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.
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