Friday, January 2, 2009

Feelin' Fine in 2009! Starting an Art Journal...



Happy New Year! I had several people leave comments and e-mail me that they were going to start a new journal with the new year! Hooray!  I had no idea WHERE to start when I decided I wanted to do this.  Luckily, I went to a stamping convention and heard Teesha Moore give a mini-class on her style of art journaling.  You can click on her name for more info but what I loved hearing is that she doesn't sit down and do all the colors, layers,words and embellishments at the same time! Whew! She paints 8- 10 pages in her journal any colors she likes.  Just experiment with your paints, pencils, sprays, glittery stuff, and play with color.  Then collect cut-out images you are drawn to for any reason.  Try them out on the different background colors and glue them down where they look good to you.  Then when we have a challenge just flip through your painted pages and choose the color you feel like working on! You don't have to work on the pages in order!  This really helps me with the blank page intimidation phase. Preparing pages is also soothing to do when I want to play with my stuff without worrying about a finished project.   I am posting some of the self-portrait exercises 
I 've done from  my new book , Mixed-Media Self-Portraits.  

3 comments:

Diane said...

THis is so funny....I was just reading Teesha's "How I journal" pages last night. I love the way she goes through her steps.
Have a great weekend, Jen!

Gayle said...

You have just made my day. I have this wonderful book full of blank white pages and no idea where to start. I love the idea of doing several backgrounds at once. You also hit upon another area of concern and that is doing something out of order. while I will have dated journal entries, I don't need the actual projects to be in any order - just date them the day I did them. I am so excited. I also have joined Linda's monthly write class. Thanks for the encouragement. Gayle

Kelly Snelling said...

these self portraits made me so darn happy and excited when i opened your blog. they're fabulous! happy journaling and happy, happy new year!!