weekly art journal – Page 4

Dangerously Close….

Note to Self: 17/52

Sometimes I’ll hear or read something I like, I have to write it down. Write it down quick before it escapes. Trap it. The weekly art journal is often to hand, and when the current week is getting full, I’ll drop in these new words somewhere in the future pages. Then when that week rolls around it’s there to remind me. This week remembered to me of this truth:

“Everything I need is already within me.”

I took this photo for fear of the words getting buried. I wanted to show them to you. I love the simple truth of it. We’re so much more resourceful that we think, much of the time.

In this much collage there’s a risk of word burial.

I’ve still got the collage bug big time.

I love the build up of layers, the intensification of imagery.

As it turned out, those words just got bolder. Then became surrounded with eyes. (of course!)

Here We Go … 16/52

This week, and how it took shape, began with these elephants who dropped through my letterbox on a leaflet for the zoo.

Amongst all the hoarded nonsense and clutter that accumulates our lives …. This week I found a box of old sheet music, and a bunch of books, all way too tatty and damaged to donate, but too much like art materials to discard.

But….Y’know, unless its actually contaminated with something that can’t be cleaned off or can make me ill / kill me, it’s almost always got a future as art materials. And if it’s paper, it’s collagable.

Still on the collage buzz (that’s here for a while. I reduced a knee high pile of magazines to 4 boxes of awe inspiring faces, backgrounds, patterns, colours and words recently. There’s a LOAD more of this to come!)

The elephants’ environment mainly consists the scraps on my table leftover from another little doing I’m working on in parallel. I’ll show you how that’s coming on soon. I like how fate and synchronicity get to choose the ingredients sometimes. It lets me off the hook, and they usually do a fine job.

I’ve found a Feeding Fascination: Feed My Soul ~ Feed My Heart ~ Feed My Being.

I’m so nourished by my art, and as of this week I’m also on a literal nourishment adventure too, I’m on a keto kick. I’m gonna give it a month and see how it pans out – day 5 is too soon to comment! – so watch this space.

weekly art journalling 15/52

From the start of this year I’ve been art journaling on a weekly basis. And it’s thrown up all kind of interesting thoughts I wouldn’t have pre-guessed.

Like how some patterns recur through so much I do and make. This checkerboard effect is an old fav. Especially this sort made up from snippy bits of text.

And the subconscious recurrences. There’s definitely an eye peering over from behind these guys. I only saw that in this photo just now! Since I chose Focus as my word for the year, I don’t think a week has gone by this year without eyes featuring to some extent.

Primarily it’s a place to doodle, spill words and thoughts, splash color with free abandon, and dabble about with techniques. I’m on mahoosive collage trip right now!

Collage and doodles. It’s my therapy de jour. I get utterly lost in the layers of cut out images, paint, doodle, ink splash….

This week’s page has been a really involved evolution.

Yes, there have been some important things I should have been doing. This book is a mirror of my procrastionationability

Grace (14/52)

Have you ever been followed about by a word?

Not a new word, just a word you haven’t noticed much before… then it seems to crop up all over the place? It keeps dropping into conversation and reading.

See, there she is again. I wanted to check against my imagination… is this really happening?

But when she’s there again, on the facing page when you open up the remains of a dictionary you began to dye and dismantle more than 2 years ago.

Well ….

So there she is, Grace, large as life. She was part of my week in all senses.

Long Time Week (13/52)

One quarter of the year through: meet week 13.

Compared with the last few, this was an uncomplicated page: dragged paint and organic in its making, a lightly tribal vibe. Muted.

But as a collection of 7 days in my life it’s been brimming to overflow (hence less time to spend in this book).

I’ve been reading Caroline Myss. She’s directed some of my thoughts to a place I haven’t visited in a long while, it’s been both refreshing and nostalgic.

It’s a page that crossed months: March over to April, so has the intentions I set for April. This time open ended wishes, based around the tone of climate I’m wanting to head toward next: Contentment, Progress, Stability, Fun, Restfulness. I think that has it covered for the immediate!

From Early Circles… (12/52)

When I set out on this page a week journal at the start of the year, I didn’t know what insights it would throw up. And just 12 weeks in, I’m sure there will be many more yet to surprise me.

Like, how much transformation can take place, in little bits of time, in some oddments of just seven evenings.

Beginning with no fixed picture and letting the ideas percolate silently round the back of my imagination. I don’t know… maybe just loads more circles? Keep doing circles til something else happens. Cos it will. Something will always happen.

Last week the New (Super) Moon, Vernal Equinox and Solar Eclipse all happened on Friday. There. See what I mean?

Another opportunity (if you’re that way inclined) to send wishes out to the Universe. Planted under the word Wish.

Reiterated in Big Bright Blue.

And surrounded by the meme I attached to my week.

And then an explosion of not-just-circles amid more spirals and scribble and circles.

That Big Bright Blue of the wish was the catalyst for the page to take shape.

My week began with a gathering of a newly formed tribe of creatives. And it closes today having taken up an extraordinary wealth of new doings and thinkings, which I’ll share with you in future postings.

From the sublime to the magnificent. Life is Love.

Dive in: Reach Out 11/52

We all face bravery in different ways.

It isn’t always a visible show of courage

oftentimes nobody else knows quite how much it took

We all develop our ways of stepping forward, facing up.

Bright, bold, audacious.

Then what?

Then you have no choice, you gotta jump:

This week, in my little way, I faced a bravery. And I dived in to a new phase. And it’s gonna be BIG

Full Moon Everything 10/52

Week 10 began on a full moon. It was a big full week.

Tidal changes of hope and spirit, plans formed and crashed with barely time to get a good grip on them.

It’s the first week I’ve really found difficult to ‘make’ – in terms of the page, but also I guess in terms of making sense of myself as well. Massive overwhelms kept colliding – giddy highs and their plummeting opposites. It was minimal in comparison with the other weeks in terms of word-spew. Just summed it up in a big fat EVERYTHING.

Again with all the eyes peering out at me. Even they are looking a bit more deranged than usual this week.

I can’t tell you how many layers of mismatched colours and unhappy paint coated these pages. It was a nothing’s looking right covered with another no that’s still not it under a coat of wtf really? And then some.

Then the Wednesday came to a close, and that was that, turn over and start again Thursday. Glad to report, this week’s looking more harmonious!

butterfly overflow (9/52)

Week 9 of this year is made out of the colours of Spring, honoring the sense of Spring as the world comes back to life after her quiet dormant months. And some of last week’s butterflies have flitted across into this week too. I had a big old tidy up after finishing that project and all the left over butterflies have landed here. (I say all of them… a few got away as you’ll see on the next page).

The week fell on the crossover from February to March, so warranted another list. Seems like there’s a reason for a list pretty much every week now. It’s in the background, but it can germinate there. I’ll patiently await the first shoots of development as the month wears on.

Another week, another meme:

When you do what you fear the most you can do anything.

Ok, yeh, I can take that on as a challenge. I’ve crossed some metaphorical bridges lately, and my metaphorical-bridge-crossing skills are notably sharper as a result. I’ve also come to realise I can’t always tell the difference between the pit-of-the-guts anxiety feeling and its close cousin, the visceral buzz of anticipation feeling.

So I’ve actively decided that henceforth, if I’m in any doubt, I’ll assume its the latter.