Changes are Coming

It was fun to change the magazine girl with gel pens, but it's not as much fun as drawing. Less collage, more drawing, in my new art journal.

I am uploading some of the pages that I haven't posted yet from my big A4 art journal. I want to start showing you my new A5 art journal, where the pages are coming faster. Smaller and faster, I like it.
I like using writing as visuals. And I love this quote, so powerful from the poet, Rainer Maria Rilke. (jeesh, I spelled his name wrong on the page.) I did a post on how mostly I don't use quotes, but sometimes it is irresistible.

Change. I love change. Good thing, cause that is a lot what being creative is about. Doing stuff you haven't done before. But don't get me started on a creativity rave, (at least not yet, ha ha.)

I am talking about blog changes. At the beginning, I decided to make this blog about art journaling. I did a lot of tutorials for a while, and people liked that. Now that I am teaching regularly, the tutorials aren't so interesting to me. I am not ruling them out, but I think I want to expand the scope of this blog.

I am not completely sure what that will include, perhaps more of my life and inspiration as a professional artist? Certainly more talks about creativity and much posting of art journal pages.

Great Rave about Creativity

I love what Creative Juices Arts says about creativity in her blog. You gotta read a post called Abuse your Art Supplies.

Art Journal Cover Tutorial

I promised you guys a tutorial on my art journal cover.

Gesso it. I didn't sand first.

Plop on some acrylic paint. You don't need a palette.

Push the paint around.
I finished painting.
Now glue down some decorative paper with acrylic matte medium.
I prepared these chipboard letters with black gesso.

Here is a shot of where I do this type of journaling stuff. A corner in the studio. Non wet journal processes are done on my computer desk.

Fun home made background stamps. I painted them with some Lumiere metallic acrylic paint and then stamped the cover and the letters. Nice paint, really expensive. I think I will buy more.

Toned the letters down a bit with a mossy green I mixed up. I sponged the paint on so it would be mottled.

It was all going great... then I messed up didn't I? I had never tried my embossing powder or my VersaMark pad before. The embossing powder stuck well enough (though the font doesn't suit what I was doing) but when I heated it over the toaster, nothing happened. I was nervous about heating up the cover too much.

The powder didn't become a raised surface so I ended up brushing it off again. Yuck.

I filled in the word with a gel pen.

I gessoed some more chipboard letters.

And glued them on with UHU multi purpose adhesive. It prob'ly isn't archival, but those letters are really stuck on.

I can't wait to show my art journal class.

Plans for My New Art Journal

I am getting excited about my new art journal, (this photo looks A4 but my new journal is A5). Actually, I am thinking of this one more as a visual journal. What is the difference? Less experimenting with techniques, more about my daily life.

I have started writing down ideas for different pages that I would like to create. I am thinking this journal will be more structured so that I can explore ideas rather than working intuitively like the last journal. Working intuitively was fantastic, I am just looking for a change.

Because I am working in a bound sketchbook, I will need to cut out pages. I am thinking it would be fun to save those cut out pages and sew them together into another, smaller journal.

I Finished My Art Journal!!!

I will post a tutorial on how I made the cover soon.

I'm No Action Hero Art Journal pages

I thought that I would show you what happened to some of those speed journaling pages. I wrote that post about a month ago, I wasn't all that speedy, eh?

These are the pages that began with stenciling over acrylic paint. Then I tried out some embroidery. That was fun, sewing through the pages. Though it was rather bitsy for the A4 pages. The jumping picture is from one of my paintings. It is fun to copy photos of my paintings and reuse the images.

The writing is mostly about my struggle to accept myself, a prevalent discussion in my morning pages.

A Change is Coming

I am loving the simplicity of acrylic background, collage and writing from my morning pages.

But I am also looking eagerly forward to my new art journal, its smaller size and the changes I am certain it will bring. When I began this journal, I was very interested in trying different techniques and working spontaneously. Now I think I want to go deeper.

Thinking of My Sister

It has been fifteen years since I last saw my sister. I miss her terribly. I am also frightened to be in contact with her. She is schizophrenic and unmedicated.

Today is her birthday. Happy Birthday Leah. I love you.

"I Secretly Want" Art Journal Pages

These two pages are side by side, but I don't know how to place them that way on blogger.

At the moment, I am doing my art journal pages in a simple way. I do the backgrounds first, usually acrylic paint in layers of different colours. These two pages have some homemade stamp backgrounds added at the end. I do a bunch of backgrounds at one time.

Then I put some collage down. Just simple cut-outs of some of the images that I have been keeping. I like to cut a single image out rather than a an entire picture as it becomes more a part of the page.

Finally I have been writing stuff that I want to save out of my morning pages, - usually insights that I think are helpful.