Finally playing in my art journal again!

Sheesh! I can't believe it's been 6 months since I last played in my art journal ... I would've guessed maybe only 2 or 3. I think part of it is that I get bogged down with too many ideas to journal about and I can't decide which one to focus on, so in the end, I do nothing. On the other hand, sometimes I know what I want to journal about, but I don't have a prepared page that reflects that, so I get frustrated and do nothing. I've realized that I like having painted backgrounds ready, but if I started collaging elements on them, they get in the way. So from now on I'm going to just paint a few pages ahead, and will wait on adding collage elements until I get to that particular page ... maybe ...

Recently I started journaling again, not quite every day, but almost. I took an online art journaling workshop a few weeks ago that got me back on track. For the class, we used a Moleskin (my first ever!) and I have really enjoyed working in it, though the pages are a little smaller than I like. Now that the class is done, I'm working toward finishing up my first journal before continuing in the Moleskin. I've only got 2 or 3 more spreads to go. Once it's finished, then I'll continuing work in the Moleskin ... or maybe I'll back and forth between it and a new journal I made myself using Kira's easy-peasy journal instructions (love it!) ... I haven't decided yet.

Anyways, these are my most recent pages.

My take on Matisse

It took me much longer than I'd hoped, but I finally finished my pages for the next round of the swap. This lady's theme was Matisse and she wanted us to come up with artwork inspired by his work or in his style. I chose to do my pages based on his later style of cutting large shapes out of colored paper. I embellished with embroidered stitches and some beading on the tree. Whew! Finally!!

Now I can work on the last round, my mom's. Her theme is the Seasons, and I believe I get to do summer. I've got one little bit of an idea for one page, so need to flesh it out and come up with a second page idea, too ... here we go again ...