a new month, a new project

one of my worries, starting back to a regular office job, is that i will forget to be creative at home (odin knows i'm going to be awesomely creative at work on a daily basis), so i decided to remedy that by giving myself a little project. i got this little wanna-be moleskine at søstrene grene some time ago and have prepared it with a bunch of list prompts inspired by this pin.

the prompts are from an old one of those 30 days of lists projects, tho' i have adjusted them to fit me and cut them down to 28 so it fits a february project (technically, i think there are 29, because i accidentally did two february 11 and didn't want to try to rip it off the page). it is also because i'd like to get back to the daily art journaling that i started clear back in 2010 and abandoned when we moved because things got too crazy.

because it's good to have goals and intentions, i started off with those. so my goals for the month are: i want to do these daily pages, eat vegetarian (tho' we're not giving up bacon, so it's not totally vegetarian, but more bacotarian), i also want to be healthier and that means abandoning my daily glass of wine while i cook (it will be good for me, right?), i want to get a bit more organized, which is why i chose to stick in the little photo of my pretty new boxes - it would be nice if there weren't art supplies on every surface in the dining room. and, last but not least, i want to have a great start at my new job. i have the rest of the prompts pasted into the book, so it should be easy to spend a few minutes every day, making a little list and playing with stamps and paint and pens and washi tape. so stay tuned.

what do you have planned for the shortest month?

update on my art journal calendar

as you know, i embarked on a daily art journal calendar on january 1. i started off very enthusiastically and really enjoyed the process. i wasn't sure where it was taking me, but i liked the ride. february went well and i began to get into a groove. march, with our impending move, got a little more rocky, but still i persevered. and now i'm here to admit that it kinda fell apart for me in april. although i made a little mini-stash in an old suitcase, and had all sorts of good intentions, my daily art journal was what had to give.

the portable stash in a modified (by me) vintage suitcase

april 1 - 2, 2010
april 1 - was when i photographed paul's beautiful rug for british home & garden
april 2 - i was on a weaving kick, so i wove fabulous washi tape (bought here). i love that stuff.

april 3 - 4, 2010
april 3 - still on the washi tape thing. i'll admit sabin inspired this.
april 4 - washi tape tree (also copied from inspired by sabin).

that's pretty much as far as i got in april - wrote this note of assessment may 1.

may 1 - 2
may 1 - new house, new resolve. so i started with a little sketch of the new plants in the garden.
may 2 - had discovered loads of rhubarb in the garden and was holding out hope there would be asparagus (there isn't).

may 3 - watching one of those fabulous BBC nature shows with sabin.

may 19 - was the day i discovered that gorgeous little nest in a bush in the yard.

and that's as far as i got in may. restarting my daily practice proved difficult in the new surroundings. and it's rather ironic, because i think that with the stress of moving, i have more need than ever for a daily creative act. there are so many adjustments at once - house, job, routine, kitchen, garden, sabin's school, caring for a horse - and so many new demands on my time. but i haven't given up on myself and have decided that looking back on these couple of months (let's hope it doesn't stretch into june as well) of empty pages will also be a record of the time and place i was in. they say when you fall off the horse, you have to get back on, so i'm trying to persevere with june's little moleskine. i'll be back with more on that when the month is over.

daily art journal: march

this month, the details are on flickr, so click each picture below if you want to know more.

1. daily art journal for march, 2. march 1-2, 3. curiosity bird detail, 4. march 3-4, 5. march 5-6, 6. march 7-8, 7. march 9-10, 8. march 11-12, 9. march 13-14, 10. march 15-16, 11. march 17-18, 12. march 19-20, 13. march 21-22, 14. detail - march 22, 15. march 23-24, 16. march 25-26, 17. march 27-28, 18. march 29-30, 19. march 31, 20. daily art journal for march

i'll admit the project grew more difficult in march and i fell behind, sometimes by a week at a time. i could definitely feel the effects of house- and job-hunting this month. it ended up both good and bad. good in that i had room for more two-page spreads, which i felt gave me greater flexibility on some of the pieces and some of the thinking it helped me do. bad in that i didn't get the daily creative practice that i embarked on this project to have. but april is a another month and i'm back on track. well. almost anyway. but i blame husband because he said yesterday was only the 2nd and it was actually the 3rd.

recurring themes - maps and eyes continue to crop up again and again. i'm beginning to see that come out when i look back at previous months. in any case, it's an interesting project and i'm starting to see a glimmer of where it's taking me.

reflections on the february daily art journal

click on this mosaic to see the whole set on flickr.

here it is, my mosaic of all of the pages of my february art journal calendar. this is such an interesting process. here in february, i've been less religious about sitting down and doing a page every single day, so there are many which stretch across two pages, because i didn't do them until the second day, thereby giving myself more space. i'm finding that works a bit better for me.

here are the close-ups of the second half of february. the first half is here.

february 15 - doodlings on a heavily embroidered dress seen in jean-paul gaultier's haute couture show

february 16 - sketch of the inkle loom that we bought  for sabin to weave ribbon on at our beloved randbøldal museum.

 february 17 18 - experimenting with monoprinting

i scribbled a thick layer of pastels on an ordinary sheet of paper and then laid it against the page and drew on it. it was fun!

 february 19 - cutting up one of those free postcards

february 20 - more monoprinting, this time a spillover from the soujournal project

february 21 - 22 a doodle a bit inspired by these, seen on flickr,

but with my own motifs. 

this was the first time when i sat down with the calendar and didn't know what to do.

and i think that shows.

as you can see, the past few days, after elizabeth (aka my zen master) sent me a link to a wonderful artist named shannon rankin, i played with some maps and really found my groove. expect more map stuff in the near future. it was well-timed, because husband had just cut up a map to aid him in our property search and so i had some extra bits of map at my disposal. sometimes cutting into such things is hard for me, but since it had already been cut, i had no inhibitions.

february 23 - 24 thinking about redrawing maps

these are places that have been important to me.

but i shuffled them at will. that was liberating.

february 25 - 26  driving around, looking at 8 farm places had me spending a lot of time with maps over two days. i found myself wondering which road would lead to our new home.

february 27-28 - fragments of a topography

maps in general interest me - topographies and mapping and drawing and tracing the topography of a life. that's what we're going to do in moving, we're going to redraw our internal maps. i got a bit of a start on it here at the end of february.

i still don't have a clear idea where this project is taking me. but combined with the soujournal project, i'm doing a lot of art journaling this year and that seems like a good thing. in fact, it seems so good, i've been pondering ways of sharing it.

so i'm putting together an online art journaling course. at first it was only in my mind, but now it's spilled onto the page a bit and i've even begun to make up packets of pretty papers for it. i'm still at the planning stage, but i'd love to know if you'd be interested in taking an online art journaling course and coming to explore this medium with me? please email me with any ideas you have about this - what you'd like to do in such a course, how you'd like to interact with the other participants, thoughts on materials and the like.

and don't forget to check out my fabulous new orange coat below. it was totally worth breaking the year of not buying things. :-)

february art journal calendar

i'm hopeless on my soujournal project at the moment. i have to send mine on to polly, but the last page i imagine before sending on to her is still stuck in my brain and will not come out on the page. i've even assembled some things that go with it and they're RIGHT THERE at hand and it still won't come out. what's up with that anyway?

however, it's going well with my daily art journaling in the moleskine calendars. i have fallen behind on sharing, but i'm only a teency tiny bit behind on the actual journal. here's what's i've done so far in february:

feb. 1 - totally me, if there's one thing i do, it's sketch plant-y things.

feb. 2 - tried to do something inspired by this. totally didn't work for me.

too cold and impersonal, i think. and too self-centered.

feb. 3 - been seeing mugs everywhere, so i drew a couple of my favorites. and a little plate of cake.

feb. 4 - back to the natural stuff + watercolor. much more me.

feb. 5 - we worked on a 3000-piece puzzle all day.

feb. 6 - a flea market find - a book on the vikings.

feb. 7-8 houses inspired by these.

i think these might eventually manifest as a quilt.

feb. 9 - dreaming of spring. and a vespa. (scooters courtesy of kim smith scrapbook paper acquired ages ago from the now defunct red velvet kit club)

feb. 10 - obsessed with plain spoken quilts, so i even painted one, but had to stitch it too.

feb. 11 - scraps of fabric, sewn together, to remind me how much i've been sewing of late.

feb. 12 - one heart for every year we've been married. and a switch to pastels.

feb. 13-14 - watched a marvelous show where joanna lumley chased the northern lights.

played with pastels again. not sure they're really me.

and again, one must be careful putting on hand lotion.

i continue to obsessively note where i am and when as i do each page, even when i'm a bit behind. it began as something i did on my travels years ago, noting where i was as i wrote and it has just continued, to the point of near obsessive-compulsive behavior. but, i'm going with it, because it doesn't really hurt anything. and it might be nice to remember at some point.

i'm not sure yet where these are taking me, but it's interesting (for me at least) to track the journey. and i think in time, when there's a critical mass of them, i'll know where it's going. and at least i've begun actually doing something with all that inspiration i've been gathering on flickr.

here's wishing you a weekend full of inspiration and creativity...

january art journal: complete

my january moleskine art journal calendar is complete. i didn't always do the page on the actual day, but i wasn't far off. i worked mostly with stædtler fineliners and watercolors. and here's a closer look at the pages since i last posted:

january 19 - reflects the weaving warps i'm setting up at weaving lessons

january 20 - was the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

january 21 - 22 i was inspired by the colors and shapes of this crocheted blanket on flickr.

january 23 - stitching design for my 9-patch diary cloth.

january 24 - ideas on upcycling a georg jensen blanket husband got as his work christmas present.

january 25 - a monocule in honor of sabin's birthday

january 26 - inspired by this painting on flickr

january 27 - more inspiration from flickr.

january 28 - still more inspiration from flickr, but also from a children's show called "smarteenies" that used to be on BBC Prime.

january 29 - clarity birds on the brain again.

january 30 - the trees have eyes. a doodle pondering kantha embroidery.

january 31 - more doodles pondering kantha embroidery.

february is a short month, but i've already gotten started.

undiagnosed OCD

picking up where we left off with the daily art journal - i didn't have time to post it on the weekend as intended due to the fabulousness of blog camp 3.0. and if i'm honest, i wasn't fully caught up on it 'til last night anyway. but i am caught up again now, so here we go:

january 9 - 10

on the 9th, i was inspired by this art journal seen on flickr.

on the 10th, the beautiful story fragment i bought from jude hill.

and i learned not to put on lotion before working with watercolors.

january 11 - 12
on the 11th, we got an offer on the house.
on the 12th, i started my weaving lessons.
this is a great way to help remember these things!

january 13 - 14
i actually did the 13th page on the 16th during the art journaling fest at blog camp.
january 14 was done during my art journal catch-up evening on the 18th.
it's a drawing of the wonderful petra art doll by sophie callaghan that spudballoo gave me at blog camp.
thank you spud (and sophie)!
i know, my stædler fineliners were a little garish, but they write like a dream.

january 15 - 16

january 15 - elizabeth's moment of clarity symbol.
january 16 - clarity birds based on elizabeth's symbol.
they just popped into my head as i was drawing elizabeth's symbol.

january 17 - 18
watching the fountain with hugh jackman.
quite a thought-provoking movie about the tree of life.
i found myself writing down quotes.
and drawing the tattoos he had on his arm.
tho' i did spend a lot of the movie expecting hoping he'd turn into wolverine.

when she came to blog camp, elizabeth looked around the house and suggested that the reason i obsessively write down where i am when i do a page was evident in the maps hanging on the walls (and the ceiling) in our house. i have a need to orient myself in time and space. knowing where i am so i can look towards where i'm going. i really quite like that thought. much better than a mild case of OCD...