I'm going to Art School!

In my own little fantasy world, I am a prolific writer with great wit, a keen eye, and a finger firmly on the pulse of humanity. In reality, I'm a blogger with a chronic pain condition, a great sense of humor, and a poor grasp of time management. The thought of even attempting to participate in a massive writing event such as NaNoWriMo leaves me in a cold sweat. If you are undertaking the endeavor this month, my hat is off to you!

Nevertheless, I feel a bit left out and feel the need to attempt my own bit of stunt journalism. Earlier in the summer, I became fascinated with art journaling. I dabbled a bit, but with the beginning of the school year I let it slide. Now that I am generally able to stay up until 8:00 (sometimes even 8:30!) most weeknights, I have the time to pick it back up again.

After browsing through the Autumn issue of Somerset Studio's Art Journaling magazine, someone referenced Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's Art Journal Everyday Challenge. Basically, she takes away all the excuses for not getting something done every day. I have all these lovely art supplies on hand, so I decided to put them to use by making my own challenge to do some art journaling every day in the month of November. To make it more fun, I enrolled in Julie's Technique-a-Palooza. That's right, I'm going to (online) art school!

Copyright (c) 123RF Stock Photos

If I can keep it up for the month, I would love to enroll in her Art Journal Everyday: December! class. Ultimately, I would like to enroll in Life Book 2013.

I love having a creative outlet. Something outside my roll as a mother, a wife, a teacher. I look forward to the few minutes I have at my art table in the evening, which in turns motivates me to stay the course of exercising to manage my pain and fatigue.

But don't worry, I won't subject you to a daily array of my artistic efforts! Unless they turn out really, really cool.

The Earth Laughs in Flowers

Playing around with my watercolor crayons & practicing my Zentangles  :)

When I grow up

I'm not sure if it is just springtime that brings out the creative soul in me or what, but I've been hankering to do something artsy. I just never seem to be able to get started on anything.

Earlier in the year I became interested in Zentangle mainly because it seemed perfect for me and my limited drawing ability. Knowing that I needed some serious stress relievers in my daily life, I pulled out my art supplies once again. Zentangles are usually black and white, but I really liked the idea of adding color to my page before setting my black pens to it. This led me to researching how to apply gesso to journal pages -I had to research because I'm such a noob when it comes to art techniques. (BTW, how did we research before Google?!?) Boy, am I glad I did! I found a wonderful resource in Paula Philips, aka the JournalArtista. Finally, I feel like I can play with the art supplies I've got! As much as I love books and reading, sometimes I really need to see in order to understand.  I'm thinking that this may be my Summer of the Art Journal. Anybody out there who is already on the art journal band wagon?





A Row of Oil...

Caspar  Benson

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