creativelifeandtimes

These are scans of an altered book journal using an old Readers Digest Condensed Book. These books are often free and will not hold up well if you get a lot of moisture (paint or glue in the spine) but I love the way the soft paper soaks up the paint. I tear our two or three pages about a quarter of an inch from the center, then glue several sheets together. I prepare the spread with acrylic paint and gesso, black gesso on this one. This book was begun as an example for a workshop I taught at the Ellen Noel Art Museum.

Looking back can be fun, insightful, helpful, and painful. I don't mean "living in the past" although I am guilty of it at times. I mean focusing in on a distant event or series of events and realizing that you have indeed accomplished something!

Experienced, grown, and learned.

I have been looking at my old prayer/sermon note journals. When I feel kind of dry and wrung out these journals always make me feel better; they refocus my mind and change my perspective.

The last two or three weeks have been exciting art weeks with a new tool and technique (needle felting) added to my arsenal, and a new source of inspiration and friendship in the Flickr artists that I have met.

I am also revisiting old art journals and am quite amazed to see what I did back when the house was full of little ones. It did not seem like much at the time, but it was ongoing and did accumulate!