Bits and pieces

I'm still working on my Irish travel journal and am gradually finishing some pages. Here's one page that was simply fun -- drawing some meals from the last few days. For about two weeks afterwards I faithfully kept my food journal that way once I got home but now it's sort of hit or miss.

Northern California is quite warm these days, in the 90s, and it isn't even summer yet. Steve and I finally made it out to the bike path to get all the vacation growth wacked back down so our section looks great. It was like mowing straw in the dust, but it had rained while we were away and needed taming. This is fire season in California and it's really important to keep grasses cut short.

I am just finishing a wonderful art journaling class from Cre8it.com. I took nine weeks of classes and would have loved to have posted my work but it was against copyright law so I'll just have to use all those ideas and techniques as jumping off places for pages of my own invention. Keeping a visual journal has definitely become one of my great loves.

Life amongst the dogs

I haven't done any real drawing yet today -- the night is young -- but I did construct a journal page that suits my heart.

The truth be told

I don't have a single visual to post today but I have EIGHT new pages in my journal! I've been participating in an online art journaling class from Cre8it! which offers 21 consecutive days of instruction in how to keep a personal visual journal. I'm all caught up, have been faithfully making each page each day, but one of the agreements of this class is that we NOT post our assignments anywhere except in the classroom's dedicated group. So.... trust me, I've been making new pages but not drawing as much, and will keep posting something visual here more days than not, just like always.

Journaling with art

In my google-ing this week I came across the site of Judi Russell (judirussell.com) in which she describes an art therapy exercise that I found helpful in two ways -- more understanding of my inner life in the moment and a way to break through the resistance to starting on a "real" art project. She has you CLOSE YOUR EYES and scribble, then find something within the scribbled lines that you might want to develop. Then color in the lines you need, erase and add on as needed. My first attempt turned out like this - and since the dog was in such a head-down position it looked like it was searching for something. That helped me to understand that the retail therapy I had engaged in earlier that day was about looking for .... what? Certainly not more stuff! So I pondered that for a while.



A few days later I tried the exercise again. This time I saw fish.



The words that bubbled up were a play on a well-known nursery rhyme. My family had just left for the day -- off to the city, off to work, off into the world.....and I was staying home. So I had lots to ponder about what that meant to me.

I encourage you to check out Judi's site, read her art journaling directions and try it as a way to explore what's up and current for you. And then tell me how it went!