SO, IS THERE A PLAN??

 

This ended up being a cry from the heart - and one I didn't know was in there until it came out!!  I was just playing around with my Neocolour II crayons as you can see below.  I MADE myself pick up an assortment of colours, because usually once I pick up a blue for example, I reach for other blues, or greens in the same spectrum.  I'm trying to teach myself that more colour is even better, and if they clash that's good too!  The lady in the corner just got added for no good reason, which is why she looks a bit random down there.  She is!

And then I started drawing on the top with a fine black Posca paint pen - I've recently moved away from all other black pens to use this one practically all the time.  It gives a very intense and solid black and although its not possible to get a really fine one (I think this is 0.7) the effects I get with it more than make up for that. Best of all it writes over ANYTHING!

The pink circle in the top left corner is cut from a copy of a journal page, and so is the bottom left shape.  One these were glued down I began to doodle shapes and patterns on top, still with absolutely no idea where this was going - I just put stuff down because I liked it!  I do believe its possible to over-think art journalling and obsess about what to put down, and where, and why.  This is me just going with the flow, and it the result is a bit random that's OK because in the end the process is what I'm about as much as the finished page.

But then, out of my depths popped this heartfelt statement .... literally a cri de coeur, which absolutely NEEDED to be got down on paper.  Its something I've worried about and prayed over endlessly, and you might like to know how I've eventually resolved it?

I'm a great fan of Kaffe Fasset's patterns and tapestry, and in my spiritual journey have come to believe that the entire universe and everything in it makes a pattern of glorious colour and complexity.  Every stitch is exactly where its meant to be, and essential to the whole, but its easy to forget that in our little lives we only see a tiny part of the tapesty, so that often the pattern doesn't make sense because we can't see it all.  That doesn't mean that the pattern isn't there, or that we aren't part of it, or that it isn't beautiful, because it IS.

So in the end that's what I had to remember .... that although the pattern for my life isn't visible I'm a beautiful part of it, meant to be exactly where I am, and it all makes sense to the One who made it all. On the other hand, if she'd like to show me just a tiny bit more .... maybe it would make better sense? No?  OK, I get it - we aren't meant to know ..... sigh.

COMPLICATED ...?

 

This is me trying to illustrate for myself just how complicated my life gets when I have too much on!  Now its entirely possibly that someone else might find what was going on extremely easy to deal with, but as someone with limited energy I find I get overwhelmed easily .... and then nothing AT ALL gets done!

It began, as most of my pages do, with a painted background using my Neocolour II crayons. You'll appreciate that this basic page is nothing fancy, but you see it doesn't have to be, since I will cover much of it up anyway.  Some people new to art journalling can get in a bit of a panic over producing "arty" backgrounds, but they can be very simple because they're just a jumping off point!

The next stage for me is collaging - all sorts of bits going on here, as you can see.  The figure is made up from bits cut out of colour copies of previous journal pages,plus a scrap of patterned paper.  The round element top and bottom right has been done using a stamp (with a few bits added).  The rest is just me drawing bits and bobs and decorating with dots.

The twisty wormholes on the body got me thinking about feeling overwhelmed by a complicated tangle, so I chose to extend them some more and tangle up the figure.  As you can also see I've used my Posca paint pen (black) to add spiky extensions to some of the corner elements.  I use these pens for nearly everything now, and the black is particularly good compared to most pens because its a really deep dark black, so stands out against the background brilliantly.  My only complaint is that they don't make them fine enough, but I manage.  Also the full range of colours isn't available in the finest point, which is disappointing.  If ever I find the energy to do so I might write and tell them that.

And then I just fiddled around and doodled some more in the spaces, which for me is my favourite meditative stage of building a page.  You can also see on the lower right that I totally changed the element there - I just wasn't happy with it so used a paint pen to go over it and give me a plain background to work on instead.

Fortunately, in the 10 days or so since I made this page, a few things have been resolved and life became very much less frantic.  Except that now I have to get ready to shoot off south directly after church tomorrow to drive to the other end of the country to attend no.2 daughter's MA graduation, not to mention taking a car full of the baby stuff I've made/collected for the baby she's expecting in 4 weeks time.  Ooops, I think life just got a bit busy again, but at least I can snooze in the car while himself drives .... or then again maybe I'll knit and see if I can use the journey time to finish the baby cardigan I'm working on?

I do LIKE to keep reasonably active and occupied, just not quite THIS busy .......!!  Anyway, here's a challenge for you - make and share your pages on the complications of life and I'll put them up here.

FIFTH DECADE ....

 

By golly its all excitement around here!  I have a new journal and I'm LOVING working it in - its another spiral bound book and approx 10 x 10" square.  I've filled 8 A5 ones so far, and it was a big step to branch out from those, so forgive me if this seems like a small thing to get excited about, but I am!  The extra space of the square format allows so much more possibility.

For those who like to know such things its a Pink Pig journal and the paper is a really nice quality - although I am still sticking two pages together as I like them to be nice and strong for anything I may throw at them, and don't want any bleed through.

You can see below what nice effects I got on this new paper (gessoed first) with my Neocolour II crayons - I never got subtle watercolour type results like this before.

I was so delighted that it took me a while to decide I could bear to do any work on top, but eventually I went for outlining some of the "layers" and doodling in the spaces.  This was done using Pitt Artist pens which write pretty well over the crayon - except if its laid on too thick when it gets a bit waxy.  However I now have a secret weapon to combat this problem in the form of a black Posca paint pen, which writes superbly over absolutely anything!  Its not as fine a nib as some others you can get, but its great for doodling and drawing.  The white and greeny blue are also Posca colours - I have a selection of these in medium and in the finer 0.7.  The colour range is sadly much better in the bigger chunky nibs (why?) but I have fun even with the limited choice of 10-12 colours, and particularly like their opacity.  If I want see through colours I go with my Promarkers.

The page was then left like this for over a week because I was so delighted with it that I didn't want to ruin it, but in the end a journal page isn't one (for me anyway) unless it has words on it, and these are what popped out of the far recesses of my brain.

So as you can see, I'm not at all troubled by the fact that I shall be 60 next week - my fifties have been absolutely fabulous (painful illness notwithstanding) and I hope my next decade will see me grow as an artist as much or more than I have in this one.  We shall see!!

BE YOURSELF ....

  

At the risk of sounding self-congratulatory, I am really pleased with this page!  I like the colours and the layout, I managed not to write in straight lines, the Easter Island head makes me smile, and I got down something that I'd been thinking about a lot.  Successful art journalling I believe?

Anyway, below is how the page began - I have this terrible tendency to just paint a page a single colour, so I was determined to use at least two.  Having just bought a new bottle of turquoise/teal and this glorious lime green (these are just bog standard acrylic paints) it was obvious that I would try the two colours together, having noticed how great they looked together in the car going home!

It needed a bit of shading and a touch of white too, and then I was off with the bits of collage and this wonderful image of a carved stone head I'd found from somewhere, a newspaper I think.  The collage is just bits of colour and pattern which appeal to me - something I've learned from Teesha Moore.  As soon as I added the glasses (using one of those cheapy £1 clear stamps) I knew instantly what the page was about.

So then I developed it a bit more - doodling on the collage shapes and getting the writing down.  My stone head stands for someone trying to be something they aren't, so as well as the glasses he got a beard etc. Man in disguise - geddit?  This process doesn't necessarily happen all in one session, although I don't normally work on more than one page at a time ... except when making general purpose backgrounds.

And then, my favourite part, when its almost finished but it "needs" something?  This is usually resolve through the "I know, lets doodle on it" method!  In this case with an assortment of posca paint pens, although you should note that I resisted the temptation to doodle on every single inch?  Proud of myself I was.

Like I said, I'm pleased with it and while I rarely blog my worst efforts - well I paint over the really awful ones - this one is up there with some of my favourites.  You don't have to like it obviously, but thanks for coming by anyway.
Love
Rosie X