Next in our Soul Journal, we were to create three 2-page spreads overpainted with gesso to begin 3 potpourri exercises.  We were given a list of steps and told to mix them up.  I had numbered my pages 1-6 freehand and after completion of each spread, the numbers stayed fairly visible.

I started with the first item:   Fill the page with descriptive adjectives (Use a permanent ink pen).  I used my Italian/English dictionary to come up with adjectives & wrote both in. 

I had some liquid acrylic which I dripped on the pages and smooshed them both together and then dabbed on a pale yellow paint with a sponge.  I wrote left-handed in the lower right corner in pencil my grocery list but you can't really see it.

Next I cut out a silhouette of a girl from Seventeen magazine and stencilled around it in dark red and splattered the same paint across the pages. I add silver duct tape on the edges and sanded and antiqued it.

The second potpourri exercise included a similar list of steps to mix up and apply.  After applying gesso, I stamped with some hand carved numbers and Stabilo permanent stamp pad and cut out all sorts of numbers from magazines.  Then I painted over with diluted brown paint.  Then I blobbed some yellow acrylic paint & again smooshed the two pages together.  I used a fork to mark the edges of my page in dark green paint.

Next we were to outline our hands six times using permanent ink pens.  By the last ones my fingers were all lined with multi-colored ink.

I scribbled a little with caran d'ache and stitched the right-hand page edges using fine silver wire.  Finally I add some meaningful words, again with hand carved stamps & permanent stamp pad.  I really love carving stamps.
 Took a rest after that.
I'm exploring joining ArtistsoftheRoundTable Artists' Journals Sketchbooks Workshop using Lynn Perella's book as a jumping off point.

Journaling

ME & JOURNALING

A couple of months ago, I joined in a yahoo group that uses composition journals as their basis for artistic journaling. Over the last few years I have taken various journaling classes but have never felt compelled to actually start something that would be meaningful to me.

As I am aging (62?!) and memory is growing weak, once again I've turned to journaling to create art & note both the sublime & the banal of my daily, weekly, monthly? doings. I've picked up lots of journaling tips and connections to many wonderful supplies & blogs but still haven't felt much direction. I've recently joined Soul Journaling yahoo group created by Sarah Whitmire and am in the process of creating pages based on her 22 intial prompts from http://www.caspiana.com/. One of the first ones was to create a page symbolic of a great protector to protect me from outside & inside critics as I create my art. I included the face of my maternal grandmother at age 15. She always seemed to be reserved & stoic. I figured she'd be good at warding off unpleasantness. This is my complete page:

The other page was created as a way to "claim" my journal and to express both negative and positive things about my art, my life, etc. We covered up these writings as, for me, a way to cast out what's come before and move on to more positive thinking. We decorated the page with multi colors and fonts so that "anybody" picking up our book would know without a doubt who the journal belongs to.

There's a somewhat new art form called "inchies", the premise being to create art in a tiny format of one inch. These are then exchanged in yahoo groups, Art festivals, etc. So our next exercise involved cutting one inch squares from magazines according to a 24-item list, arranging in a pleasing manner to see if any themes or stories emerge. I have to confess this is not in my comfort zone so mine are placed rather randomly.

Our next task was to paint over or age the page and draw different markings around some of the inchies and add eight words describing my pictures. Sarah's philosophy is that no page is ever really done so I may be back at this one.

The next 2 pages were an exercise in creating interesting backgrounds using various types of tapes: bright orange ducktape, silver duct tape, a couple colors of masking tape, etc. We were supposed to write & fill both pages with "I forgot to tell you..." secrets, sayings but I 'forgot'. So my pages are just paint, tape & sanding.

That's all for today. I'll add more photos when finished.

I've been working right along with my Soul Journaling. The next project was to draw/create a symbolic house and people it with paper dolls of everyone who lives there. It's just me and my black pug, Bailey, and my fawn pug, Mitzi, and my remaining parakeet. This was to be where I currently live or a home from your past where you felt happiest and safest. This is entirely ficticious except the house number. I loved collaging all the foreign language text to the buildings.

Well, it's been a long time since I posted. Many things have happened in my life since 2006. I took a watercolor class at Art & Soul 2006 from Barbara Roth and was so taken with her that I decided to join her watercolor group trip planned for May 2007 to Cortona, Italy. I really got into it & created a Yahoo Group for those of us going to help us get to know each other before the trip. It was all-expenses-prepaid trip so we didn't need to worry about cash except to buy souvenirs.

I had spoken about my plans to my sister, Holly, and she worked it out so she could go along too and just not participate in the watercolor portion of the trip.

I prestarted my sketchbook/journal with practice watercolor thumbnails. As time went on, I printed out all of our emails from the Yahoo group on transparencies to interleave between the pictures. The book turned out to be about 5x7" and about 2.5" thick which I dragged around with me but rarely wrote in until we returned. I hand painted a grape cluster on my watercolor bag (see below). We were supposed to bring a small folding camp stool which I found for $15 at GI Joe's, packed into my too-heavy backpack, never used and left behind.

We arrived in Rome via Amsterdam on May 30, at the Leonardo da Vinci airport, caught the train into Rome's Forum Termini with just a short time to make it to our connection to Camucia, the little town where we'd take a taxi up to Cortona. As we were going thru Camucia I tried out my minimal Italian asking "Questo Citta?" What is this City? So we arrived at Hotel Oasi Neumann, a former monastery, set on the top of the hill within walking distance (uphill) of Cortona town center. We made that walk a number of times. The rooms were very clean & beds comfy. Our room overlooked the villages of southern Tuscany. We had all breakfasts in the restaurant in the hotel, lots of cappucinos, granola, yogurt, milk. We only had one or two dinners there. The others were in various restaurants which had a contract with Patrick, the trip host.

We had a couple of day trips, one by train into Florence where we walked around, took in a flea market (in place of Boboli Gardens because we were running late) and a very rushed trip through the Uffizi Gallery. Some unfortunate trip-planning. Barbara wanted to look for italian shoes. Holly & I took a photo of an older man in hot pink jacket & kneesocks-very dapper.

Another trip we took was to an outlet mall and to the house used in "Under the Tuscan Sun" and to the wall where the old man left flowers everyday. Then we went to Lucignano, a medieval walled hill-top village to take photos for use in our paintings. A beautiful little town, we could make the walk around the perimeter in just a few minutes. What I found very interesting was a fountain at the entrance to the city in the bottom center of this photo. It was a war memorial to Italian rebels executed by the Nazies portraying a letter from one of the rebels to his mother.

Another highlight was our driver, Alberto, who did not speak much English but was very cute.

We had a couple of painting sessions in the huge fourth floor studio space. I learned that it's OK to trace using a grid over a small photo to get a good sketch to paint. I tried an interesting wood doorway using both the grid & freehand. I was much happier with my transferred sketch using the grid. I came back with a number of beautiful watercolored calendars for inspiration.

When it came time to leave, I had planned a day & a half in Rome to see the sights as long as we were there. I had planned two escorted tours but found that the one through the Roman Forum was plenty. We went through several temples and saw rocks with furrows 2" deep worn into them from the repeated use by chariots. We went down into the Temple of Mithras which lies 64 feet beneath a renaissance church excavated in the 1800s. Very dim & winding.

Holly & I were very tired from the trip so just wandered around the neighborhood of our hostel, which was in sight of the Termini. We were on the third floor with the bathroom/showers down the hall. We had to enter the hostel through huge gates on the street using a key. Looking out our window, we saw the backs of many buildings with people's laundry hanging and had bats swooping past the window in the evening.

We never went out at night and as always, the last few hours were spent just laying around in limbo before we needed to get to the train to the airport. Finally, nervous that our alarm wouldn't work, we got up quite early and trudged pulling our packs on rollies to the Termini, making it to the airport early. The trip home was long & difficult & we were very happy to be home.