weekly art journal – Page 6

2/52 Dream Big

One of the purposes of this weekly art journal is to offload some of the stuff I pick up through what I read and hear. Already I’m feeling the benefit of unburdening my busy head! I might never need to read these things again, but it’s a way of filtering them out of my internal monologue.

This week’s page has got a bit busier since last time I showed you. Curiously, the first words I wrote on this page asked “where are the words?” (on a day when I was unable to find the what I needed to say …) and since then there has been a steady flow of must write that down things.

Filling up the space with stuff that keeps showing up on my radar….

I have big dreams – by which I mean I have big plans and hopes for the future – but I also have big colorful episodes of imagination at night time. And I don’t distinguish much between them. Just the nocturnal machinations often want for some translation from the garbled jumble of metaphors my subconscious knits together out of the day’s happenings. It doesn’t always make sense, but often they are fun.

Sometimes the meaning shows up a long while later. sometimes it doesn’t!

These words come from Connie Solera of Dirty Footprints Studio. I love her style and she has a beautiful way of describing the creative process. She brings sunshine into my spirit.

More Focus & Trust 1/52

So last night I polished off the first week of my 2015 week by week art journal. Little tweaks and changes…. more emphasis on Trust – I gotta trust in this process,

and more focus on the word Focus. Got me thinking about focusing on what this week has meant to me.

The big silvery full moon (which kept me awake Sunday & Monday nights) is now shining from the top of the page. Full moons symbolise the stage of a cycle which is full on, full volume: intensity. As the peak of night brightness passes and the moon wanes the power subsides but I feel like it’s added strength to my convictions and spirited up my wishes.

Y’know I told you about my goals for 2015… I’ve been working on weight training and this week I upped my eek-I-can-just-about-lift-it weight by another 5kg. Little by little I’m realising that dream! The incentive behind my desire to get stronger is to improve my yoga practice. I’d so love to be able to do this. (and so much more… but this would make me happy for a start!)

Thanks to the darling Adriene, of ‘Yoga with Adriene‘, from this week I’ve been practicing with a new found daily discipline. I love her gentle, easy going style, she’s doing this wonderful 30 day program on YouTube. If you’re even a little bit interested in yoga, go check this out, it’s so lovely!

So that’s where I’m at for now; Now onto week 2/52!

week by week 1/52

There’s something so deliciously enlivening about the start of a new thing

…a new year

…a new book

…a new project

In past years I’ve played with different art journaling projects, from page a day to a page a month. This time around it’s a page a week.

So, 2015, here we go!

Week 1 has been a painty brain-dump.

The only thing I had in mind to start was colour: I’m in a big ole red/magenta/turquoise vibe this week. Look at them ZING!

I primed the pages with gesso and began with some dollopy finger-painting. This process was fun but produced a textured surface so crunchy it really precluded writing with anything finer than a big soft marker. So the words are big n few.

I found some phrases through the week which stuck in my head:

Focus (my word for the year)

Let down your guard and Trust (I’ve read this in more than one place. So it’s a sign, right?)

Stand in your Light (I’ve heard myself say I’ve been standing in my own way a few times, this is a better place for me to be!)

Speak your Truth (it doesn’t have a meaning I can grasp at the moment, but I sense I might come back to this one later and see what I can’t see right now – ‘the woods for the trees’ maybe. What the hey, good solid advice.)

I wrote out the Holstee Manifesto. It’s mostly buried under layers of paint now. But I know it’s in there….the line “Some opportunities only come once, seize them” is just showing enough still to remind me: I want to compose a 2015 manifesto for myself.