every-single-day

Dilettante, NOT!! revisited.

A few days ago I posted about journals and visual journaling because of a post I saw on both Arlee's Albedo Design site and Sharon's In a Minute Ago. I loved both posts and because I am an avid art journaler, I posted to my blog about what journaling means to me. In the meantime, Arlee had been posting to an email list we all love and sometimes hate (can you guess which one?) about the same topic. She was getting some nasty emails from this list.
She asked if I would come to her defence, but I misread what she was asking of me and thought she felt as though I were flaming her. I took my old post down.
Flaming and negativity and nastiness are not OK.
As far as I am concerned enabling artistic dabbling is what networking, blogs and the internet are all about. So Thank you Arlee for sticking with me, communicating and helping me see I wasn't flaming me you.

These days my journals are highly finished and the uninitiated might be intimidated. So I wanted to show older pages so you could see the difference. My drawing skills have improved immensely.

This is an older entry in my journal, my color skills were just beginning to coalesce. My sense of style and approach was closely related to Sabrina Ward Harrison’s Spilling Open. I would even say it was somewhat derivitive.

Because I am the type person who thinks immersion in a passion is the best way to learn, I began to search out visual journalers whose work I admired. I also began to closely examine how to make what I was seeing my own. How to incorporate intrinsically what I liked best while still maintaining a distinct sense of self.
In this way, I sought out Danny Gregory's Everyday Matters. Danny draws and notates his thoughts and ideas on each page. He keeps his books for the sake of them, they are his art.
I do not. I keep my journals as inspiration. I know that if I can rely on what I have done in the pages of my journals to inspire new works in fiber. I don't always use my journals in this way but when I need them there they are.

I also love the work of John Copeland. Click on the word 'Journals' when you get over there. His output is phenominal. He taught me about transparency.

Check out Tom Judd's Everyday. Insane. I wish I had the wherewithal to draw everyday for on hour for an entire year.

But the bottom line is that it is important to keep an artist's journal. To have a record of your thoughts, ideas and wonders. You can tape rip sheets, write, draw stick figures if you like! Just do it. You will see the benefit over time. Give yourself permission to create both medichre and awesome pages within your books. You need not show them to anyone.

Yesterday I treated myself to a journaling gift! I bought this Japanese Aquash water brush. It makes painting on the go easy!

Posted by Melly at December 20, 2005 07:03 AM