Saturday, August 16, 2008

Autumn is my favorite season of the year. There's so much to love about it. Fuzzy scarves, twirling leaves, smiling jack-o-lanterns, garden harvests. The fact that it's back-to-school time isn't one of the reasons I love it though. I always enjoyed the freedom our family had during the summer, and some years we just homeschooled and missed the whole back-to-school thing altogether. But I do love the way the stores are restocked with school supplies every autumn. It's been decades since I've needed my own school supplies, but I can't help but dawdle on the school supply aisle like a kid in a candy store. Especially notebooks. Pretty covers. Clean white pages. Oh, the possibilities!


Today I went in search of a new notebook, a journal. I wanted a moleskin, but being a small town, I couldn't find one. I did find this recycled paper blank sketch book however. It's not clean white pages, but I thought it might be fun to try this instead. Maybe the organic hue will help inspire lots of earthy art, like the soil in a garden gives a bed to beautiful vegetables and flowers. The cover is certainly a blank slate. It's heavy paper, I'm sure some cover art will come to me in due time.


I also bought some thin tip sharpies. They're blue. I meant to buy black but I guess I was meant to buy blue. And these cool erasable colored pencils. They really do erase! But they don't seem to smudge. So, good call.

I haven't worked in an art journal for almost three decades. Yes, you heard me, decades. I've been meaning to start one for awhile now, but I kept putting it off, rationalizing, being too busy. But really, the reason I've procrastinated all this time is the fear of those big blank pages. AWWWWWWWW! SCARRRRRRY!

Here goes nothing:

First page. Not a great photo, it's too dark. But that's okay, I'm not really done with the page anyway. I just wanted to show you that I jumped into the blank and made a few ripples.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Very nice! I am impressed with ANYONE who does that. I was trying to at least journal everyday - mundane things - three things to be grateful for, 5 rules to live by (if I repeat they will stay with me through out the day), etc. Oh and my to do lists, lol.
However these last months I have not gotten hear it. Hmm - maybe that is my problem. Ok I will take this as a sign to start again.
Oh - and I went to Art Unraveled this year - it was GREAT. I learned so much! I am finally writing it up for my blog that I never write to, lol. (I see a pattern here with me.) Check out the blog tonight if you want - I should have posted some of the writeups - I am missing some photos still though so I haven't released them yet.
Are you in the sinister swap this year? I just found some cool bulging eyes...

Kathy