|
|
||
|
This week’s page was to practice face drawing and a little doodle edging. I started out with this:
and then added the prompt: today i know that I am stuck in the rut of …doing what i already know. Today I Know is a project for 2014. You can read more about it here. January 17, 2014 | Doodling, Journaling, Mixed Media, Today I Know, Weekly Art Journal | Leave a comment
 So here we are. While the meditation isn’t really happening, I’ve begun the bird drawing. So far, I’ve skipped only Sunday due to the fact that I was traveling. Almost all of the birds come from this pinterest board. The credit belongs to the original artists:
This last one, I did on the plane to CHA so I didn’t have too many supplies. Some of these I love and others, not so much. But I am definitely getting to practice drawing and painting birds which was the whole point. You can read more about my monthly projects in 2014 here.
It says: It did not happen to you or because of you. it just happened. remember it is real but not true. This page was originally done for My Mind’s Eye. It uses mostly scrapbooking papers and paint. This page came about as I was listening to a podcast with Tara Brach. She was talking about one time when she was working on her book, against a deadline, and the computer crashed before she was able to save the writing. She then talked about how we take it personally and think that something is happening to us. How we blow it all out of proportion and how we construct a big story around what happened and what it means. I do this a lot. I make it mean something about who I am. What I am worth. Or more like, not worth. Since whole is one of my core desires this year, it’s really important to me to remember this one. It just happened. a few more shots:
Remember This is a project for 2014. You can read more about it here.
As it worked out with the title page, this month will only have three more weeks. So this week is the monthly intent for January: Listen Calmly. January is going to be a tough month for work, so I decided that calm would be a good way to start the year, especially since serene is one of my core desires. So this month’s intent is to listen calmly. I’ve been thinking a lot about what calm means to me. What I’ve learned from a lot of reading and listening to talks is that when we stress, our fight or flight response kicks in and our prefrontal cortex (where we do higher level thinking) shuts down. If I can manage to find a way to calm myself down, it gives my brain some time to come back online and for me to be able to think again. This means that I am now acting and not reacting. This is where I would like to be. When I was discussing a situation where I often find myself reacting with my coach last year, one trick I thought of was to walk away (in this case from the computer) and take ten minutes to myself. Go outside if I can, but if not, just walk around the living room, or do whatever it takes to spend the time. Ten minutes can be long when you’re doing nothing. Long enough to have the influx of emotion pass and long enough for my body to stop reacting and for my ability to think to come back. And while ten minutes is long enough for all that to happen, it’s short enough that the “disaster” can wait. It will not get much worse. I can afford the ten minutes. So that’s my plan for this week. If I find myself experiencing anxiety, stress, worry, fear, I will take a ten minute break and walk around. Wait for the immediate reaction to pass and for the calmness to come back. Here’s a before shot of the above page. I used the picture of a tree because trees make me feel calm. The lettering is Octave and the tree is inspired by the wonderful Pam Carriker.
I then colored with watercolor pencils to complete my page. Listen with Intent is a project for 2014. You can read more about it here.
I talked about how I had different types of goals for my projects this year. Here’s what I had in mind for this one: Skill to learn/expand: doodling, using different mediums, journaling, collage This idea also came completely from the Soul Comfort class. When Melody talked about the idea and showed some of her pages, I was immediately hooked. Coupled with the fact that I knew I wanted to focus on doodling this year, I decided this was a winner for 2014. My goal for this project is to couple lots of journaling with doodling, sketching, and collage. And whatever else I am in the mood for. This is the first page I ever did and it’s a bit different than the ones that come next. As I did more pages, the idea expanded a bit and then settled down. As with the others, I am not married to a particular way and this might shift and morph but for now, I love what it is. Like the Listen with Intent project, I created a pinterest board for the ideas I want to try out. I am hoping to have a wide variety and to use this book to explore, have fun, and journal my heart out. The pages in this book are thin so even though I hadn’t intended to, I ended up glueing every other page just to get them to be a bit stronger, but I also plan to stick to dryer mediums which will be a fun and interesting challenge. The prompts are all from Melody and this first page says: Today I know that I would like to get better at…. And the feather art was inspired by Jane Monk Studio and I used copics to color the feather. Here’s to a year of meaningful and fun pages to record what I know.
I talked about how I had different types of goals for my projects this year. Here’s what I had in mind for this one: Skill to learn/expand: Painting, using different mediums, portraits I bought this journal last year because I heard how wonderful it is and I wanted to try it out. I usually have an intended purpose when I buy a new journal but I didn’t have anything with this one. It sat at my desk for quite some time. Until one day I was particularly frustrated with myself and opened to the first page and created the piece you see above. I was annoyed with myself, With the way I see myself in the world lately. I was fed up and ready to be done. And I wanted to remember that feeling. So I painted and I wrote. It says: it is time to be brave. i choose to fly free. i am ready to break out of the cages i have created for myself. i am done being a victim. watch me soar. I then decided this would be my book for remembering messages that are meaningful to me. Things that I lose sight of. Things that I want to make a point to remember. When I was sitting down to think about my projects for 2014, I knew this book was going to be a part of it. I decided to couple it with something else I’d decided to take on for 2014: Life Book. I took a free class from Tam a few years ago and I have been a fan ever since. I was on the fence about taking this class in both 2012 and 2013 so this year I decided to just take the plunge. Knowing myself, I was aware that the best way to commit to a year-long class was to make it a part of one of my projects. So I decided this journal would be my Life Book for 2014. I plan to do the exercises/promopts/etc. in this journal. I might do exactly what the lesson is or I might just use the art technique and do my own topic, or I might just pick the topic and do my own technique. I am open to the possibilities and since I have never taken the class, I am not sure how it will turn out yet, but I am flexible. I am also taking The Walk with Brave Girls in January, so I am pretty sure I will incorporate those lessons into this book, too. At least that’s my current plan. I will also likely use it for my My Mind’s Eye Mixed Media pages. This will be my book of experimenting, having fun, trying new mediums, and keeping in touch with Art Journaling this year. For the first few weeks I will be sharing mixed media pages I’ve made for My Mind’s Eye last year in this book. They are all reminders that I need again and again. Here’s to a year or Remembering.
I talked about how I had different types of goals for my projects this year. Here’s what I had in mind for this one: Skill to learn/expand: Lettering (and Sketching) I’ve wanted to do lettering for quite a few years now. I’ve taken a few classes but nothing did the trick, so I decided I wanted to make it a major focus for 2014 and see what happens. As with each year, I am not sure how it will turn out, but I am looking forward to finding out. As for the topic, I’ve become a huge fan of setting intentions thanks to last year’s January OLW prompt So I’ve set monthly intentions for listening for all of 2014 and then I will set weekly intentions within those monthly ones. For each week, I will set an intention, use a new alpha to write the title and then couple it with a small sketch. At least that’s my intention for this project. I’ve created a Pinterest board full of alphas I can use. I would like to make another one with sketching ideas (to match the phrases/sentiment) but I haven’t done that, yet. Here are the intentions I’ve written down:
I’m not attached to these. I might stick to them, I might not. I just know that doing preliminary work makes the project more possible and exciting to me. Here’s a before look at the page above:
This page uses the avanth typeface. I first drew in pencil, then I went over it using my Pitt pen and then I colored it with Watercolor pencils. And here we are. Project #1 for 2014. I’ve long been a fan of Brene Brown. If there’s a class she teaches, there’s no chance I am not taking it. And this class with Oprah was no exception. I will admit that during the class, I didn’t do any of the assignments. I did watch to all the videos and attended the live chats and thought about doing the work, but I never did. So, one of the plans I had before the year closed was to sit and do all the assignments and I am glad to say that I did all the ones I intend to do. Not surprisingly, they were profound. The first assignment was about setting permissions and then taking a photo of ourselves and writing the names of people to whom we trust our stories. I didn’t do the permission slips because I honestly didn’t have anything that stuck out to me. I reserve the right to do them later if I so choose. And here’s my page with the photo and list (which is on the tab inside the envelope.) On my hand it says “I am imperfect and I am enough.”
David took that photo of me. Isn’t that awesome? I did the second and third assignments in one spread.
The left side is a photo of me that captures a sense of who I am. I love this photo because I look like I am fully stepped into being who I am. I am wearing boas and hats. I am having fun and i am looking right at the camera. I love that. The right side is a photo of me when I’d like to say some compassionate things to myself. I picked this photo because even though I am pretty young and looking at the camera, I know that I was already feeling vulnerable then. It’s all about how things will work out and how I will find belonging. I painted the pages with golden paint and then journaled. I tried to then cover with some candle so they wouldn’t stick but I rubbed too soon and some of the ink hadn’t dried, hence the smear on the right side. But I’m okay with that, it’s a class on imperfection after all. 🙂 And then the next assignment was about making collages on what makes me numb, how I numb and what I could be doing instead (what brings me joy.) I thought a lot about this one and how to do it, and I finally decided to just make a collage on what brings me joy:
What makes me numb is loneliness, worry, feeling like I’ve disappointed myself, being overtired, frustration, jealousy, sorrow, anger. Unkind people. People lying, cheating, putting others down. Injustice. And how I numb is random surfing (pinterest often), TV, staying up late for no reason, and a lot of chocolate. But then there’s the joy list. Things that work when I do them. My comfort wisdom list:
These are what comfort my soul. The next week’s assignment was to take photos of everyday ordinary things from our life and make a collage. I decided to just go over all my photos from 2013 and put some of the ones that make me smile on there. I picked many from home so as to keep them ordinary. Love my family so much.
Just looking at that makes me happy. And then the final week’s assignment was to go back to page one and create a mantra. I thought a lot about mine and finally settled at the one that I’ve stuck with for a long time.
other ones I thought of were:
but in the end, yes you can is my motto. No one gets to tell me what i can and cannot do. And I can do anything I set my mind to. Anything. And there we are. If you’re on the fence about this class, I will, of course recommend it. I think Brene’s message is profound and I can never listen to it enough. I will be taking the next part in March and maybe this time I can do the assignments alongside her. Gratitude journal was a new project for 2013. I wasn’t sure where it was going to go but I loved the idea of writing my and David’s gratitudes daily and I knew it would give me an opportunity to do regular art. Of all my projects for 2013, it was probably the one that felt the easiest and least burdensome even thought I did it daily. Even though I can’t say I was a huge fan of the actual journal I used, I loved the variety and freedom this format gave me. The watercolor one I used for The Weeklong Journal project was much more fun, paper-wise. I think I am just a fan of watercolor paper. I find it more versatile and I feel it makes the colors much more vibrant. Putting the paper aside, I loved this project. I loved the freedom it gave me, I loved writing down my gratitudes, and having them all in a book. I loved all the color and joyful pages. Here are some of my favorite pages:
as you can see i have more than a few:
which is a good indication that this project was a success joy-wise!
As we approach 2014, I decided to take a break on this, however. I might bring it back for 2015 but I like being able to vary things around and I needed something different. Having said that, I believe the daily gratitude practice is too valuable to give up so I think I will make it a part of my Savor Project for next year. 2013 was my year of gratitude. I did two weekly projects that were to be focused on gratitude. However I will admit that most of these postcards did not end up getting sent. So maybe that can be my 2014 project. Sending them out, reaching out to people for whom I am thankful for and having an excuse to mail them. If there’s a card you’ve loved and you really want, let me know and I can try to mail it to you. here are a few of my favorites: I had mixed feelings about these little cards. I loved the idea of watercolor postcards and I loved working on them with David, too. We did actually send all of his. But the paper was harder to work with than my watercolor Moleskine journals or the Arches paper I usually use for my projects. It was hard to use it with stencils and not have the paint seep under. I ended up using sponges a lot (which I don’t in my other paper). All in all, I think this was a fun project and I’d recommend it. I’ve now been sketching for a few years and I knew that even if I did it less often, I wanted to continue this project in 2013. Alas I went only about half a year before I needed a change, so I decided it was okay to let myself off the hook. I still ended up with over 90 sketches for this year which isn’t bad. Here are some of my favorites:
and a few more:
I also did end up making a few zentangles and a bunch of portraits this year so as to not walk away from sketching altogether. As I thought about 2014, I knew I wasn’t going to continue making these for a while. I ran out of ideas of things that interest me. I know that at some point, I will want to do it again and maybe do something different like landscapes or more involved sketches but for now I knew I needed a break from them but I also felt sad about giving up sketching completely so I decided to keep it around in a less involved way for 2014. We’ll see if it works. And, if not, I might bring it back anyway. I know these little sketches make me happy. My final project for 2013 was Six by Six. An excuse to continue to art journal and experiment with a different size and with selling. I have mixed feelings about this project. In the end, I loved almost all the pages I made and I sold about half my art and I feel like it certainly motivated me to keep making art (which was really the main goal.) But knowing that I was planning on selling the art did add some undue pressure in some cases but I am still glad that I stretched and did something that’s uncomfortable for me. Here are the ones that are still available:
some of these I love so much.
and others are less of my favorites. but more than anything i love the versatility even within a very specific style.
if you’d like any of these, you can scroll down here and look for them or you can message me and I’ll send you the link so you can purchase them. If you’ve bought art from me this year, thank you for supporting me, it’s a magical feeling to have your art appreciated enough to want to hang it in your house and I cannot tell you how much joy that thought brings me. I won’t continue this project for 2014. I might offer prints of some of these but, at this moment in time, that feels like a monumental project so I’d say it’s not likely. |
|
|
|
Copyright © 2024 karenika - All Rights Reserved Powered by WordPress & Atahualpa |
||
