Mixed Media Journal

Finally a few minutes to post. We were on a Road Trip (Yay!) and made our  journey to the Sioux Narrows Art Festival and then followed that with a few days visiting relatives in Wisconsin.

Of course the weather was gorgeous, as was the scenery.  The Shield and lakes of Western Ontario were outstanding.  Due to circumstances I won't go into (none of which were our doing) we had to stay about 25 miles from the event, but the extra driving was worth it just for the view from our lakeside room.  The mist on the first morning we were there covered the entire lake and I wished I'd had more time to savour it, but duty called.  The show was good, not as good as in previous years sales wise, but most people said that, so I am not complaining.  Once again, the show was very well hosted and aside from the accommodations aspect one couldn't ask for better.

When we got to Wisconsin, we played, went for pontoon rides and I got to 'shop'.  (More about that later.)  As well, I demonstrated how I did my Coptic Binding on the books that I've been making recently.  I didn't go overboard in decorating this one, as my main purpose was to show the binding, and only added one polymer element (so far) to the cover.  Since I was 'describing' the Coptic technique (should coptic have a capital??), I somehow got my pages turned topsy turvy about half way through.  Since I don't feel like ripping them out, I decided to keep this book for myself.  I also promised I would do a page a day, as in Marlene Brady's blog "Do art every day" and since I returned, have kept up.  I'm not a journal artist by a long shot, and I have lots to learn, but I gave it the old 'collage' try.  Mostly so far I've used my own 'stuff', pictures I've drawn (and photocopied) or wording I've done.  That brings to mind a million questions, and a few answers I've figured out.  Does one acknowledge sources of images in a private book?  What does a title page in a journal look like?  Does one even need a title page?  I mean it is not like I am ever going to be organized to have a table of contents in the thing...

On one  page I did a take-off on the word 'type'.  I was tickled during my shopping trip to  find an antique Smith Corona in great shape.  I had sold our old Underwood upright in a garage sale many years ago, and when the gal accepted my offer (the same amount I sold the Underwood for) I sealed the deal.  After sharing a little secret about my high school typing experiences with her, I decided that the word needed to be exploded a bit.  I didn't do much exploding.  I only linked it to a few phrases, but since I have a tendency to [overdo] things like that in my work in general, I hoped in this case that less was more. 

The colorful rainbow background for the page (I'd gesso'd it up first) was from an old painting kit I purchased at Mall of America kiosk about ten years ago.  I'd love to be able to do that effect in other colors and maybe when I have time I'll try to recreate another way of doing it so I am not confined to the colors of tempera that are in the kit.  I glued the little typed excerpt into the middle of the opened page, and thank goodness for that feature of coptic binding I love so much.  The remainder of the page is some journaling in every which way direction using a purplish-mauve gel pen.

Now that I've completed another page (it's still drying) I'm off to work on polymer clay and replenish stock.  Also have to make some butterfly pendants for my sister's friend in SK...BTW, she returned from a three week stay in Australia and brought me back a scarf done in the traditional Aboriginal dot style.  One day I am going to try my hand at that.  When one of the exchange teachers from Adelaide (I think) was at our school, she had the kids emulate that style and their paintings adorned the hallways for weeks. 

I rather like that technique, but need to do a little more research on it before I attempt it on my own.  Perhaps one day a page of it will get into my art journal.  In the meantime, I'm letting it sit open on a book stand.  Drying.  Although on this sticky humid day here it may take longer than usual.  Now if I were in Phoenix...it'd be dry before I finished the page!