Although it has been a busy week in the studio of cleaning, purging and organizing, I have found some time to work in my journal, especially on Monday when Dave came down for a good chunk of the Day, and we spent the day in the studio working in our journals. There is something about making art along with someone else, and it has been quite a while since Dave and I got together to simply work in our journals. It was good working and chatting.
As I've mentioned before, my journaling process is a slow accumulation of marks, colors, lines, textures, ideas, and so much more, and I build up pages layer by layer. It's not uncommon for some pages to have 10 or more layers, and it is this build up that gives many of my pages their richness. Much of my journal work this week has been working in all of my current journals, adding layers of materials and techniques, trying to build richness. Right now I have three journals - a large 11x14 journal which is my basic, everyday journal; a 5.5x8.5 journal where I am focusing on how colors, techniques, materials, and ideas can link and connect pages creating a true visual narrative, and a 4x6 collaborative journal that I am sharing with a friend in North Carolina. It's interesting to work in journals of various sizes, since each size poses it's own challenges, and the size affects how ideas, shapes, and colors relate. I like having multiple journals going simply for the fact that as I allow something in one journal to dry, I can work in another, and it's quite easy to rotate through them.
A few pages from the large journal.
A few pages from the collaborative journal.
Finally a page from the visual narrative journal.
