Today’s page is inspired by the amazing Dina Wakley. Nothing nearly as amazing as her work of course.

I cut out a silhouette of me from the photo from the end of the year (with jeans) and then taped it down and watercolored around it. I then watercolored in a different color on the top. I sprayed the circles on the left and drew some stars. There are also subtle, tiny stars inside the body. I sprayed with dark brown on the hearts and then a little drippy india ink and that was it. I am not so happy with the dripping but here we are. It’s all about playing and experimenting after all.

Weekly Art Journal is a weekly project for 2011. You can read more about it here.

One of my goals for 2011 is to art journal more. I love watching Donna’s Inspiration Wednesday and looking at journal pages of many of the artists I admire. There are so many art journalers that I admire and I want to make this more of a regular practice in my life. I think it will go a long way in helping me expand my art.

Here are few things I want to use art journaling for:
– explore new techniques
– try different mediums
– practice drawing
– play around with different color combinations

Here are some artists whose art journal pages (or just art in general) inspire me:
– Donna Downey
– Pam Carriker
– Dina Wakley
– Tam Laporte
– Misty Mawn
– Rebecca Sower
– Alisa Burke
– DJ Pettitt
– Judy Wise
– Julie Fei-Fan Balzer
(many more coming)

Here’s what I did to prepare for this project.

First of all, I bought a journal. I wasn’t sure what to go for and I might want to do stitching so my first hunch was to not go with anything bound but I did anyway. I went with a Strathmore Visual Journal in 5.5×8 watercolor paper. I wanted to make it personalized and have it represent my word for the year so I altered the cover with some fabric and put a bird and the word Free on the front cover:

on the back, i made a birdcage and wrote “no more cages”

so here’s how the whole thing looks:

The second thing I did was start a list of art journal pages that inspire me so that I could have ideas to pull from. I am not intending on selling or publishing any of these pages. They are for me to explore, experiment, and have fun. So it’s ok to try to recreate other people’s ideas. I find that this helps me get started and it also gives me the push I need to eventually develop into my own style. I used pinterest for this so here’s my board and I will add to it continuously and also I note what part of the page spoke to me so I can remember what idea I wanted to try out.

And finally, I plan for most of my themes to revolve around my word. So I collected a list of quotes on letting go of the past, being free to be anything you want, that you can accomplish anything, etc.

That’s it. Let’s see how it goes.

If you have art journalers you follow, I would love for you to leave their names/blogs in the comments. I really love discovering new artists!!

ps: I also wanted to add that if you’re interested in even going farther, Julie is doing an amazing project called Art Journal Daily in 2011. I highly recommend checking it out. Julie is amazing.