Finding the Courage...

So as I mentioned previously I intend to start sharing images of my art journaling and stuff. The hold up? Right now other than a busy RL? Scanning the pages. It's on my list of things to do.

I've been wanting to art journal for years, even fiddled with it for a time. I didn't start literally keeping a more complete one until I purchased a moleskin journal over at Target. It was a little pricy but hey I've been wanting one for years so I caved and bought one. I've been working in it off and on. I've been doing some journaling, some painting, some sketching and even have just started working on collages in it. It's a slow going process but thus far it seems to be working out. Now to share it with everyone will be my next step.

I've fiddled a bit with several mediums and seem to be experimenting a bit more too, but I'm still slow to dive right in. I imagine others experience this same stall? Either that or I'm just plain unfocused and hitting more brick walls on the creative front. We shall see what results in the coming months.

Oh hey while I'm thinking of it: Happy Halloween everybody! :)

Minor Delays

So truth be told I do plan to start sharing art journal pages and the like, only I find I have a very difficult time actually sitting down and focusing on scanning the pages and actually typing entries. It's been a major stall for years with me and journaling: trying to make myself sit down and actually type out entries. Instead of doing that I get sidetracked by a million and one other things...one of the biggest being that damned Farmville on FB. I play it way too much and it takes up a large chunk of time. I'm trying to draw away from it due to that and sometimes I success, sometimes I don't. All I know is I'll go on it intending to only stay there a few minutes and next thing I know HOURS have gone by and I lost a crap load of time to that game. It's frustrating.

So I do intend to post stuff here as soon as I break myself of that stupid Farmville addiction thing-y.

In other news...

Searching for a community where I can share my works with fellow artists and we can chat back and forth, share ideas, thoughts etc on art in general. You know one of those communities where you can just talk in general about creating and the whole process, but it's got to be a site where we can all share our works, thoughts etc...just not sure if such a community exists. Perhaps I should create one such community but well time is not always on my side and I tend to get distracted by crazy things such as FB addiction. Not cool or good or anything.

A Delve into Altered Art

When I first started art journaling another factor that kept me shy of really starting was the fact that I have a very difficult time delving deep inside to pull out the stuff I've worked on years of healing and getting beyond. My childhood for the most part was good but I faced many a challenge through the years. When I started reading about altered art I decided why not use that as a way to start, I suppose dig, into things I don't normally think of. I decided to title my first attempt at altered art "Fragmented". Why that title? Because when I look back on my childhood, on the things I've faced and experienced I see a lot of fragments of who I was, who I am and who I want to be. I often describe myself as "layered" and that's because I truly am layered. There are layers to me no one's ever seen and there are layers everyone has. There are also layers that certain people and ONLY those certain people have seen as well. I'm layered. I'm complex. I'm full of contradictions. I'm full of dreams. I'm full of imagination and mystery. Some parts of me are so easy to understand while other parts...other parts no one sees, knows or understands. I'm layered with a capital "L".

It wasn't until I delved into the concepts, the ideas of altered art that I found myself able to express well some of that, the hidden layers, and perhaps that's why I stalled again because delving into hidden layers and exploring them in art is not as easy as you all may think. Oh no it takes time and patience and a willingness TO want to tackle it all and for me that's a little difficult. Why? Well you see I'm one of those people who keeps a lot hidden, and I do mean A LOT! I don't share a lot with others and those I do share stuff with have to be pretty damned close to me and have to have earned my trust. You won't get to the inner me by simply saying hi or hanging around me. No you have to work for it because well that's just me.

When I tackled this stuff, the inner me stuff, it didn't last long and now I'm finally getting back to it. I've shared pages from this particular altered book at 1001 Journals but no where else. If you read the passages on the pages, which I apologize may not be the easiest due to this being a digital photograph, then you can probably see the underlying purpose of this particular altered book. This one is one I like but that will take no doubt countless years to complete or progress in. Still I've done a little bit of work in it so that's a good thing :)

Early Attempt at Art Journaling

As you can tell when I first started art journaling I didn't really do a lot. I was a bit nervous, a bit anxious, a bit uncertain. I'd paint a page and then stare at it or I wouldn't paint the page at all just look at it over and over trying to decide what to put on it.

Years ago I joined an LJ (online journal) community titled "alternate_books". The purpose of this community was to make a journal and mail it around the world so that others could add to it. The first year or so was great I'd mail out journals and receive others journals in return. I'd add my artwork and mail them onwards, but soon journals I had signed up for would become "lost in transit" whether it was the original creator who decided never to mail it to begin with or if it were someone else who had kept it and not sent it onward or if the thing just simply got lost somewhere in the mail I didn't know. It saddened me. All these journals people had going missing and quite a few of my own as well. I pretty much gave up on that community and well so did most of the other members. The comm still exists but no one really does anything anymore.

I started working then on making my own journals and started reading up on altered art, but again I'd often (more often than not mind you) would find myself in a familiar dilemma: staring for endless hours at a blank page or paint a page and stare at it not wanting to "mar" the pretty colored page. Crazy I know but so true.

Soon I delved a little more, started writing in some of those journals though I didn't much care for my own handwriting. Added a drawing or sketch here or there and threw a date on it so I could remember when it was done.

More often than not a lot of my earlier work is very similar to the picture above. I drew this one for a journal titled "In the Wild". It was a journal that I created for a website titled 1001 Journals. Sadly this one like so many of my other started journals for communities such as this is now forever lost. Either someone kept it, the mail lost it or it got tossed in someone's box and they forgot to mail it back to me :(

Needless to say I've since grown a little cautious about such communities as this having added to tons of journals only to ever see one or two come back to me and one or two make it back to their original owners.

I still like the idea of the community I just have a very hard time with the loss of so many journals that it saddens me enough to only cooperate on the very fringes of the community...meaning I send journals to those I know who will return them and sign up for a few and that as they say is that.

Anyways I digress...

So when I first started art journaling I took pictures with a digital camera or the pages I did (the photo above was a digital camera) therefore lots of the early works I've done if shared here will most likely be taken with a digital camera and thus not the greatest. It was several years later that I started scanning my work so hopefully the overall quality of the pics will improve... :)

Anyways so now I'm working on my actual own art journal and finding it fun but challenging. I will share some of those pics here in the future for now I think I'll just start by sharing a few older works :)

And if I ever figure out how to add multiple pics to a post here I shall do so. As I mentioned above this journal page is from a journal titled "In the Wild". The main premise? To journal about animals: your favorite animal, anything related to animals. I have more pics of this particular journal of the front cover, inside covers and the rest of my journal as well as pics of pages of journaling from other artists. As I mentioned above though this journal ended up lost somewhere in Arizona and the person who had it never replied to any attempts at contacting so sadly the journal is probably forever lost :( That folks is the downfall of journal comms I fear.

Love is a Funny Thing

You know there's all kinds of love out there: love between friends, love between family, love between two people...there's true love and puppy love and even love at first sight. It's an interesting thing and something I sometimes think about. I have loved, love and been loved in return but I've never really been IN love. I've never found that "special someone". I was engaged once but it was more a friendship love than anything to me. I've wondered sometimes if I may have at one point met that "special someone" and due to circumstances or other factors never pursued it. I'll never really know if that's the case or not. All I know is I'm fine with not being "in love" with another.

Years ago I made that decision to stay single, never marry. When I was younger my dream was to get married and have two kids, you know the typical girl and boy both relatively close in age so hey could grow up together and always have each other, always be close, always be friends. I had envisioned some handsome prince would come along and sweep me off my feet. You know that fairy tale belief that each and everyone has a significant other, a soul mate out there longing to become as one. I'm not really sure what my thoughts are on the soul mate thing now. All I know is I'm happy being me, being single and doing my own thing. Weird though because sometimes I think of what will be left after I'm gone from this life. I love to write stories, journal, draw, make scrapbooks and tons of other things. I love to collect glass figurines of dragons and wolves. I love to travel around the world and collect key chains and postcard from every place I've been but in the end after I'm gone who will get all that stuff and really is it that much of a concern? There's really no one to pass stuff onto that will "carry on my legacy" so to speak and that does bother me at times, but again it's the choice I have made to not marry, not have children so really why does it matter?

Still I love to watch those old sappy romantic movies, get all excited when I see the stars meet one another and fall in love, cry eons of tears when the leading characters lose one another and find each other again. I guess I'm one of those old romantics at art. While in my mind I've decided, made the choice to remain single in my heart I love to see those romantic movies have a happy ending, so yeah guess I'm a romantic sap.

I just wonder though what draws one to another? What makes someone meet another and say "wow they're the one for me?"

Guess I'll never know the true answer to that question but it's fun to contemplate at times. Guess it comes down to just one true fact: love is mysterious and love is a truly funny thing...

Back in the Saddle

Yeah so I had an original purpose for this particular online journal and some where along the way lost it...or rather that thing called real life entered in and kind of took over. Well so in between real life, work, travel, finally finding and buying my own home and a sorted collection of other things I drifted, actually drifted from just about everything there for a time. My writing stalled, my art stalled, my internet surfing stalled...as a result a lot of my other things stalled. I created this journal with the purpose of using it to share my artwork, my art journaling, my photography and all that. I kind of had an epic fail with that I fear but now intend to remedy that.

Since settling into my new home and getting myself sort of back on track I've thus returned to some of those things that were "left by the wayside". I have recently started writing again. I have started settling down and relaxing more. My job seems a little calmer and I have again picked up a paintbrush and pencil.

The other day I bought a moleskin journal, been wanting one of those for ages and figured hey why not now? It's a bit expensive but it'll do. I've been reading more art journaling stuff, thinking more about life in general and brainstorming ideas for both stories and art. I plan to now, hopefully, make an attempt at using this journal for its original purpose: sharing my artwork, chatting about it and talking about life in general.

I actually have three online journals with even my main one having drifted to the wayside. One I share mainly my writings and fandom-y stuff, one is just there as a back up with hardly a thing in it and then there's this one. I still can't decided if I should just make my main journal and all inclusive or not. I don't know that remains to be debated...oh and I have a fourth journal that was supposed to replace my main one but never did so yeah lots of online stuff that hasn't seen the light of day in ages.

Still for now I think I'll stick with this being mainly for artsy stuff and who knows maybe eventually stuff contained on my main journal will end up here or vice versa. We shall see, for now though let's just call this all and experimental affair and leave it at that shall we?

For now I shall sign off but plan to work on making updated posts of my older art journaling and my newer stuff and who knows perhaps THIS TIME I can stick with it. Keep your fingers crossed people! :)