My Latest Project/Obsession.... Art Journalling

It started with an impulsive purchase (doesn't everything?) of the No Excuses Art Journaling book at Joann's Fabrics.

But it's actually been so awesome. I've wanted to journal forever but I was spinning my wheels because I thought journaling had to be just writing. Hah! How silly! Seems obvious now. And the best part is it gives you monthly assignments. So I can do a little art everyday without having to get into the mess of an acrylic painting. I still do that of course especially on Mondays but I can have the therapy that comes from doing my art without the mess.

So here's pictures of it so far. It's not as cool as some of those on pinterest or what not but it's just for me to express myself so it doesn't matter. A lot of these journals are done by professional artists so don't compare yourself to them. THEY DO ART FOR A LIVING. I'm just documenting living through my art and it's my art. So I'm not worried about it. (Jeanna Fearon would be so proud!) You can see I had to work through this by my prior 2 blog entries where clearly I was a little OCD and stuck at first. http://rebeccasotherlife.blogspot.com/2014/09/back-to-journaling-project-or-tyranny.html and http://rebeccasotherlife.blogspot.com/2014/09/art-journaling.html

$3.99 journal from Michael's

Washi tape! Now that may add up. But it's so helpful for adding in more pages, affixing a plastic envelope and my favorite business card.

Then I took my current daily planner that I carried in my purse and cut all the pages out and added them to this journal. Which was soooooo much easier than making your own tabs plus then I'd have the calendar grids to use. Many people buy a larger desk type calendar and add blank pages. I started with smaller size blank journal and added calendar pages. I had to do it my way. 

Pictures I "googled"of water for the grid drawing with copic markers. The markers I bought back for landscape drawing class.

So this is a collage with a poem for September. It needs more stuff or painting but I'll get there when I get there if I get there.

Ink drawing of view of island from lobby at Couple Tower Isle, Jamaica, sigh......

On your daily spaces you always record 3 or 4 things, the weather, some pattern, and a word and a color for the day. At first I forgot the pattern and focused on drawing the weather. 

You also draw these boxes that are roughly playing card size, one for each week, to do contour drawings. From what I gathered a contour drawing is done quickly in ink while looking at a picture with the goal to increase your speed and reduce need to keep looking back and forth from picture to drawing to picture to drawing. 

You add one envelope (or more I'd think if traveling etc) to collect your monthly epherema. Which to me meant mostly pictures I cut out of magazines and brochures from Jamaica or tickets to concert or from travel. I also decided in November to cut out small squares of "patterns" or "textures" since I'm supposed to be drawing a pattern daily and often can't figure out what to draw.  I figure I'll "draw" one from the envelope then draw one. (sorry for the puns)

The whatchamacallit

From the book "No Excuses Art Journaling", hereafter NEAJ,  there are links you can scan the whatchamacallit with your phone, takes you to a link, where you can download and print these inserts for your monthly "themes and assignments".  So this month I was supposed to draw a house (it said from imagination but that would have been way too simple) so I found a dream house and drew that instead.

The house from Houzz.com

My monthly collage of colors that say October to me, some fashion, a stamp that didn't stamp well, an owl from a download from NEAJ, and lots of Washi Tape.

You can see here I was in Albaquerque and finally was adding a pattern or in my case picture along with weather, word and color. The picture on the right was from draw something you see right now. It was a painting next to our bed in the hotel room. It''s sideways here but you get the idea.

This idea was directly from NEAJ book and you can see the Harvest Moon assignment there as well below.

So here's some examples in the book that I just copied. I figure copying is good practice.

Journal still in Albaquerque... fuuny word Albaquerque

Novemeber grid waiting patiently for me to decide what to fill it with. I have penciled in the rest of the month grids themes I may try but nothing is set.

I love this Red Riding Hood into the Wolfffffffff we go! It's also a copy and the webpage is there on bottom.

Halloween Collage! Will add pictures of how we looked once I get printer to work! Argh!

Last night I added some extra pages that fold out. This is a variation on how to do your to do list. I put all these tasks on this page last weekend. As typical I had 4 times the tasks humanly possible but that's ok worked on them again this weekend. When done I color in with a random watercolor pencil. Then later I use water to change it to paint. Also attempted to draw a zipper as that days pattern along with a collage of cool fashion but took up 3 days!

Big problem I foresee is only 3 months in and journal is already huge. But many of the pages I now add in are empty pages I rip out from the same journal so hopefully won't get too much thicker.

I also want to do a garden journal and maybe a Christmas Journal? CRAZY I know.

And for those of you who would like a more Christian theme for your art journal just add Bible Verses and prayers and stir thoroughly. Hee hee. It kills me that some people were criticizing the above book for pagan themes? It's art people. It's whatever YOU put in it. And I only saw one Buddha. I happen to think Buddha's make great landscaping features no disrespect intended to the Buddhist. But it's a system. She didn't tell you to worship Buddha. But I also stumbled today on this woman's art journal site that was amazing and Christian so here's a link:

Yes and Amen

And here's some of her journal pages!

See! Aren't they amazing! How do these people do these amazing pages. And how thick of paper is that? I do coat my paper with 1 of 3 things and sometimes 2 of them:

Liquitex Matte Medium

Liquitex Iridescent Medium

Copic Opaque White

The latter I don't know where I got or what it really is but it works great when I want to obscure the lines or cover bleed throughs that still happen. They happen mainly because the matte medium dries to well I can't always tell if the page has medium on it or not! So silly.

The garden journal would be more to document the plants in the yard that are perennials and need maintenance, track the veggie garden, and keep track of all the important dates to start seeds, transplant, etc. I have already got that info in a bunch of places but that's the problem it needs to be condensed and might as well be pretty. Here's the journal I'll use for that most likely:

And here's a book that has great intentions but can really mess you up as I learned:

See it was written to guide you week by week, but the problem is it doesn't tell you that you'll have to adjust not just for your frost dates BUT also for your length of growing season. Not all grow seasons are the same. Not even close. It's obviously much different here in middle of Illinois than our Northern neighbor Wisconsin not to mention Texas. They don't account for that. OOOPS! If they simply added that info in beginning so you could "adjust" the weeks then it'd be a 5 star book. I digress as usual. 

One more tangent....

This may be my next tattoo along with the letters SBTA which is part of Rescue Diver training... Stop. Breathe. Think. Act. Which I thought are also words to live by. Especially for those of us with AD/HD that tend to skip the first 3.