Messy, Messy, Stop

This is my second post of the day.

Diana Trout is an author and artist. She wrote Journal Spilling: Mixed-Media Techniques for Free Expression and boy is her book expressive. There is permissive freedom, experimentation and exuberance on every page. Diana knows how to get the creativity out and onto the page! If you have any trepidation about opening a journal and expressing yourself artistically on its pages, I suggest you go check out Diana's book.

Last week Diana called me through Skype, so I was able to watch her wake up and we talked about journaling and our styles. I think we journal for much different reasons and I will say some words about my approach and hope that she does too.

I journal to capture thoughts, ideas and moments of my life in an artistic manner. I call what I do, the book I keep, an artist's journal and I hope that either an aspect of the page or the page itself will inspire further works of art either within the pages of the journal or on cloth, my chosen medium. I choose to paint full spreads, both sides of the paper because these books are for my own use as an artist, I do not have aspirations of selling or framing my pages-I do this as a library of imagery by and for myself.

I can be found paging through my books when I am feeling creatively dull. I also rely on the blank page in times of quiet, coffee shop journaling is the epitome of sheer joy in my world. When fiber creativity eludes me, I open the pages of my journal and get to work, it keeps me creatively focused and open to my self.

So Diana challenged me to be Messy and Intuitive. I think intuitive come easily to me, Messy? Not so much. Diana also challenged me to use words and not cover them up. In describing this challenge she suggested something similar to Nudge #8, 'Nudges' are her weekly challenges (a brilliant concept that you should try)-check them out!

So here goes.

This is one of the last pages in my journal and had notes on it. Alex, a 4 year old that I know, made the green cat stamp on the left part of the page. The two hand stamps on the right side of the page were made by me and were on the page prior to this challenge. I wanted to keep them, so worked around them, rather than covering them up.

To create this page, I globbed on some white gesso, smoothing it out in a thick layer over the page. I pressed some leaves left over from this post into and scribbled over the gesso then heat gunned the lot. I rubbed Caran d'Ache into the textured gesso, wetting drying and rubbing some more.

All that brown made me nervous, so I moved over to the left side of the page where there was some bright, cheerful yellow and I wrote about fear of Messiness.

This portion of the page was just yellow at that point. I took liberties and circled the pertinent words in the paragraph in pencil and used a stump to feather the lead out.

When I get to serious journaling, there are no holds barred- so out came the Crap! Border stamps had thier day on the page. Leaves, checkers, dashes, zig zags. Stamp pox be darned! If you feel compelled to make them, so too should you use them.

This is one of the first stamps I ever made. It is probably 15 years old, is carved speedy cut and is inspired by henna'd hands. See the Mess? Scribbles, dribbles, flecks?

This is a two color stamp made in Pat's Faux Screen Print technique. do you see those dark red penned triangles? That sort of quick unstudied line is hard for me to accept, but I did it in the hope of embracing the Messy and Intuitive aspect of the challenge.

Then I checked out the entire page and felt I needed to lighten and brighten up all that brown and began dotting some white and gold, swiped some blues into the page and continued to play and Intuit.

I don't know if I pass the Messy test (I know it wasn't a test). My Friend Pamela said, 'That is very messy, for you.' See that qualifier? For you. Hm.

Here are some other pages that I perceive as Messy.

And on this page I challenged myself to draw messy, not studied or realistic but with quick abandon. This pages imagery kept me thinking about The 20 and is a Common Grackle. This last is a reminder of the manner in which I tend to use my journal.

My challenge to Diana? Use Negative Space. Perhaps some paper Frisket? Maybe some fruit, but it was open to interpretation.

What do you think?