Journal Friday #115: Where I'm Going

 
 

So, once again I’m late in posting my latest Journal Friday. I created the video on Friday, and posted it to social media, but I didn’t have time to make a blog post. But here' it is now. My schedule has gotten a little less hectic, so hopefully, I’ll be better about posting Journal Friday on Fridays, and also posting more content in general on the blog.

But this spread uses my typical arsenal of materials — watercolor, Inktense pencils, pen, collage, and paint marker. But I wanted to do something a little different this time, so I incorporated some observational drawing into it. I created a continuous contour drawing of myself from a photograph. With this technique, I didn’t lift my pen as I drew, so the idea is that it’s drawn in one continuous line. I did forget to draw a small portion at first, so I had to go back and add an eyebrow. I tried to put the pen down where I had picked it up at last.

Though this spread doesn’t have any words or journaling, a phrase kept going through my head from a song lyric by hip-hop artist Sage Francis. In his song Runaways from the album Personal Journals, Sage asks, “If I don’t know where I come from, how do I know where to go?” Though not explicit in the final outcome, I love how it informs the work.