House of the Past - Art Journal Collage and Paint

I don't throw out much. I used to throw out mistakes, wanted to scrub them, forget them, move away from them.  Now I think mistakes are generally lying in wait, ready to be cut up and made into something that makes them even more awkward and even more terrific.

This piece didn't involve mistakes, per se, but proof prints with colors that weren't what I wanted. Printing greeting cards particularly seems to result in a lot of "oh, crap!" moments. I intend to get through this pile eventually, adding them to journal pages like this one.

Journal Page - a kind of Gratitude

It's been ages. I'm dusting off, though, and getting into blogging my journal/mixed media practice some more in this space. I feel like I kind of need a playground just for my journaling, versus my portfolio site or pattern design, or things like that. Even though eventually everything comes together, a lot of work starts out kind of personal and precious and I am very grateful that there are places for gentler sharing out there on the same web that can be pretty cruel and hard at times.
 

A peek inside my 9x9 superdeluxe journal - I'm going into the blank pages of old journals I haven't completely filled and doing the job right.

Some people have been really wonderful to me lately, allowing me the luxury of being vulnerable and not exactly my finest. I'm very grateful for that, and it feels like a huge gift.

She's got handmade stamps, acrylic, watercolor, an old stamped image and newsprint at the very beginning, posca pen, stabilo All (which I have mixed feelings about, but whatever) and lyra pencils.

I'm gearing up to make some videos. Any tips out there for a nervous first-timer?

Finished Up

So here's the finished spread from a few days back. Some changes, but not too major. I find I'm waiting for a lot of things in my life right now, one of them is the end of a steroid taper, that's the most concrete of them. If you have ever done a long one of these, you'll know the feeling.

I've also  been playing with watercolor. Everything they say is so true about it - it's hard. It's wildly uncontrollable. It's so easy to create hideous badness. And it's fun.

Journal Page - The Possible

I've got a Moleskine A4 that I've been kind of precious about using because it's expensive watercolor paper and a nice binding and blah.

What a mistake that was! It's nice to get out of the square format of my usual journals. I do love Bee paper recycled 9x9's quite a lot, mainly because I find them heavyweight enough for all that I throw at them AND nicely portable.

But the Moleskine? There's obviously a reason they're popular. I believe these to go in the "worth every penny" category. It's just really pleasant to play with water media on the right kind of paper, and still have the option to keep things bound.

What's all this then?

Watercolor, my own carved stamps, pigment ink, commercial background stamp, acrylic, gesso, caran d'ache crayon, acrylic ink with a crowquill pen, charcoal, washi tape, alpha stamp. Whew!

You probably don't need a psych degree to tell that things are turning around a bit for me, too. The hopeless malaise of a flare that lasts for unknown amounts of time is over. I'm moving away from misery - for how long who can say, but my experience tells me I can now dig in and get on with the rest of my year, with any luck!

The body may be a step behind, but the mind is light and ready to say yes to things.

Ask/Ask - Art Journal Page

No matter how old you get, you and your mother will probably have this dialogue.

.....

technical sidestep of further navel-gazing time!
There's some of that tasty hand stamping, you can see where I started.

Gelatos again. I think they're a definite candidate for my next BRUTALLY HONEST PRODUCT REVIEW segment - will they pass the test? As always, it depends what you are testing!

Also used - 99 cent alpha stamp, posca, charcoal, pencil, gesso.

Getting messy again....gelatos and inktense journal pages

Peace of mind? Really? How journal schmournally. It's a well-trod sentiment. But peeps, my dear peeps, how I really really could use some in my life this week.

This page started with a hand stamp I carved. I call the pattern "cairn" - you can't really see a lot of evidence of it here, but I'll be showing it off a lot.  I'm LOVING carving my own stamps as a starting point - it's a great way to lay down a bunch of information onto that intimidating white page, and it's a nice way to keep the image vocabulary your own.

The flowers are collaged deco paper, though. I thought they went so nicely with the background I worked up with plenty of gelatos dripping. They do tend to migrate down the page in a different way from watercolors, it's hard to explain but you'll notice the difference if you try both.

Used inktense, gesso, posca, acrylic pen and ink, and lots of prismacolor here. It's nice to get messy again and get lot of deep saturated color.

40 - lost your way? Art Journal Page - Art Journal Every Day

A good time to reflect on your mortality. Keeping it upbeat and valentine-ish though. Vintage label scans, acrylic, distress inks, tattered angels mist in some kind of pink color. I included a wry little reference to "The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock." The meanderings of the narrator as a contemporary list.

1. part hair from behind
2. eat peach.
3. mermaids. wth?

I draw him so I can talk about you without talking about you - Art journal Every Day

Acrylic, acrylic ink, poscas, washi tape (a little)

I used a wooden embellishment from Michaels as a mask, and went over my background with Tattered Angels spay in "cork."  Also some distress ink around the borders.

The sparrow is a print and cut from my own work - I drew him freehand from an 1860 or so ornithological reference picture. Then when I liked the stage the sketch was at - you guessed it - scan and print onto computer paper, cut and paste and paint over the sketch, used as an underpainting.