Catching up with JF365 and finding orange...

It is April so that means the Journal Fodder 365 group @ Ning is now on Chapter 4. One of the prompts for this month is Solitude and here is the page I made for it:

The other page I made for this group was using one of the month's techniques: overwriting. It is something I have done on other art journal pages too. I like it because it is possible to write out something that maybe I need to say but don't want anyone else to read. The technique is to write one line then write over it as you go down the next lines. I tend to go over it all a few times, and this time I tried it with various colors of paint marker pens over and over a few lines. The rest of the page isn't very pretty as it was mostly a test of the paint marker colors and some previous stenciling.

I was looking back through some of my travel photos from recent years (looking for art inspiration) and found a few that I wanted to post for all the orange challenges I have been doing lately. Seems I am very much called to the color orange lately so these excited me to see again.

The inside of a church in Prague:

A post box in Prague:

A mosaic bench on Green Street in one of London's East Indian neighborhoods:

Breakfast salmon in Estonia:

Beautiful flowers at the Midsummer Fair in Riga, Latvia:

The beautiful terra cotta orange tiles of Trakai in Lithuania:

Ok, I think I like the color orange! (And many more travel photos another time)

I love a Linky Party!

Linked to: Mandarin Orange Monday, Color Connection, Art Journal Every Day

Sunday Introspection...

I was told when I was younger that I "think too much"...

I didn't really know what that meant at the time but I see it now when it comes to my art. It is hard for me to be loose and free -- to allow all that spontaneity that art sometimes demands, I guess in that thought I can answer my own question of why I do art journaling... it allows me the space to be free and open and at the best of times, spontaneous.

With that said however, I still think too much and take a lot more time looking at other people's art than doing my own. I tell myself it is for inspiration and ideas and then later say I don't want my art to look like or be anyone else's... Where do getting ideas and being derivative separate? I need to be there.

I am liking these online prompt groups...

They keep me motivated and creating... this page was actually for 2 different groups, Carolyn Dube's "Use Your Words" group as well as the ongoing Journal Fodder 365 group on Ning that I have mentioned before. Both of them had a prompt about words so I was able to incorporate things from both prompts onto one page.

Sunday art...

Finished up a set of gelli prints that I started yesterday and ended up with 21 pages, which I am going to bind into a small book (7 signatures) and probably just keep as the gelli prints without any other journaling in them. It is very colorful and I haven't get fingured out how to show it in a photograph so I guess I will need to scan the pages and make a mosaic to show them before I bind it. But not today...

I did another journal page, not so much for the Art Journaling Journal Fodder class but more cause it just felt like it was coming out of me today...

Gelli printed background with collage and writing on top. Lyra aquarelle crayons and Micron pen. Ink drops on top of it all.

3 Day Weekend Art Play...

Heard my Gelli plate calling me early in the day so spent some time playing with that...

Then made a journal page for the Journal Fodder 365 class on Art Journaling (see links in a previous post). The topic was writing on non-straight lines so I made some swirly shapes on a gel printed page in my journal and went to town.

What you don't see is the incredible mess my work area is so tomorrow I will be cleaning that up before I do anything more!

Going in circles and Into the Woods

Continuing to work through Journal Fodder 365 for the Art Journaling group... today I found myself drawn to circles.

Gelli print background, then pen, and Lyra Aquacolors (can't find my Neocolor IIs which I prefer so using these while I keep looking). This was from one of the Journal Fodder 365 exercises about repetitive shapes on page 19.

The Journal Fodder guys just announced a retreat this summer... sounds interesting. Thinking about it.

And on another (musical) note... we just got back from seeing the Sacramento Light Opera Company's rendition of one of my favorite musicals, "Into the Woods". It was fun, very well done for such a small venue and a pleasure to be somewhere not crowded on Stupor Bowl Sunday! I must prefer a musical any day! Also a pleasure to be able to support a local production.

Journal Fodder 365

I joined a group on Ning called Art Journaling and one of the groups I am in is Journal Fodder 365, based on the book by Eric Scott and David Modler. It is a year long look into Art Journaling and the Ning group will go month by month with posted pages from the prompts.

The first month is a lot of introspection about who we are and how we got to where we are now in our lives. Topics like who are the pivotal people in our lives, what roads did we take and not take, what are our personal mythologies...along with the first week prompt of "I am", being the roles we play and so on.

I suspect the prompts will generate a lot of pages. Here is the first one I did...