So Where Was I?

Oh yeah - before the sudden push to meet a deadline, I was working on my art journals. I was in a quandary - a silly one as it turned out. I'd let myself get locked into following an example (which side the crit sheet would be on) and when my painting of the spread resulted in not liking the side the example used for collaging, I fell into a tug of war with what I can only think of as the old me (one who follows directions to the t) and the emerging new me (one who veers off to do her own thing). With the break from working on it, now my reaction was why of course I would reverse how it was done in the book I'm following and use the side of the spread I really liked. The words of permission were staring right at me and yet I had hesitated.

This exercise from Creating at the Speed of Life was about color again, but working with just one - monochromatic is the term. I had fun checking the dictionary for other words starting with mono and then adding them around the page in phrases. And I also had fun adding familiar phrases that include the single color I chose to work with - blue. If you click on the photo for a larger version, you can probably make them out. The strip set at an angle is part of a bits-and-pieces-of-leftovers package sent from a friend. It nicely pulls together the blues leaning toward green (words cut from a newspaper and the watercolor wash around the edges) with the blues leaning the other direction on the color wheel. I adhered it to the page with gel medium which oozed out a bit in one area. Encouraged to add other media to shade and highlight the page, I worked some of the Inktense colored pencil next to the edges and couldn't figure out why when I ran a wet brush over that section and even tried pulling color directly onto the brush for transfer, it wasn't showing up. Then I remembered something Hilary said about a class she recently took, that gel medium could be used as a resist with water-based products like inks. Ohhhh....

Because I am allowed and in fact encouraged by the book's author to note what I didn't like about my page, I can tell you it's mostly the stamped "one only" next to the crit page. The spacing in "one" was much closer than I intended and I am still struggling to line the letters up evenly. Had the crit sheet been on the other side, or had I left room on the left where I collaged for those stamped words, I think it would have looked better. As it is, it doesn't quit fit in, kind of needs to be bracketing the other direction. But then I couldn't have shared that "o". Mostly though, I really like this spread.

Then it was back to the Positively Creative art journal. I'd put some paint on a page where I'd be journaling at the same time I'd painted the other art journal's spread back in March. This lesson included stripping paper from one side of a piece of corrugated cardboard to create a stamp for adding lines to the page. Not a new concept to me but one of those things I've meant to try but never got around to doing.  It was the only thing holding me up from getting on with this page.

Oh my - this worked like a charm! Before adding my journaling, I glued that scallop piece of cardstock along the side and top - it was what was trimmed off when I made a scalloped mask for a previous lesson. Waste not, want not you know. Even though the white contrasts nicely against the blue background, it got an extra boost from running a thin line of dark blue gel pen along its edges. I find I'm doing this a lot with the art journaling and that it is not unlike what I learned from Suzanne Marshall who often embroiders a stem stitch in black long the edges of her applique to make them stand out. As for the left side, occasionally I find something in this "Simple Diary" I'm "altering" that I want to preserve as was the case here. I used the Sharpie markers to block out the rest and make the yin/yang symbol. It somehow seemed to fit the questions and answers I preserved below it.

On a somewhat different note, Meg from my art group alerted me to this list of 20 Things To Remember If You Love A Highly Creative Person - I'm gathering she's feeling the need to post it at her house. I've read a lot of these what creative people are like things, usually finding much of it doesn't seem to apply to me. This one, however, rang too true, and I actually think I understand myself better now. And if you've read my previous post (written before reading this list), you can cross-reference some of my statements there. ;-)