I really like this page. The block of text blended with the page with white is nice and the simple black line work on the left really adds to the page.
I really like how this person integrated the text with the image. Very nice.
Do you read Robert Genn? If not you should, here's his facebook page. You can read his twice weekly writings via the FB page or you can find his website through the page. He writes short, to the point nuggets of artistic wisdom. His work is amazing. His site has years of his writing and it's all inspirational.
This week's writing was about hopelessness. An artist wrote to him about his deep depression and his unsupportive spouse. He included some images of his work, which, in my opinion were quite good. Having had an unsupportive significant other I can tell you how it eats at your self confidence and brings you down. The summer after we split up was one of the most gloriously artistic summers of my life. I had this crappy little part time job to pay the bills but I was selling my art on eBay and painting everyday. Suddenly I didn't have anyone bringing me down about my art. I was free to create as I wanted, with no worries she'd look at it an say it was awful. My work progressed leaps and bounds that summer. I had a definite style.
Today my significant other is supportive of all that I do and want to do. I know that is not the case for all of us out there. I guess the real question is how do we all deal with it? When you bring home a piece or share your art with your significant other, how do they respond? When I was first making books my ex used to ask me "What are you going to do with that one?* Now that you've learned this, what are you going to do with it?" With a final exclamation of "Useless." Sometimes it's not the hurtful statements but simply ignoring the art that hurts.
I'm often brought back to my college years when I think of hopelessness. My parents would tell you that even when younger, though capable of much more I needed extra motivation to get A's, if it had been up to me I'd have been a solid B student. In college I got just the grades I needed to maintain my scholarship and frankly I floundered in college art classes. I wasn't inspired by the art classes frankly I was bored in them. After 4 years of being allowed to pretty much do what I'd wanted in art class I'd been spoiled, being directed to make art in a specific way pretty much killed the urge to create. Add to that the the new freedoms I found in being away from home and I had a severe hopeless feeling. It lasted well into my 3rd year of school. I look back and regret that those 4 years I had where I could have devoted myself to art, I didn't. (Don't get me wrong I did a lot of personal growing in those years but I certainly was not as academically motivated as I should have been nor did I focus on art.)
I know what made me helpless do you know what makes you feel helpless. It's something to journal about eh?
Another sketchbook. This looks more like an art journal than some of the others I've posted. Lots of dense writing, lots of little sketches. Great stuff.
Love the thought of the day idea.
Most of my older journals are spare on the art side of things and focused much more on the words than images. In this case I glued in some business cards I picked up as we traveled my old stomping grounds in rural Maine. I wrote little notes about them. I used a waterproof ink in a rapidograph (shock) or something like a pilot precise grip or something else with waterproof ink. I let the ink completely dry and then work back into the page with watercolors.
When I wrote in these journals I purposefully wrote in chunks. Each idea or thought had it's own little section. Larger ideas had larger bubbles and smaller ideas smaller. In some cases I doodled outlines to the spots of thought, in other cases like this page I just used watercolor over the top of the ink.
I was working on 140lb cold pressed strathmore 400 series watercolor paper. At the time I used it because it was inexpensive, but also very serviceable. The page measures 5×7 and there were 24 pages in a journal.
Great page. Love the watercolor flowers and the writing on the facing page. The colors work really well together.
So last week I’d been trying to figure out how to write this
post… And it wasn’t coming to me so I started journaling about it and came up
with an idea for a page. I hadn’t done an AJ in process video in forever so I
recorded the making of the page. I’ve posted it to YouTube. I’ll post it after the cut here
too. It’s vaguely NC-17 because there is a nude involved in it.
At least one person has vastly missed the point of what the
image and journal page is about. So, let me tell you a story. A friend of mine like
to show me dirty pictures, he really likes them and likes to share. The most
recent set of pictures involved a woman, fully nude, with clearly fake breasts,
tanned and posing in an orchard. She’s in a variety of poses smiling for the
camera. I found the orchard setting kinda creepy. I mean, orchards have spiders
and bugs and poisonous sprays. Yes, this is the sort of shit that goes through
my mind in the 30 seconds it takes to show me a couple of pictures. At the end
of everything he asked me what I thought, I was honest and said, “Meh.” He
looked at me and said, “What the hell is the matter with you?”* It was really
too hard to explain to him in that moment that it’s more complicated than that.
As a lesbian who is usually “one of the guys” I’ll have to
admit the dirty pics don’t offend me and I appreciate them but they don’t do
much for me. It’s just that sex/sexuality is a little more complicated than
dirty pictures for me. Sure I appreciate the female figure and form and yeah I
more than glance when I see a nude. The fact is that, like most women (I
suspect), its more complicated than that. Yeah I’m gay but I’m still a woman
and the hardwiring of my brain is really no different than most women. Sure I’m
more comfortable with short hair, you’ll never catch me in a dress ever again
and I’m very practical and pragmatic; but I’m still a woman.
The initial point of my journal page was that it takes more than a dirty picture
to get me going but it has a dual meaning, the more I look at it, in that it
also means I’m more than just a piece of ass. (There really is no other way to
put it that makes the statement less offensive.) I’m glad though, that the
piece means more to people than just my initial meaning. That’s part of the beauty of art, we all make our own meaning
when we look at a piece, and instill our
own life story to the meaning.
I really like this page. I love the writing and the images.
