Negligent.
Originally uploaded by David Fullarton

Another great image. Love the mix of text and the sweet little sketch. I love this guys style.

Tea in Waterstones
Originally uploaded by wil_freeborn

Love how this guy sketches. Simple, effective and very cool.

I'm not a big Easter person. I like Cadbury Cream Eggs and Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs but other than that the whole zombie risen from the dead thing kind of creeps me out. I'm not sure I've shared this story with you yet, I'm sure my family will not be pleased if I do but,that has never stopped me before so…

When I was a kid we used to go to church. Every weekend. My mom used to give us a dime to put in the plate. It was pretty much all we could afford. We were very poor. (I'm not kidding when I say we were very poor.) In the early 80's a teacher in rural Maine did not make a lot of money. I think Stephen King wrote in his book "On Writing" that he made all of $7500 in the Bangor, ME area, which was significantly higher than what rural Maine would have seen at the same time. I digress. In my family we did not talk of money, that was for adults only. Church, I was writing about church. My mom would give my brother and I a dime each, we would put it in the plate and all the other kids would put nickles and dimes in as well. It did not pass my notice that the kids of the families who were better off than us put in quarters. Some of the adults put in bills, folded up so you could not see the denomination, occasionally an old lady would put in a check, which I used to refer to as the colored paper in the plate.

We went to the local Union church. Sort of like a Unitarian Universalist, except, well more like a Baptist, but not. There weren't any sermons on hell fire and brimstone just some boring old dude jabbering on about jesus and god and taking jesus into you. Some of the sermons, looking back on, I would find very creepy, with bizarre subtexts. At one point we had a Reverend who was really into baptism and brought in a big tub of water to dunk people into. Her sermons were really weird and had people standing in the aisles raising their hands up and talking about taking jesus into their heart and getting dunked in the dirty water in the tub.

What I really liked was Sunday School, after the sermon was half over the kids would be sent from the main part of the church off with a couple of the older kids and one adult to the basement, where a  series of tables and chairs were set up. Here some photocopies and mimeographed sheets would be passed out to us and the older girl would read a story to us. We'd them color in the sheets and answer questions.

The church had no bathroom. Which meant if you had to go you had to hold it or go outside behind the church. You weren't allowed to leave Sunday School. So you had no choice other than to hold it. At one point, it must have been around '81 or '82 the state said that churches had to have bathrooms. I suppose the law must have said that "large meeting areas" had to have bathrooms. The church decided that they would set up a port-a-potty thing in the basement behind a screen. It was a toilet seat with legs with a heavy blue plastic bag hanging off the underside of it. You can see already that this will not end well.

During one of the Sunday school lessons an elderly lady came clattering down the stairs, ran behind the screen and sat down. The noises she made behind the screen made all the kids giggle, until we smelled the stench. That basement had no ventilation and that stink settled upon us all like a thick rank fog. The elderly lady went back up stairs but we were left in the basement with our eyes tearing up. I remember complaining to my mom about the stink but she said it must not be that bad, she hadn't been in the basement.

The next Sunday I didn't want to go back, summer was fast approaching and I wanted to play outside and not be stuck in the basement with a toilet seat on legs with a bag full of shit hanging off it. My parents were surprised but sent me to church anyway.

That Sunday the "toilet" had been used a few more times and the basement smelled of raw sewage and strong urine. Even the Sunday school teacher tried to cover up the smell with a lavender spray that merely combined with the smell of shit that hung low in the air to create an impenetrable force of flowers and feces. Those of us who could stand it previous to the air freshener now sneezed in pure revulsion. The combined odor was enough to even make the hardiest child gag.

The following Sunday I begged my parents not to force us to go back, that the sun was out, we could go to my grandparents early and I'd help cook. I wanted to be sure that I never went back to that hell hole. Still my parents forced me to go back. Each week the smell got stronger and stronger. The Sunday school teacher stopped showing up and fewer and fewer kids were showing up.

Shortly before the shit bag hanging off a toilet seat with legs was instituted a new Reverend had been hired. Apparently my parents did not much care for her style and had a discussion about not sending us to church. My incessant nagging to not go, not wear a dress, actively resisting putting on my church clothing only helped them to decide not to send us back to church. This all occurred right around Easter when I was 6 or 7.

I saw Sundays as freedom from then on. I had a discussion with my Dad years later about why they didn't want to send us to church anymore. He mumbled a bunch of crap about crazy ladies and said something I really appreciated, "If you want to find god, you go take a walk out in the woods. We live in the middle of god's country." While I'm not a believer it's stuck with me that sometimes if you need to find something- an inner truth, an answer or something of that nature, if you take a long walk in the woods you'll find your answer, eventually.

I’ve been talking about a couple of different things with my
friends, and one of the major topics has been transformation changes. It’s a
fascinating topic as it’s different for everyone. When you ask people what the
most transformative thing in their life has been, they think for a minute and
launch into a story.

I could sit here and list a series of my transformative
moments, moments that blew my mind, opened my eyes and awakened my senses but
it would come off as trite so I’ll just start to tell you about the most
recent with roots further back. It’s a hard thing for me to write about but in the spirit of the open
honesty that I’ve written this blog about I’m going to explain.

I used to be fit, extremely so. I had a very low body fat
percentage and ran every other night and biked the other nights. In college I
allowed this to slide a bit as I found a love of good beer. But I never got out
of shape and my second year of college began mountain biking. I was obsessed,
biking to and from class and then putting in 6 to 10 miles on trails almost every
day. I loved it. When I graduated I had less time for my bike but still spent a
lot of time hiking and biking.

Then I moved to Massachusetts. It was a rough time in my
life, full of heart ache and me doing dumb stuff to further ruin my life. I
moved from the woods straight into the ghetto. Still I persisted in commuting to
my crap job by bike and train. Until October 10^th 1999; when I was
hit by a minivan as I rode home. I was not badly hurt, my bike was not badly damaged
and I walked away. I can now look back at the incident as somewhat humorous,
but not. I was very shaken up by the incident, if I had not looked over my left
shoulder that one last time I would not have seen the Gordon College** professors
running the red light and I would not have swerved to avoid them. They hit me at
about 40MPH and I know that it’s simple luck that I’m alive today and writing
this. One foot to the right and their front grill would have hit me squarely in
the back.

Shaken up and scared I limped myself and my bike to the train
home. I sat at the train and journaled. The page is mostly garbled nonsense,
physical hyperventilation; mental diarrhea on the page. I got home and freaked
out with my roommate. When I took my sweater off you could see the imprint of its
woolen knit in my left tricep, an indentation that matched the curve of their
side mirror. You could see the indentation and feel the texture of the sweater.
Six inches to the left and my elbow would have been shattered. A foot to the
right….

Anyway you get my point; that was 11 years ago. I never
commuted by bike again. 2 summers ago I dusted off my bike and rode around my
hood, grotesquely out of shape the ride up and down my block left me gasping
and wheezing, my heart rate peaking at an obscene number.  Not to mention the anxiety of wondering if I’d
be hit again. Cars coming up behind me nearly gave me a panic attack.

That one moment turned me off from biking. It’s not the only
reason I gained weight over the years but it’s an easily identifiable moment
that helped to lead to my weight gain.  Over the last 10 years I’ve gained a ton of
weight. I’ve had this mental picture of myself as kind of pudgy, like I was at
about 27. It didn’t occur to me that I was a fucking statistic in the American
War on Obesity.

A coworker took pictures at a meeting and gave me a copy of
one of me. Sweet jesus. I didn’t recognize myself. I realized I had gone from pleasingly
curvy to fat. Over the last 2 years I’ve tried a variety of diets. Nothing
worked well for me. I’d lose 5 pounds, 10lbs, gain 5, and then maintain at a
specific weight for a few months then gain it all back. I visited a Doctor,
finally found one that accepts my health insurance and was accepting
adult patients. I was diagnosed with PCOS and put on medication.* Since beginning
the meds and watching what I eat I’ve lost 15 pounds in the last 4 months. I
also feel a whole hell of a lot better.  I started to wear a pedometer at my Doctor’s
urging and came to the conclusion I’m sedentary, especially during the week.  I’m not an over eater, I sit on my ass. I’m
nowhere near in shape enough to run let alone do a decent workout but my goal
is that when I get down to a comfortable enough weight I can begin to make my
way back to decently fit. I’m not striving for my peak of physical fitness but I’d
like to not be a statistic in the war on obesity.

I didn’t notice much of a change in the first 2 months but
in the last 2 I have. All my jeans are loose and I have to wear a belt
otherwise everyone will get a view of my underwear. My face and neck are
thinner. I feel better. I have more energy. Holy crap it's great. I'll keep you all updated on the weight loss, but I won't blog about it too much more.

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Doodle and some text
Originally uploaded by lessherger

I doodled the face with a Pentel G2 gel pen, then wrote the text in the same pen. I went over it when completely dry with yellow acrylic, let that dry and then used my watercolor crayons to get the red glow around the face.

small house on 3rd st
Originally uploaded by petescully

I decided that I would spend more time outside this summer sketching and drawing houses, building and things. PeteScully on flickr is an inspiration if you are interested in that sort of en plein aire ink and watercolor drawing. His flickr is full of inspiring stuff. Head over and check it out.

feelin like crapola
Originally uploaded by lessherger

Did this in my art journal the other day. I was feeling like crap. I think it was at least partially influenced by DayQuill. Luckily I’m on the mend, my eye is no longer swollen and red and I can breathe!

In May I'll be setting up another Art Journal Challenge. This one more self paced than a prompt a day. My plan is to set the workshop up by the weeks in may and have a series of prompts ready for each week. I'm not sure how many but lets just say not 7 and more than 2. Exact numbers to come out later. In addition to the prompts released into the wild each week I'm hoping to do a PDF that you'll be able to print. The PDF will include the prompts, some images and writing.

I think that this style of art journal challenge will take the pressure off the feeling of pressure some people noted in the last challenge to create a spread or page a day. Having the x# of prompts available for you when you want to use them will leave you able to work on your own time for the amount of time you choose, with no need to worry about a full page or spread created per day. Get rid of that pressure! 

Join the Challenge here, it's free!

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I know your tomorrow
Originally uploaded by cathy cullis

Cathy Cullis does some intriguing work with fabric, thread and ink. Head to her flickr stream to see more great stuff.

It's April first and it's the first day in 31 days that I've not dragged my butt out of bed and posted a prompt to the March Art Journal Challenge, and most days it was a miracle because the posting was done BEFORE my morning coffee, you have no idea!

That being said that challenge was a rousing success, at least in my mind! There was lots of discussion, lots of imagery and lots of stuff going on in the discussion, especially in the first 3 weeks. I think in any long term challenge it fizzles out at the end but this one stayed lively for quite awhile. I'm happy to have been a part of it. I hope my prompts were sometimes wacky and sometimes mundane. I, myself, focused on opening my journal everyday rather than finishing a spread everyday. I found that to work the best for me.

I have in mind another challenge, this one more conducive to that sort of meditative "opening" of the page rather than a focus on finishing a page or spread everyday, as many people told me a prompt a day challenge makes them feel forced to do. Which was not the idea behind the challenge but I understand the pressure. You give someone a prompt a day, they feel pressure. 

If you didn't get the chance to follow along in March or you are new to ArtJournaling.ning.com you can head on over, follow the March Prompts for the month of April, or use them as an inspiration point for anytime.

Also keep an eye on the page, we've got something big in store.