This is the second in a series of images exploring self-doubt.

This
image started as the last with some journaling, written with a
noodler’s Ahab flex nibbed fountain pen. I focused my writing on the
self doubt surrounding the “big thing” that I have coming up*, hopefully
in May. I also wrote about how the impending change is affecting my
feelings around how people will perceive me. I worry that people will
think that my work is inauthentic.

As
I wrote I came to the conclusion that as long as my work is from the
heart and my mind that the work will be authentic no matter the content
or direction I explore.

I
blurred the writing with water. I decided to be literal with my images
and colored photocopies of a heart and brain with watercolors. When
these were dry I cut them out and glued them to the page. I added layers
of color around the 2 collaged pieces with colored pencils and
watersoluble crayons.

I
took one of my sheep stickers colored it black and stuck it in the
middle of the brain. A rather literal representation of sheep brain. I
also added a tea tag to the heart. I added a few more colors, picked out
the yellow crayon to get the color a little more intense and added some
white crayon between the blue rays.

The image measures 5×7 inches and is available on my etsy shop here.

Continue reading →

A little more on this self-doubt thing.

I
could trace it back and say that it’s because of this “big thing” i
have dangling over my head, or I could trace it origins back to my
Chipin campaign. It went well. I was way behind schedule due to a death
in my family but it went well. But the whole thing, the whole time, I
thought I was going to screw it up. I put myself out there and was well
received. Through all of that I figured that I would in some way screw
it up. I’d do something that would foul up the works. I’d screw up a
piece of art, send one to the wrong address, or something else.

I finished everything and sent it on it’s merry way.

Still that nagging voice of self doubt, different from my inner critic said over and over, “This won’t work, you will fail.”

I
think we all have that voice of self-doubt in our mind. Maybe it’s the
inner critic, or the voice of a parent, a teacher or co-worker. Someone
has given voice to our doubt, and that voice sticks in our mind. It
plays on repeat, over and over and over again, until we figure out that
the little orange circled arrow thingy on our iP0d is what is making
that song play again and again.

the
real question I have to ask myself, and you possibly need to ask
yourself, is. how do I stop that loop? What can I change? What can I say
or tell myself?

The
thing is I know that even with work my self doubt will never go away.
It will diminish, but I have to give myself time and put forth effort to
quiet the voice of doubt.

This
is my first piece in my series of images based around self-doubt. I
started by writing a journal entry about my self doubt. I then washed
over it with a large watercolor brush and clear water. This blurred and
moved the water soluble ink around the page. I used a watercolor pencil
to add a border around the edge.

I
made some copies of a self-portrait I’d made for my JF365 Challenge. I
colored them all one color with liquid watercolors. I glued these down
then added a piece of washi tape I’d colored yellow over the black and
white stripes. The face represent myself and the warning tape represents
a feeling of danger. The sheep represents what I call sheep brain. I
layered in some gelatin printed paper and a tea tag.

I added colors and lines radiating out from the sheep to show the influence of sheep brain on my thoughts.

I intended to take more progress shots as I worked but got caught up in the process of journaling.

The image measures 5×7 inches and is available on my etsy shop here.

Can I be honest here for a minute?

Well, I’m going to be, even if you said no. Isn’t that why you read my endless diatribes?

😉

I’ve been harboring an avalanche of self-doubt lately.

I
threw myself out there for something that I STILL can’t tell you about,
at least not for the next few weeks. The waiting game for knowing if it
will happen, or not, has taken it’s toll on my head. I’m questioning
everything now. Is this right? Is this wrong? Should I post that picture
of the page in my art journal that uses the word fuck? Or is it okay
because it’s a found line?* Do I need to be careful with what I write
here, because, you know, people are watching.**

Then
I had this crazy wonderful idea for a project that will kick off this
new thing I’ve been waiting on and the self-doubt has crept into that
too. Should I do it? Will people find it fake/inauthentic? Will people
make fun of me? Will it crash down around my ears in flames? Will I
suck? What will happen if it doesn’t work out?

This
doubting of everything is stunting the progress I’ve been making in my
art journal. The JF365 challenge has been huge for me, it uses a method
I’m familiar with and it’s been forcing me to explore topics I’ve
previously explored and look at them in new ways. But this doubt, man,
it’s the pits.

This
grand idea I had, the doubt is making me consider if I can do it. It’s
making me feel like I will fail, no matter what I do. No matter how I
try to reframe the doubts into a positive dialog it’s rough and my
brain, after allowing the doubt to seep in and fill all the crevices of
my noggin is freezing up and breaking apart the concrete of my resolve
to make my crazy idea work.

The
truth is I’ve allowed the self doubt to worm it’s way in and it’s up to
me to warm up and get it out of my head so I can move on with my art
and my crazy idea.

This post is the first is what I hope is many that is starting an open and honest dialog with you and myself.

Continue reading →

I have been asking myself, “What is art journaling?” a lot
lately. Mostly because things keep coming up on art journaling ning that
challenge my idea of art journaling.
Until recently I felt that art journaling had to include
paint, ink, or some sort of physical art making but several journalers on the
site have been doing digital art journaling. Digital art journaling is something
that until a few weeks ago I’d never have considered, but here we are and
people are loading digitally made pages to the group. Not a drop of paint or
ink involved.

When I first started out art journaling, nearly 15 years
ago, we made do or made our own stuff. Gluing in receipts and product packaging
was just a thing we did. Now you can buy special stuff to put in your journal.
Things have changed, a lot. Some of it is for the better, I
can buy gear shaped rubber stamps and masks now. Oh also nut and bolt brads,
how cool is that?

I worry that you can buy so much pre-made stuff that the
core element of art journaling- that self-explorative aspect where you look
deep and hard at yourself in the pages of your journal is being lost to well-made
pre-planned layouts, pretty pictures, and pre-made ephemera that doesn’t speak
to your life except for the money you spent at purchase.

If we spend our journaling time worrying about making pretty
pictures and following directions for a planned layout are we art journaling or
scrapbooking with paint?

Maybe these questions come up because I’ve never focused on
making pretty pictures, if a pretty page came up it was not on purpose or a
side effect of the collage and painting I did over my writing. In my journal, pretty pages
should be accidental not a predetermined outcome of art journaling.

I’ve
been feeding my watercolor addiction with DR PH Martin’s Hydrus
watercolors. They are liquid colors made from watercolor pigments. They
come in a range of 36 colors that correspond to artist’s color names.
The colors are concentrated, vibrant, and blendable. Each glass bottle features a plastic eyedropper for precise measurement. They are all
between $7 and $10 depending on where you purchase them. So far I’ve
purchased 4 bottles a yellow, red, blue and turquoise. The colors I can
get from mixing these 4 shades is nice and they layer well.

To
use the watercolors they seems to need to be diluted with some water to
get them to spread on the page well. This holds true for any paper,
high end watercolor to cheapo sketchbook. You can adjust the intensity
of the color by adding more or less water. A few drops is enough to
cover my entire 8.5×11 inch sketchbook spread in glorious vibrant
colors. The colors also seem to pop off the page.

I’ve
used these painted extensively and haven’t yet made a dent in any of
the bottles. So while they are expensive at about $8 each where I buy
them, they are a good value. The color is so concentrated that a 30ml
bottle will last a long long time. These are definitely becoming a
mainstay in my art journal kit.

I
had an incredibly long Monday and I can’t wait to share with you about
what and why, but I can’t, not quite yet. (How’s that for a teaser?)

I
had an appointment that I had to get to in Cambridge at 9am. Easy
enough, take the early train, take the T and then find a coffee shop and
people watch until 9. Easier said than done, though the lovely MBTA
decided to run a holiday schedule they didn’t put up notifications on
their website nor did their app show an alert. So I paid for tickets via
the app last night and got to the train station and the train wasn’t
running until an hour and a half after I got there… I waited in the
cold windy weather and then called C, who9 had already gone back to bed.
I hoofed it home.

It was so cold that my shoes were frozen and inflexible. Awesome.

Got in the car and drove to a T station and then rode the T into Cambridge.

What an adventure.

I
got there with an hour to spare so I chilled in Starbucks. I know, I
was in Cambridge surrounded by 100 different local coffee places and I
went to Starbucks. It was safe and close enough to my appointment
without trekking to a new unknown place.

Not to worry I made up for it by hitting up an old favorite, Tealuxe on my way home.

My
appointment lasted much of the day and I think it went well, I’ll get
results in a bit. (Seriously can’t wait to write more about this
exciting thing.)

For potential advertsisers who did not read my previous link:

Ever
have one of those days where you have a day where you are a complete
and utter space cadet? Mhmm I’ve been there all weekend.

We
had a fabulous day planned with a friend on Saturday and I had one
chore- go buy wood pellets for our main source of heat, and right now,
only source of heat for the house. And I completely and totally forgot
to go. Yeah. We got home from lunch and coffee in the city and I didn’t
even realize that I’d forgotten to go until C mentioned we only had one
bag left. That left me scrambling to find another place that sells them
on a Sunday. Around here the places that sell pellets tend to be small
family run places that aren’t open on Sunday. I called around and found a
place that was open on Sunday and sells them cheaper than the usual
place. The silver lining to this mush brained cloud is that the new
place is on the way to Artist and Craftsman. Which completely gives me
an excuse to go and buy more art supplies… Not that I need
encouragement…

I’m
still working on the JF365 Challenge over on AJ ning. If you haven’t
had a chance to check it out, we’re going into chapter 2 and the pages
from chapter 1 are really nifty. There’s lots of great work and the
group is really supportive. get the book and work through it with us!

If
you’ve been following me for any period of time you know my partner and
I make all of our own wrapping paper. Usually I gather packing paper
and newsprint from work and hoard it from about halloween on. There has
been a serious lack of decent newsprint, brown paper, or other packing
paper. It’s been coming in torn up and a mess, a recycler’s nightmare.
This year I had to resort to buying the largest pad of cheapo newsprint.

This is meant to be a money saving project. I think it still is.

Here is why I made those simple circle stencils. They are a stencil for over another stencil. What?!?

Lay
down an intricate stencil, like this X’s and O’s then lay down a circle
stencil over that.
Mask out unwanted areas.
Spray, spounce or roll.


Remove stencils, press off excess paint into a journal. Repeat as
needed. HIt it with a heat gun, and voila! Nifty stencils on stencils,
which make the most bad ass wrapping paper ever.

You can also do this with crayons- try rubbing over stencils. Or sharpies- use stencils as a guide. There are a million ways to make your own wrapping paper. I've been doing this for years and years. When I first started to do this it was because I forgot to buy paper adn remembered making paper with my Mom one winter. I lvoed it them and I love it now. At first I felt pretty cheesy doing it, but the reaction I get is usually pretty positive. People don't want to tear the paper. Also it's loads of fun.