This week’s catalyst is How has art saved you?.
Karen Says:
Art has saved me so many times. It has led me to create this wonderful place, creative therapy, where I get to be inspired by some of the most amazing artists and people I know. I criticize myself all the time. I worry about not being good enough, not creating pieces as beautiful as I see others create. Not being able to bring to life what I can see in my mind’s eye, what I can feel in my heart. Not being able to express all the emotions, all the colors. I put myself down and beat myself up all the time. I tell myself I will quit. I am not good enough. I cannot do this. I will never be good enough.
And yet, I don’t stop.
I keep making more and more art. I take pictures. I write my words. I touch the fabric. I scrap. I cannot stop myself. Good or not, art gives me joy. It gives me wings to fly. It helps me recreate my joys, capture the moments and the magic. It frees me from the world. From my worries. From my sorrows.
From myself.
Catalyst One Hundred and Eleven is: Did you ever get into trouble?
Thoughts:
I have always been the girl who follows the rules. Predictable and boring and never really did anything to get myself in trouble. Sometimes I wonder how it would have been if I weren’t but in the end I love the predictable, the safe, the reliable. Those are me.
So here are some pages I did this week.
This wasn’t the best week for my art journal but I still completed some pages.
I first tried to sketch a face but it went badly and I got all frustrated so I covered the page with fabric and just added some tags for the journaling. Not great but I actually don’t hate it.
The back has a tree I made with oil pastels. Just had fun without thinking too much.
The next few sheets already had a lot going on so I gesso’ed the text so I can write over it and left it at that.
This house was inspired by Beth Quinn‘s art in Artful Blogging. i’ve had some mica lying around for so long so I decided to finally play with it.
For the next spread, I just sketched. I need to practice like a thousand more hours.
And finally, I took a small model from Warm Fuzzies and cut and stitched this little bird on a branch with her nest. This, too, isn’t nearly as magnificent as the original inspiration but it was fun to make.
And that ends week 4. Let’s see how next week goes. Hopefully better.
Catalyst One Hundred and Ten is: How would you describe yourself as a child?
Thoughts:
As a little kid I was mostly quiet and pensive. I tended to sit by myself, preferred reading over anything else and it wasn’t until my mid-teens that I became more outgoing and friendly. Even though most people would say I’m extroverted today, I’m still that quiet and pensive girl on the inside.
So here are some pages I did last week. I’ve been working hard not to be a perfectionist with these.
I wanted a representative page for Carla Sonheim’s Silliness class so I cut out the crazy animal from the 0th class and colored it with my copics and glued it right on there.
The rolled up papers on this page were inspired by Somerset Apprentice Vol 2, art by De Anna Welch. For fun, I then cut out a butterfly and heart and covered them with glossy accents.
Closeup of the heart and butterfly.
And one of the papers.
This next one was inspired by Somerset Apprentice Vol 1. You can actually see this one on the web page. It’s the one with the canvases backwards by Connie Govea Stuart. I took a tiny canvas I had, put some fabric in the back and tried to make a nest with a blue egg. The tiny word says domestic.
It didn’t turn out as magnificent as I would have liked but you live you learn. Closeup of the nest:
The back of that page was also inspired by something I saw in the same issue but I can’t even remember what anymore. You can’t see it but the cage and bird both have wax on them.
closeup:
The next page in the journal was watercolor paper, so inspired by Nancy Lefko’s article in Art Journaling Winter 2010, I drew pears, colored them with watercolor pencils and water soluble markers:
and on the back, I drew some flowers and did the same coloring:
And finally, this piece was inspired completely by Somerset Apprentice Vol 1, too. This beautiful art in the magazine is by Sara Naumann.
And I am still filling those pages. Albeit slowly.
And that ends week 3.
Catalyst One Hundred and Nine is: What was the best night of your life so far?
Thoughts:
When Jake and I had just started dating, I got to go home with him to a family Christmas party. It was a last minute decision where I convinced him to surprise his family (we were in college, had final exams, etc.) When we showed up his whole family was so excited and his mom even cried. The whole night she introduced me as the girl who brought her son home. Of course I had no idea at the time that I would end up marrying this boy. But it was the best way to be introduced to the family and one of my favorite nights ever because I got to see everyone so happy.
Lest you think I forgot about my Art Journal, I am still working on it.
Here’s what I did, I went through all the books and magazines I have and marked the pages that inspired me and ideas I wanted to try and I am just doing one every day. So far, so good. I will try to keep going and maybe post updates on Fridays or something. I could do it daily but I didn’t want to annoy you with so many posts a day.
But then I worried it would be too many photos. So what do you prefer? One post a week or updates daily?
Here’s what I’ve done recently.
A page inspired by one of the projects in Artistic Mom. This page is not done yet, I’ve been staring at it for days but I still haven’t decided how to complete it.
This next page was inspired by Ruth Rae in her book. I first did the dress, then covered the page with fabric and stitched.
Closeup of the dress.
Can’t see but the fabric is really shiny.
And this page just uses some stamping and copic coloring. Just for fun.
One of the few things I didn’t do from my list of 52 tags last year was doodling. So I did some masking, inking, and doodling on this page. Now you know why I don’t doodle 🙂
And finally, this one is inspired by a piece of art in Somerset Apprentice Volume 1.
Lest you think I am not actually using this as a journal, I have also started writing daily. Not a lot but just small thoughts.
And here we are.
Catalyst One Hundred and Eight is: Are you proud of who you are?
Thoughts:
There are many accomplishments in my life that make me feel proud but none more so than my two little boys. They are my pride and joy and I will never feel more proud of anything than I feel about the life Jake and I have made together.
Catalyst One Hundred and Seven is: Honor a family member.
Thoughts:
My grandmother, Maya, was a magnificent human being. We lost her on February 16, 2010 (I wrote a long entry here.) and I will never ever forget her. I love you Omama.
The first workshop in The Artistic Mother book is to make background pages and then attach a weekly plan to it. Since I am doing this for my art journal, I decided just to do a background page. Amazingly I couldn’t find a credit card so I used a DVD and it had mixed results.
After the paint, my page looked like this:
I’ll admit I wasn’t crazy about it. I then stamped some more the next morning:
I am still not so crazy about it. Interestingly, I decided to do the second project on the other side of the same paper. And this project begged me for some stitching. I was feeling like it was unfinished without it. I spent a day worrying about “ruining” this page and then decided that’s what art journals are for.
So I stitched on the other side to my heart’s content. And here’s what this page looks like now.
Believe it or not, I like it more now.
Catalyst One Hundred and Six is: Where did you grow up?
Thoughts:
I’ve had the luxury of having an idyllic childhood experience. As a child, I spent my summers on this island called Burgaz. It’s in the middle of the Marmara Sea in Turkey. It’s tiny and can be walked in two hours. It has no cars, only horse carriages and some of the best memories I’ve ever had were created there. A truly wonderful place to grow up.
I’ve dreamt of keeping an art journal for years now. I’ve started one in 2007 and another in 2008 and even did a few pages in 2009. This year, I’d finally given up on actually doing one since I had the worst track record of anyone I knew.
And of course as things always happen, this ended up being the year I actually made progress on it. So I used the journal I picked in 2008 and decided to use it as a full book and not one that opens up:
This is an old 7gypsies book. I’ve covered it with a photo I took a long time ago and Journey was my word of the year for 2008 (but I think I could always use the reminder that life is a journey not the destination.)
Inside the cover, I sewed a pouch that holds all the odds and ends and little bits and pieces that I might want to glue on the pages.
The inside of the journal is filled with pages of different sizes, textures, and colors. All of the pages came from a kit I bought from Rebecca Sower. I added some copic sketchbook pages, etc.
My plan is to use this book for all my artistic endeavors and trials. I plan to use it for copics, watercolors, sewing, embroidery, pastels, and anything else I can think of. I’ve already put in all the trees and this week for my week-long daily art adventure, I have begun using a new book I bought called: The Artistic Mother. I will be adjusting the projects to fit my art journal but I will be doing as many of them as I possibly can. I think since I am buying these books, I might as well use the workshops to learn, grow, and experiment. If you have this book, too, and you’d like to play along, there’s a Artistic Mother Group you can join.
I plan to use this also for journaling. I mean regular journaling with words. Like Judy Wise whose journals are full of art and words. Hers inspire me so much. Let’s see how it works out.
|
projects for twenty twenty-five
projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
|
