Okay so like I said in previous posts I started working on art journals several years ago, mainly ones that belonged to other people. One day I decided why not create one for myself, a travel journal that I can take, put pictures in, items I find and that I can carry along with me when I do travel. My first attempt at my own personal art journal is this Chicago journal. I decided for my next two pages in the journal that since I spend a lot of time on the El (CTA trains) why not incorporate a map of the CTA system in the pages. The main line I travel is the O'Hare blue line.
I stay in a hotel fairly close to the airport and the nice thing about this particular hotel and this particular airport is that there's a 24 hour free shuttle bus that runs from the hotel to the airport about every 15 minutes. Also in what I call the "basement" of the airport is the entrance to the CTA blue line. O'Hare is the end of the line and it's very nice and convenient to take the El right out of the airport. Due to this particular set up you can enter the airport and head straight downstairs. Two trains pull in and out of there throughout the day and boarding the CTA is way cheaper than a cab, even though the trip from O'Hare TO downtown Chicago is approximately 45 minutes. It's the cheapest and easiest way to travel to the city, which makes seeing a very busy city relatively nice and simple. :)
When I first started this particular journal I was leery about experimenting. I didn't want to mess anything up, so I stuck with using my scanner and gluing what I scanned into the journal pages. As I progressed, learned some new techniques, bought more magazines on art journaling and continued to work on art journals from the 1001 Journals community I found myself daring to delve into more complex things...I drew a CTA train, painted some pages and fiddled around with ways to make the journal more appealing, more exciting and more interesting. After working on this initial first trip I decided to label each year I spent in Chicago. I used one word (or two) to basically describe in a nut shell how the trip was and I used some water colors and paints to express it. The more I worked on the early bits of this journal and the more I experimented the neater and more interesting each entry became for me.
Now I tend to do a lot of drawing and journaling in this particular journal but I have also started working on my own sketch book and my own personal art journal that delves more into my feelings, emotions and such. The more I learn about art, painting and sketching the braver I become in daring to try new things.
What's actually starting to happen? When my writing muse is slow I find myself picking up an art journal and going to town with it. Some of the entries turn out amazing while others not so much but each new "project" I undertake seems to be better than the previous one and I'm quite satisfied that I seem to be improving and expanding.
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