Rapid-collage prevents any elevating movement toward a fixed goal. To 'be nowhere' is to let oneself be." --Josh Goldberg

 "Collage is like a hall of mirrors. Every direction you look, you see something different and visually stimulating." --Nita Leland

 "Collage is the twentieth century's greatest innovation." --Robert Motherwell