When Inspiration Leaves

I create almost every day. Often most of the day. I don't think a lot about whether I am inspired or not. Creating is my work; my vocation, it's what I do and I just do it. But occasionally, maybe once or twice a week, I hit a blip of feeling actively uninspired. Where suddenly I feel yuck at the thought of working on my painting or drawing or whatever it was that I had planned. Not just not excited but almost repelled. This is usually kinda scarey. It might be a painting in a series that I have been excited about. It might be a plan for an art journal page that had filled me with enthusiasm. Or it might be continuing some entirely new project.

I get scared because I wonder what it means. Will I be able to finish that painting series? Will I have to give up art journaling? (what about my students? my classes?) And sometimes those scary thoughts are true. I have had to give up on a series of paintings, I did have to stop teaching beadweaving. My interest went and it didn't return.

But more often, much much more often, it just indicates that that particular painting or journal page or project is not what I need to work on today. I need to draw rather than paint. I need to leave the new project for a while. I need to try approaching a different journal page in a new way. Later I will come back to what I had planned with fresh eyes and fresh inspiration.

Why did I write this post today? Because I am feeling bored with my art journal.

So I might just pick up the new muslin journal and see what happens.

Sometimes when I feel like this I even clean the studio. Only as a last resort though, tee hee.

The Wonder of our Creativity

I recommend this wonderful post by Judy Wise on the benefits of creativity and art journaling.

Please be sure to read to the end. She brings it all together beautifully.

Lynne Hope's Muslin Journal Pages

The wonderful Lynne Hope wrote a tutorial on how she makes her unique muslin journal pages. I was immediately attracted to the idea, so I started experimenting.
I didn't have any walnut ink so I tried using watercolour ink to stain the muslin squares. Stupid, silly me. Of course it washed out when I rinsed it.

The squares with colour have been dyed with tea. That worked really well. I used it on all of them in the end.
I did some brush cleaning on a few of the squares. Not to the extent that Lynne did. You gotta follow your own inclinations - cause it's more fun.

Then I decided to spray some stencils with Ozecraft dyes. That worked really well.

I used Lynne's suggestion of some acrylic paint over the top to knock it back. I used a beige colour.
When I did this burning heart stencil, I didn't use any paint over the top. I liked them too much the way they are. The one on the left is where I printed off the stencil I used on the right.

Ooh, this is really exciting. Thank you so much Lynne!!!

a Prompt from Daisy Yellow

Here is a journal page in response to Daisy Yellow's prompt: Booked. I confess that I already had this page and used her prompt as an excuse to post it.

Her prompt is really more interesting than what I did with the quote from Terry Brook's book "Tanequil". What I did is an illustration. Her prompt is about imagining climbing into the book and creating a page that expresses what that would be like. Go and check it out. If you do a page, please let me see.

I might still do the prompt. I think it's a good one.

Two Art Journal Pages

I don't have a lot to say about these pages. I made them quite a while ago. Easy peasy, just a bit of collage, paint pens and gel pens.
On this page I also used some water soluble crayons. I don't use them a lot. I think I am more into drawing.

Fabric Dyes as stencil spray

More experiments with stenciling. I am trying out the Ozecraft dyes to spray with (instead of using spray paint, which I hated). Apparently they are a fabric dye. I watered it down and put it in a little cheapo sprayer I got from a dollar store. The Ozecraft was cheaper than the ink re-inkers which I will also try, -but gee it goes quickly. The effect wasn't too bad though.

I am using chipboard surrounds as a stencil. It works well, but what does mo hui mean?lol I reckon it could break down fairly quickly with the wet spray.

The colours are pretty.

The spotted background was done using a plastic needlepoint canvas as a stencil.

This ochre colour is Tim Holtz Distress Ink. It turned out crap as you can see. I don't blame the ink. It was the s*** spritzer I bought from a discount cosmetic shop.

These were all done on manila folders. I don't have any plans for them, just experiments.