Playing In Janie's Exotic journal.

Janie's Exotic arrived the other day and I was determined to get to it early this month, so I had thought about the spice markets and wonderful tiles and colours of Morocco as being about the most exotic thing I could imagine- however the lovely Lisa Jones already took Janie's journal to Morocco so the pondering continued.

Thinking back over my life - what have I done that is exotic, I mean I love gardening and herbs and trees and art and making compost-  There was that time the circus came to town and I raced down there as they were leaving to collect the elephant poo to make my most exotic compost heap ever!

Hmm - maybe not- there are already elephants in Janie's journal and the other images, well nothing exotic came to mind, however the kaffir lime tree and the lemongrass that eventually got that compost loved it. 

Oh well, I had some time to play today so bugger it I will just jump in and let it unfold.  

I started with a magenta oil pastel - that is pretty exotic, right?

and I scrawled the word exotic across the double page.

Looking around my desk I spied the stencil I used for Alice so I grabbed 2 warm and 2 cool 'exotic' colours. I love pink and orange together, it makes me think of Indian sari's and teal is very exotic, as well as my favourite colour, next I picked ultramarine.  I played with the stencil to cover the page and my word.

It was wonderfully vivid, but all those blank spaces! Grab another exotic stencil and some black paint and work in strips to cover some of those spaces and I am loving it.

 Then I scratched off the acrylic paint from the oil pastel to re-expose my word and outlined it in a white posca paint pen.  And in all of that exotic- maybe even chaotic background what would be more exotic than a calm white egret.  He looks like the page was built around him- pulling the whole thing together.

 So I went in without any idea of where I would end up simply following my impulses and intuition and I am very happy with how it turned out and it was lots of fun.

Destination Egypt

Egypt!
What an mind boggling place, it conjures up so many images and thoughts and is one of our most documented and most studied ancient places- so many ideas were present for Annabelle's amazing travelling art journal. 

We are a homeschooling family and when my lads were little my eldest was obsessed with ancient civilisations, especially Egypt. We had some dear friends spend time there and we followed their journey from home and they bought us home a stack of goodies on their return. I raided some of these for the center of this spread, all of those wonderful places to visit.

One needs hieroglyphs for Egypt  and they are great graphic journal fodder too :) I have no idea what I was talking about up there but I like the way they look.

I also had the lyrics of this old song from Mental as Anything that insisted on being included so I squeezed them in too and my page came together. It is a really fun journal and Annabelle I am sure you will enjoy your journey through it on its return. 

Egypt

Mental As Anything

Egypt, I saw you 

On the television

I saw your name 

Written on a wall

I saw your picture

In a magazine

Egypt, can I ask you 

To lend me your blue sky

And your dreamy

Virginal tenderness

I don't know you very well

But I really like you

Egypt, I'm a gonna 

A, see you soon

Said I'm a gonna walk on 

Your foreshore

Egypt, won't you hold me

Like I held a map of you

I learned your location 

From a travel brochure

Egypt, I need your 

Sophisticated silence

Egypt I'm a gonna

See you soon

I'm a gonna walk on 

Your foreshore

Songwriters: Chris O'doherty

Life is a Circus

Some times I think my life is a circus,

 there are certainly enough dare devil occurrences

and no shortage of clowns.  

This month has been very circus focused

 as I live near the show ground 

and the Rio circus from Brazil 

has been there performing 

so I have had their lights and tent viewed from my window

 and some folks from work also attended and enjoyed it. 

However aside from my own very dramatic family circus 

I have had the pleasure of playing in 

Sharon Rogers's lovely Vintage Circus

 travelling art journal from round 6 of 

the Australian Art Journal Swap. 

I have been super busy but had my vintage circus radar peculating in the back of my mind and nothing was grabbing me. I was in a shop though and there was a notice up from an old news paper story about a long ago flood that had a circus stranded in town and Samson the strongman was assisting in the rescue efforts and also put on a benefit show to support the town. 

He must have loved our dear Grafton as he then stayed on and became a shop keeper or maybe it was a publican. 

We almost had a strongman theme  but unfortunately I didn't make the Vintage Circus connection at the time so went on my merry way and can not remember the shop or all the details beyond my curiosity in that moment and googling gave me no answers either, meanwhile time was ticking so I went back to good old google and started looking at Vintage Circus images for inspiration. While looking I didn't want to use any animals and I don't think animals in circuses are a good idea even though they could have been a great page and of course once I go going I just had fun and played and I think they fit the theme ok. 

Looking for Wisdom

 The travelling art journal
Words of Wisdom arrived with winter, things were insanely busy with trying to sell our house and homeschooling and just family life.

I wasn't too concerned as I can usually create a reasonable spread in our allocated month fairly easily and incubation time always takes up the begining of the month for me.

I love the arrival of a new journal.  I love the anticipation and excitement and I love that first perusal over a cuppa. 

I tend to put it on the shelf then and let my ideas brew. Sometimes I will look through the journal a few times in this process until my idea starts to form. 

Sometimes I dont get an idea at all!

I just start playing and let it happen.

And this page is one that evolved on the page, intuitively.

 After 6 days sick in bed I was desperate to art despite have no wisdom on what I would create.

I just doodled all over the page with intense pencils then activated with watered down white and a tiny brayer. Looking at what came out made me think of pebbles on a beach and away I went.

Gypsy Journal

I, like quite a few of us took a while to find my mojo and create my journal for round 6, but once I did it was so much fun.

My theme is Gypsy.

To me this word brings so many images to mind but the beautiful horse drawn gypsy caravan and a fortune teller were the strongest.

I used my favourite Stonehenge paper and bound with leather.  My pages are created with inktense pencils, acrylic paint, serviette, lace and scrap book paper.

Im ready to hitch up the horses and send it travelling and watch it gather beauty here on our blog, you can follow along https://australianartjournalswap.blogspot.com.au/

Tea Bag Art in Lisa'a journal

My first journal to play in, in Round 6 is our fabulous Lisa Jones's Music and Lyrics. Lisa is such a gorgeous artist and one of the things I admire is her incredible tea bag art! So I was always going to do something with tea bags in this journal.

I had to find a song that had tea in it and what could be more iconic than "A home among the gum trees".

I painted my page with tea and used some inktense for the green leaves, the plums and the dark browns.  Tea bags are collaged onto the trees and the house.

I was quietly chuckling when I saw Joans dot to dot this month  on AASG is all about tea bags!

Art Nouveau

Roz's lovely Art Nouveau journal arrived this month and it took me a while to come up with a theme. I was planning on drawing my girlfriend's lovely cottage but although it does have elements of art nouveau it is more federation. I am learning all the time :)

Further discussion with Kathy and she suggested the Paris metro and once I saw the gorgeous subway entrances I was entranced. Now I have another place I want to visit. 

Please excuse my unedited photo's as I am still without a pc.