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A hand made book inspired by Kelly Kilmer, a collage filled page ready to journal, and an ex-library pocket.
I work on so many books at once that sometimes one gets lost along the way. Thanks to Wild Precious Studio's "pocket" prompt, I remembered this little favorite! Now that it's found, I'll fill its pages with collage and pockets, then journal in it to my heart's content!
Another mandala to ArtipyTheSoul. Coming soon...
Mandala Two
We all need a little stardust from time to time.
In her post on Friday, Julie Fei-Fan Balzer went into delicious detail in text and photos as she composed her spread of journal pages, step by step. Click HERE to see them. Something she said in her post struck a chord:
"One of the things that I so enjoy about art journaling every day is the sense of a project building. I have a bad tendency to be a "finish it now" person. I have zero patience. Doing little bits every day allows ideas to percolate and themes to emerge and forces me to let go of control."
I've been immersed in Strathmore Workshop I, and like everyone else involved, I worked my journal page in steps. Step 4, the final result, is below.
Like most everyone, I followed the steps and the stages that were outlined in Pam Carriker's workshop. But it didn't get past me how many people complained about how long it was taking, how many steps were involved, how it wasn't as quick as they were used to or comfortable with. And it set me thinking about my own habits. How I work.
It helps to have lots and lots of time, but in my life, it isn't realistic to think it can come in one sitting. Some things take time to develop. Precious, glorious time. Regardless of the "make it in a minute"s that are out there in droves, some things need to be nurtured and coaxed into being. Deserve to be.
So why does taking time and developing work in stages, strike such fear in the hearts of artists? I encounter it all the time. People who are afraid of somehow overworking their pieces. It's true that overworking can occur in sensitive drawings where conservation of line is paramount, but in truth, very few paintings, almost no collage, and certainly no mixed media are ever in danger of overwork. Most are underworked, with shadow still waiting to be painted in, painted out, or just corrected. Or color, or composition, or line, shape, detail, or variation developed.
The truth is, we tend to fall in love with our work in it's unfinished stages and want to call it done. Like Gollum's ring, it becomes our "Precious", and it holds us in thrall, keeping us from making progress and developing something really wonderful. Also, we are impatient, and art and impatience are like oil and water. Except that even oil and water can be emulsified. Art and impatience are at opposite ends of the spectrum, and never the twain shall meet.
So here's what I do. I plan it all in stages. Many unplanned stages. What? Planned, unplanned? Yes. Go take a look at Julie's pages. The ones I mentioned at the beginning of my post. The link is HERE. You'll get the idea when you see how she divides her pages into sections of time and content.
The key is not to be clingy-needy with your work. It's OK to think it's awful in certain stages, and sometimes it's necessary for the piece to get downright ugly before it can develop. Lots of under-shading is awful looking until the top layers are added, but without that ugliness, there would be no depth. And if you still don't believe me, take a look at how today's piece developed. What it looked like in its last three stages, some of them really awful, but necessary.
The year has begun with a creative frenzy. If it continues at this pace, it will end as one of the best on record for the art blogging community. Only two-thirds of the way through January, and I've already stumbled upon dozens of new workshops, challenges and creative tutorials, all given freely by talented artists as their gifts into the new year.
I just completed the first three phases of a workshop by Pam Carriker for Strathmore Online Workshops. It's amazing, and when it's finished, there are still two more to go!
Strathmore is where I met artist-blogger Effy Wild, who got a wild idea to host an art community herself, and without any hesitation, voilá! Wild Precious Studio was born! I joined along with 15 others on the first day, and now just a week later, membership has risen to 76 and counting!
Among other micro groups, Wild Precious Studio features a weekly art journaling group. Week 1's challenge is painting owls. My Barred Owl was born last night, but not before serendipity led me to Green Isles Crafts where I found a journal prompt for "Wings".
My Barred Owl is below. On the left he's painted in acrylics, and on the right, he's the feature of a darker, finished journal page created from a color copy of the original, including one of my favorite poems by Pulitzer Prize winning Richard Wilbur.
Click to enlarge the pics and read the poem. If you think "Who cooks for you, Who cooks for you" is mere poetic license, watch the video below of a live Barred Owl, and listen to its wonderful, haunting voice.
Late edit- Here's the poem, in case you'd rather see it in print:
A Barred Owl by Richard Wilbur
The warping night air having brought the boom Of an owl's voice into her darkened room, We tell the wakened child that all she heard Was an odd question from a forest bird, Asking of us, if rightly listened to, "Who cooks for you?" and then "Who cooks for you?"
Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear Can also thus domesticate a fear, And send a small child back to sleep at night Not listening for the sound of stealthy flight Or dreaming of some small thing in a claw Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw.
Get ready....it's coming soon. In the meantime, here's a preview:
Mandala One
Sometimes a page conveys its meaning without words. The picture says it all. I've found that the pictures which speak the loudest are often those with fewer elements and fewer lines.
I heard the snickers when I posted step two. They were expected. Invited, even. Whisperings of, "Wow, that got flat," and "Who's got the nerve to tell her how much worse it looks?" So let me ask this: have you ever seen anyone just after a freshly cleaned and shining face, and then a minute later, immediately following the initial layer of matte foundation? Perhaps your own reflection in the mirror? Or the face of a significant other? What does it look like -- before the addition of color, contour and tone? Has the pink yellowed out a bit? Become slightly chalky? Lost it's vibrance? Flattened in tone? Is that not expected and necessary in a base for corrected color?
Here's step three. It isn't finished, just getting there with the addition of texture and corrected color on top of it's neutralizing underpainting of lights and shadow.
To refresh your memory, pics of steps one and two are below, as well as original artwork from my journal page which was photocopied to use as the base. For more about the process, click HERE for step one, and HERE for step two.
I ended last week with my first ever re-blog, and I'm beginning this week with another. While I don't intend to get into the re-blog habit or make it a regular feature of my own blog, it was just good fortune that brought both of these pieces to my attention, and because I feel strongly about the importance of this piece from Tammy Vitale, I'm bringing it to you. Enjoy! --Barbara
4 Positive Possibilities For Procrastination
via tammyvitale.com
One of the biggest “problems” potential clients talk to me about is procrastination. I hear: “Oh, I’m such a procrastinator.” “Oh, I always wait to the very last minute.” “Oh, I procrastinated too long and then couldn’t do my best work.”
Everyone thinks procrastination is negative.
Here’s a secret! Procrastination carries a message, you just have to consciouisly pay attention to what your actions (and your subconscious, driving those actions) is trying to tell you.
1. It isn’t really procrastination. It’s overwhelm. So you’re stuck stock still in the headlights of the oncoming truck and your conscious mind is blank.
You have a list. You woke up with 3 must dos, 2 want to dos and 4 should dos. Before you were out of bed, you were already behind.
Stop! Take a breath. Bring all the worries to consciousness. Write down all the to-dos whirling around your brain. Make them concrete. Now prioritize your top 3 things. If there are more than 3 things that MUST be done today, you are on overwhelm.
2. It really IS procrastination. You are putting it off because you don’t want to do it. Have a look at the “why” of doing it – why do you HAVE to do it in the first place? Is it in accordance with your true priorities and life’s passion? If it’s not, why are you doing it? And if it is – what are you hiding from yourself, because if it’s really your passion, you’ll dive right in!.
3. It’s productive procrastination. You find yourself cleaning the refrigerator rather than tackling something you know is your passion (if you’re home-based). Your subsonscious is saying: take a break. You need to think about this some more. Go for a walk (that take something out of the “must exercise” column). Don’t think – just go through the motions. In half an hour what it trying to break through will have had the space to do so and you can dive right in.
4. It’s really procrastination and it’s bringing unconscious motivations into the light showing you what you avoid. It allows you to see patterns. And once seeing, it allows you to correct by identifying the story running in your head – and then pick the story apart. Are you giving to much time to things you don’t love and aren’t passionate about? Are you afraid of failure (or success? – the end result is the same. Don’t do anything and you’ll have neither). Do you need to hire help or delegate work (share control)? Do you need to get clear on what your true passion is and what you really really want to do with your life instead of that thing over there that you are so assiduously avoiding?
Contrary to what we all think, procrastination is a positive experience that calls us to have an inner conversation.
So next time you think “I’m procrastinating” – stop and breathe. And change your reaction of beating yourself up for it. Instead welcome procrastination to the table and sit down and chat for a while!
via tammyvitale.com
A couple of days ago, I showed you a page I colored from Tammy Vitale's Wylde Women Coloring Book. You can click HERE to see the original post, but here's a thumbnail to refresh your memory.
If you want to see it bigger you can click on it. But I'm keeping it small because there's another version of this that you just have to see, and see it big!
Carol, whose blog Swallowcliff's Art is full of beautiful and wonderful things, chose to color this page with fabric! You can click HERE to see her original post, and you really should click to see her pic, and to read about her process, which she so generously shares with her blog readers.
Carol used reverse applique and some of the yummiest fabrics on the planet to make this piece, which measures about the size of a sheet of paper. She's given me permission to post about it and to show it to you here, so feast your eyes on this!
Fabulous, isn't it? Anything this amazing needs to be seen, and commented on. So get yourself over to Swallowcliff's Art and leave Carol a comment to tell her how wonderful this is! And while you're there, take a look at her adorable Dotees!
Also, don't forget to stop by Tammy Vitale's website to get your own pages to color, which she so generously offers as a free download.
Enjoy yourself!
Yesterday I posted step one of a journal page in-process, using material recycled from some of my own former journal pages. Now that we're into the second week in Strathmore Workshops, it's time to reveal where I've taken it in step two.
The idea was to soften and add shadow to the page. This is not finished, and from the list of materials needed for weeks three and four, it's far from finished.
If this seems a huge departure from my usual crisp style, let me just say that I'm not only a firm believer, I'm positively fanatical about taking a class with the instruction that's given. It's the only way to stretch creative muscles. There's no point whatsoever in taking a class, then doing it your way while you're there. You have the rest of your life to do it your way, so why not learn something new? Or not take the class at all? Just my two cents...
You can click HERE to see how it began and where I took it in step one. I'm really looking forward to next week. I'm ready to take this further.
We used to snicker when we heard songs by musicians that obviously contained bits and pieces of music they'd previously recorded. "Stealing his own material," we'd say. So when the idea of photocopying your own art journal pages as material to re-use in your own future works first surfaced a few years ago, it never occurred to me that it was something I'd ever do myself. Too much like stealing ones own material, I thought. In fact, that's exactly what it is. But you know what? It's fabulous!
Pam Carriker is directing the first set of workshops at Strathmore Artist Studio, and since she's challenged us with turning copies of previously finished pages into new work, I've farmed the pages above to use as fodder for the next piece. I photocopied the page and it's mirror image, then cut it up and rearranged it into a new composition.
This is only step one of a multi-step process, so at the moment, it's quite bare. But with all its similarity to the parent page, you can see how it's been changed, and get a fairly good idea of where it's headed, especially if you've seen some of my other collage and journal pages.
The original pages at top are among a group that I've never shown anyone. They are raw and purposeful. I keep a 97¢ composition notebook as a sketchbook filled with ideas and progress on larger things I'm doing. These pages are typical of how I spill out the words of what I've done and what I plan to do when I'm beginning a project. They were my toe-in-the-water pages for a series of richly layered and deeply personal journals I'm constructing out of a set of old and beautiful discarded encyclopedias which I'm altering. Right now I'm working simultaneously in vols. one and two. I think there are 14 in all.
Back to the topic of stealing from oneself, I've pretty much come full-circle. I began with the thought that this was a type of cheating. Of not doing the work. But it is work. In some ways, more difficult than the original, like re-arranging a puzzle. So now I'm on to the possibilities this opens for a collage series. And it's fun!
Almost every artist I know loves to color. Anything. Everything. I'm no exception. Coloring your own images is great. But so is coloring someone else's. Really. It's something I learned in a drawing class in college. If from time to time you take the time to color an image drawn by someone else, you'll find yourself working in curves, spaces, crevices and other areas that are new and uncharted territory, and you'll have to do what artists do best: Make decisions. Decisions that you wouldn't encounter if the image was your own, with your own preconceived idea of color placement.
The image above was drawn by Tammy Vitale. If you've been arting around the web for a season or two, you may remember when Tammy's Wylde Women Award was being presented to artists online. Take a peek at my right sidebar. My Wylde Women Award is there. What you may not know is that Tammy has a coloring book in .pdf format that she'll send you for free, and I really suggest you take her up on it, and color! What a fabulous release. Coloring! Good to un-stick your muse if she's stuck; Easy to take along if you're on the go. Stay in the lines. Or don't! Use any media. It's all good. Just color! Click the award or any of the links above and they'll take you to the .pdf. Just do it!
There's one other person I must mention. If you like the smooth gradients in the coloring, you should know that they're done with Prismacolor Premiere pencils only, without blending tools or fluids of any kind, and this technique which in reality (but not as much in this blog photo) resembles flat airbrushed gradients, is taught by an incredible artist, Terry Medaris. You need to take a look at his website, so click on his name and get yourself there. And if you ever have the opportunity to take a class from him, do it. You will be privileged. He is an amazing artist and an equally amazing teacher.
The most popular mode of art journaling right now seems to dictate beginning with a background, adding pictures or photographs, and then journaling words and ideas last. Being one who is not easily dictated to, I lean toward trying lots of things, then doing them as many different ways as I can and seeing what comes up.
Back in my take-along altered graphic art journal again, I wondered what it would be like to block out my text and make it flow back and forth into the lines, so I tried it. This is actually a 3pg spread. The left page of the two that are finished is actually one of the (many) pages I removed from the book when I prepped it for journaling. I added it back in with masking tape, and while it may look like that snippet of an unfinished page you see on the right is the one that was added, you'd be wrong. The page with the date is the left page in the book with the page to it's left, folding out from it. That snippet I mentioned is the right hand page in the book itself.
When I started this experiment, I had no idea where I'd end up. I really thought it would take all three pages, and I wasn't about to go fiddling around on scrap paper first. That's what my journal is for. Experimentation. And what's the point of having something for experimentation if you have something else standing by for experiments? That could become so endless and defeating the original purpose that it hurts my brain to think about it, so I wont. At any rate, I just went at it. I didn't worry about word breaks or line breaks. I just painted and inked one page at a time, and as it turned out, everything I had to say fit very neatly into two pages, exactly. I have no idea what I'll do with the third page, but when it's ready to say something, it will tell me what to do.
I know it says Nov. 17th. That's the day I began. When I finish all three pages, I'll add that date also. But since I'm in the middle of the process, you can rest assured that it really is Jan. 7th, or maybe Jan. 8th, depending on what part of the world you're in on the day of this post.
I don't know about you, but I really love the look of this! Just text.
Another piece in my graphic altered art journal. This time I aimed for more of a cartoon style.
The pages in this part of the book were very thin and damaged, so I reinforced the background by using torn and overlapping pieces of masking tape with a layer of acrylic paint on top. Before I even thought of drawing, I added the diamond shapes, which are nothing more than pieces of textured paint chips from a hardware store. Everything else is done with black india ink and a red ultra fine point Sharpie poster paint pen.
