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.

1001 Journals

For the longest time I've been wanting to find a place where I can post about my adventures in this particular community. I've had about 50 journals come my way so far and still more en route. I've been wanting a place to post the entries I made, talk of other peoples' entries and just plain talk about/share it. : )

I finally decided that maybe it's time I start so here I am again *waves*

What is 1001 Journals for those who don't know? It's a community in which people all over the world circulate their art journals. They make their entries and once done the journals get mailed on to the next person on the list and so on and so forth. Some journals have successfully made it back to owners, some are still traveling and others unfortunately have gone missing : (

This is where my creativity and such got started...a long time ago when I first got an LJ I stumbled on a community titled "alternate_books". It was the same basic concept and I created journals as well as recieved many others. I had a blast doing it but sadly the interest for that particular community died so I scoped and searched for similar places. I found 1000 Journals and was sad to see no journals were open any longer then I found 1001 Journals and joined. After that I started getting others journals and even circulating some of my own. I then scanned what I did because you can for the site but due to having so many scans I started deleting them off my hard drive and found it so sad that there really was no other place to share what I had done with them and what others had so an idea formulated to work on this newest online journal knowing/planning to eventually get to this post. Now that I'm here I'm ready to share a bit. : )

For those interested in looking into the 1001 Journals site here's the link:

1001 Journals

And now I'm off...but plan to be back soon. I'm not entirely sure how I intend to share these scans and such but getting this post up is at least an official start.
: D