Weekend Journal

HEALING

That is the word that best describes my past week.  My spider bite is mending well and my leg is back to 98% of normal.  My cold/virus/whatever is finally subsiding and losing it's powerful grip on my energy.  I'm looking forward to a new week with renewed creativity.

This past week has been a rough one for me.  I spent hours sitting in the sun, watching the birds, thinking of the projects I had no energy to attempt doing.  I fought  battled the force of guilt that kept popping up telling me what I could or should be doing when what I obviously needed to do was just take it easy and allow myself to heal.

"Appreciation is the highest form of prayer, for it acknowledges the presence of good wherever you shine the light of your thankful thoughts."  - Alan Cohen

In the midst of my misery, a package arrived.  Keith spotted it on the front stairs when he arrived home from work.  Neither of us had any idea what it could be as Keith went back to the front of the house to retrieve the mysterious package.  "It looks like you got something from your friend, Barb", Keith stated as he returned with the package.  

I was so excited!  Barb and I had spoken by phone several weeks earlier and during the conversation, Barb asked if I would be willing to except one of her Soul Dolls.  She said she would surprise me with one sometime and I never thought of it again.

(Barb and I have become friends through the Internet and our mutual love of art.  We've never met in person but hopefully will soon.   I was also honored and privileged to review her book, Normal Doesn't Live Here Anymore.  It's must reading for those of us facing aging parents and who may one day find ourselves in the situation of being a caregiver.  I highly recommend this book!)

When I opened the box, I immediately felt how much love was packed into it.  The handmade, hand-written card and the carefully packaged postcard and ATC greeted me before I met my new Soul Doll.

What struck me immediately was the bird theme.  Birds have been popping up in my work recently and have a very spiritual connotation to me.

As I carefully unwrapped my doll, I literally gasped when I pulled her from her protective cocoon.  I could feel how much love she had been created with, and I could sense immediately that she was an intuitive creation.  My horrible photography just doesn't convey how special she is or just how much of herself Barb put into her creation.  

Barb's attention to every little detail is stunning.  From the felted body, to the beaded bird fetishes, to the tiny necklace, to the detail on the back (complete with envelope that contains a small gift and treasured note), to the bird charms, Barb included so much on this beautiful creation.

Since I'm so far behind on my blog reading, unknown to me, Barb blogged about my doll before she sent her to me!  You can read all that Barb had to say HERE.  My doll also has two sisters.  You can see and read about them HERE and HERE.  All of these "sisters" are spectacular, but how Barb knew to send me the exquisite bird themed doll is uncanny.  Barb, like your friendship, I am grateful and will treasure you both forever.

And as we enter a new week, I'll continue my WIP.  (Can you see the bird on the left of the face?)  

And yet another bird appears in this WIP.  Do you see it?

I hope you're enjoying the weekend, and I hope you're finding ways to express your own unique and creative nature.

CELEBRATE * LOVE * CREATE

Monday's Musings

Yesterday while we were sitting outside enjoying the beautiful day, I became aware of an incessant chirping and discovered a baby robin hopping along the side of the deck calling for his mother.  This little fledgling was one of the cutest little things I ever laid eyes on.

We were concerned for his welfare and waited anxiously for one or both of his parents to return, but to no avail.  Finally, Keith decided to place him in the large honeysuckle bush hoping that the nest was buried unseen, deep within the branches.  Well, fiesty baby robin was having none of that!  He immediately jumped back down to the ground to continue his quest.

As twilight approached, we became more concerned that we hadn't seen any adult robins, and baby was blindly hopping into "stray cat territory".  As he ventured into the neighbor's yard, other birds began to go crazy with chirping.  There were grackles, sparrows and cardinals grouped together in the trees, all anxiously flying about in what sounded to us to be a warning.   Sure enough, we spotted the cause of all the commotion - a stray cat!

Much to our delight, we spotted baby robin's mother.  She placed herself between her youngster and the cat, swooping down (just out of reach), and acting as a decoy for the cat.  Keith also ran some interference, making the cat vacate the premises, and we were happy to see Mom finally land on the ground and carry a snack to her baby.

Watching Mom risk her own well being for her baby made me think about how moms of every species go to extraordinary measures to protect their young.  I know a lot of people would argue that humans are superior to all other species, but mostly, I just don't think we're all that different.  And that's my Monday's Musing.

CELEBRATE * LOVE * CREATE

Tuesday Tips and Techniques: Sketch Once, Copy Twice!

Take your labor intensive sketches and drawings and let your copy machine do the work for you!  I tend to use a lot of bird imagery in my work, and drawing these wonderful creatures doesn't come easy for me.  I decided to  do some drawings of birds that I could photograph and store on my computer.  Using my Paint program, I can alter the images in a number of ways.

I took two pages of my original drawings and altered them in Paint.  I played with contrast, brightness and color saturation.

I altered the sizes and the directions of the images, and I also cropped some of the images tiling an entire sheet.

You needn't draw images specifically for copying.  Magazine and catalog images also work with this method.

I photographed this lion from an old catalog and uploaded the image to my computer.  I played with the image in Paint, removing the color and playing with the tint and contrast.  I also made a mirror image.  I wonder what secrets they will guard one day?

Going back to my birds, I cut several of the different sizes and designed a composition around them.  I adhered them to the page with Mod Podge and worked around them with oil pastels.

Speaking of birds, Keith captured this great shot of our Japanese Maple filled with blackbirds during last week's (hopefully) last blast of winter.

Photo:  Keith Thompson

Whatever your favorite imagery is, I hope you'll find this a useful method to use in your journal.  While you're at it, why not flip through your journals and apply this method to some of your favorite pages.  It's always nice to revisit your old pages and see them in a new way.  I hope that you're safe and warm and allowing yourself plenty of time to "Celebrate, LOVE, and Create!"  Spring is right around the corner - a little birdie told me so!

Tuesday Tips and Techniques: Rubbings

I was enjoying the great outdoors yesterday morning when I suddenly remembered doing pencil rubbings as a child.  I remembered thinking that it seemed magical at the time.  Do you remember your first rubbing of a penny?  I remember doing it over and over again, each time amazed at the detail I could see.

Thus began the great hunt around my house for things that I thought might make a good rubbing.  I searched through my jewelery drawer and found earrings and a pin.  I found a tin planter in the dining room, and I found medallions on the medicine cabinet and sink in the bathroom.  I gathered a couple African artifacts with interestingly carved designs.

I used copy paper for my rubbings, and I used various colors of Prismacolor colored pencils, holding the pencil sideways.  Using a medium pressure, a rubbed my items in the same direction (mostly) and got some pretty good prints. 

By far, my favorite object to rub  was the tin planter.  The pattern transferred easily using black and sienna colored pencil.

This is a lion medallion on the bathroom sink.  It was a little awkward to get to but I wasn't too concerned about getting minute details.

The partial rubbing on the left was done with a harder pressure than the rubbing on the right.  I used the same colored pencil (black), but you can see the difference in color just by adjusting the pressure.  After I had completed a few sheets, I opened my journal to see where I could use them.

I had been watching a movie (Honeydripper), and one of the characters said, "small minds are never in shortage".  Being fond of quotes, I had to write that down!  Later in the evening, Keith and I watched "Angels and Demons".  I was happy to have my journal open as I was rather bored by the movie.  I began sketching a Rome styled building with the quote, "Let angels guide thee on thy lofty quest."  Is art a lofty quest?  I'm beginning to think so!

The images begged to have some rubbings incorporated into them, so I tore a medallion from one of the tin rubbings, the lion medallion and a Fleur De Lis (from fake stained glass on a door in my living room), and Mod Podged them to the pages.  I applied three glazes to the page: warm yellow, orange, and red.  Then I took a dark umber glaze and applied it over everything, wiping off most of it.  I darkened the edges and splattered some of the same glaze over both pages.

Here's a close-up of the lion medallion on the left side of the spread, and the medallion from the tin rubbing formed the angel's hair.  The Fleur De Lis is almost totally hidden on the right side beneath the angel's hair.

I added detail to the angel's wing and medallion with yellow colored pencil.  I may add more detail to this spread, especially on the left side. 

Moving on, I wanted to use my rubbings in a way that highlighted them, so as I was looking at the rubbings of the tin, I thought they would make a great birdhouse.  I cut one whole tin rubbing and the corner rubbing I had made from the tin.  I cut the medallion out of the center on the whole tin for an opening to my birdhouse.  I had applied a dark glaze (left over from the previous day's journaling) to the bottom of the pages. I made a yellow glaze and applied that to both pages, then I applied 2 different green and 1 blue glaze over that after the yellow glaze had dried.  I dabbed and blended the green and blue glazes so some of the yellow would show through.

I painted in black craft acrylic tree limbs and branches, and I cut a leaf stencil from a heavyweight cardstock advertisement from the mail.  I applied the "birdhouse" with Mod Podge.

I painted in the birds with black craft acrylic and the opening of the birdhouse and little bird also.  I colored details of the birdhouse and birds with colored pencils.  At the bottom of the birdhouse I wrote, "The promise of spring is heard in the songs of birds."

That's your Tuesday Tips and Techniques for today.  I hope you'll go on a search around your house and give rubbings a try.  Whatever your preference for art journaling, remember: "Celebrate, LOVE, and Create!"

Dine & Dash

I love this time of year and often enjoy creating from our back deck where I can keep an eye on the orioles and other "Geographic moments" that happen to unfold.  I'm often gifted with surprises (and horrors!) from mother nature among as assorted creatures stop in for a visit. (I count praying mantis larger than hummingbird among the horror!)

Friday was a lovely day perfect for creating on the deck, so I gathered my supplies and several projects and headed outside.  I've been working on another "Outside the Book" journal project, "I", and finished that to near completion. ( I know you can't wait - I'll be posting that later on in the week!) I then turned to my journal. 

I really had nothing in mind when I started.  I only knew that I really felt like writing about some of the things I had been thinking about as I worked on my "I" project, so I used a marker and began to write.  When I finished writing, I covered my writing with a thin layer of  yellow, white and orange colored craft acrylics.  I like the look it creates.  What I wrote wasn't important to my finished spread, but it added great texture and I got my thoughts out on the page.

I still wasn't certain of where my spread was headed, but I knew I wanted more paint dripping, oozing and splattered.  I wet the left vertical edge of my spread and dropped in blobs of turquoise and purple and let them run in horizontal streaks across the entire spread.  While I was waiting for it to dry, I watched the orioles come in to feed.  They had been amusing me all afternoon as they swoop in, chatter at me, and indulge heavily at the feeder all in a matter of about 40 seconds.  That's when the idea of "dash and dine" came to me, and all the turquoise and pumpkin colors in my background were a perfect background for a jar of grape jelly and the bright orange feeder and orioles.

I began by adding "Dine & Dash with white acrylic.  I then lightened an area for the sun and sketched it in lightly along with the feeder using a marker.  Next, I added a rough sketch of my generic grape jelly jar.  After those items were completely painted, I added the birds.  Lastly, I added the white highlights in the lattice and around the bird on the feeder.  

I included 2 other regular feeders and lovers of grape jelly; the house finch and the cat bird. The orioles have begun to take chunks of jelly with them as they fly off - I think the babies are here!  The finch are very fleeting and don't like their photos taken, and the cat birds are comical and brazen and have no fear of me.  I love their little "mohawk" hairstyle.  They all get along very peaceably at the feeder with the exception of  the occasional squabble.  I think there might be a lesson in that for all of us.  Happy creating from my fowl friends and me!

Photo:  Nick Thompson