Fancy a Cuppa?

I bought Sharon's cute and quirky journal down to mama's and on a sunny afternoon we played out on her back deck in our travelling journals. Arting with a friend or loved one is even better than having a cuppa with one, but not by much.

As usual, I jumped in with no pre-planned idea and just went with it. I created a background of book pages, paper doilies, used tea bags and recycled tissue paper- if you have a keen eye you will see the same tissue paper on both my page and mama's page. 

I then played with a brayer and some paint- white and ochre, once it dried I added journalling and the book paper circles I found in my stash and then sketched in a teapot and cup and saucer. Finished off with some doodling and more words-

Enjoy a cuppa with a friend and be uplifted. 

The Fig Tree

If you are ever looking for me 

and there is a magnificent buttress rooted fig tree nearby, 

check there first. 

There can be nothing that says nature to me

 more than a fig tree,

 it embodies the essential divine feminine energy of earth for me. 

My page in Janies Nature journal
in round 7 of the Australian Art Journal Swap 

is quite simple 

and meaningful to me,

it is textural and was fun to play in.

Totally unplanned. 

These are my supplies plus a green and a brown marker

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.

Flying Fox

I am the last artist to work in Roz Willoughby's lovely silhouette travelling art journal.

My page is inspired by the 20 000 flying foxes we have on Susan and Peanut Islands in the mighty, mighty Clarence river in Grafton NSW. 

They are such a magnificent sight filling the sky at sunset, swooping down to the river to skim the surface wetting their furry chests so they can get a drink after a long hot day sleeping in the trees before dispersing for their evening of foraging and pollinating.

These colonies are native to the east coast but innocently inspire quite a bit of contention in human communities. Personally I admire and appreciate them and I am a keen gardener and fruit tree grower and spent 2 years living right next to a huge colony further down river. I like to live and let live and tread lightly upon this earth. 

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. 

Art journalling in the style of Teesha Moore

I was thrilled when mum sent me her journal

 from round 4 of the Australian Travelling Journal Swap

 as I love theme and I wanted a good sticky beak 

at all the lovely pages done by everyone. 

Mum and I are very close and love to live near each other

 but I live in hot humid Grafton 

and they cant cope with the weather 

so they live hundreds of km away in the central west.

But mum loves Grafton and the jacarandas 

and the Jacaranda Festival 

so I wanted to do a page about Grafton and of course 

it had to be purple. 

Working in Teesha style to me means bright and busy

 with lots to look at,

 colourful borders, interesting words 

and unexpected quirky characters. 

So my jacaranda queens

 are not quite like any I have seen at festival time

 but they sure were fun to create. 

The next page I created was inspired by bugs- 

its summer time here and they are loving

 all the heat and rain we have had lately. 

Mum had 4 pages left and generously said I could play in all of them :) 

So I unearthed so much 'stuff'

you know all of that stuff we hoard for art?

This style of journalling is really good for using it all up. 

My girlfriend Kathy visited Paris a couple of years ago

 and shared some of the incredible exhibitions

 she saw with me through photos and bought back flyers and catalogs. 

So these pages are about Picasso and Paris as an armchair traveler.

As I was making my way through the piles of above mentioned stuff

 I came across some fashion mags. 

They have fabulous fonts and great imagery

 but I was a bit upset at the extravagance

 of it all and this page became a bit of a rant. 

I saw all of these shoes and shoes and shoes

 and knew I had a fabulous big die cut 

somewhere so they formed the basis of my last pages. 

However I was shocked at the ridiculousness of it all

the prices!

and where could you even wear them?

So many ways in my opinion that could better use those dollars. 

I should also say I own very few shoes 

and the most expensive are my well worn,

 paint splattered  redback work boots. 

Diving Deep

Its funny how art imitates life and life imitates art,

I have been delving deep into trying to understand me and searching for things that might be hidden, lurking in the deep, aware too of the association between the element of water and our emotions and my affinity for water and my emotional state of late.

Lately I have had mermaids swimming up from the deep in different art works and the first art journal I received in round 5 of the Australian Art Journal is Danie Mays  "Ünder the Sea"

I had no idea of what I would do until I started, that is often the way I work, I know many like to consider and plan and research and funnily enough that is also how many live their lives. I find I operate on a different system I work instinctively and intuitively and trust in the outcome without having to understand every step. I just let it happen.

I started with a sketch and I wanted to work with collage, texture and paint. I stamped some background layers knowing they would be sunk deep into the work along with the collage elements I added. I always use words in my art journaling, somewhere in the piece - I found an old sheet I made years ago with some good words so they became part of the collage and I wanted shimmer so I also added small pieces of aluminium foil. 

It was hard to hold down the fibres I used in her hair and for the kelp strands so I started adding tissue paper, then she wanted to go out by the pool, she is a mermaid after all-

 we found a sunny spot to dry that layer.

That is one of our cats-

Domino

on the other side of the pool stalking his territory.

My next layer was using transparent colours, transparency is a real thing for me right now, in trying to know myself and expose more of me to myself as much as others and also in my art work

- there it is again, life imitating art.

I painted her ocean out by the pool in the sunshine, its winter here right now and quite cool inside the studio. 

Next it was time to pull it all together, I painted her, and painted the kelp forest she is swimming in, I added some glitter too, that is not something I do often but she called for it and used gold and green to to find the kelp. I outlined the leaves and the page border with pens. 

Here she is all finished-

She has a few more elements - some animal companions and some beautiful rocks in her transparent watery colours and a 5 petalled white flower.

I added the quote by Anais Nin

"I must be a mermaid.... I have no fear of depths a great fear of shallow living"