Compassion: Daily Art Journal Page

Hello everyone! I'm here with you guys again today, with a page that holds a bit more meaning to me personally. I don't know if I mentioned it here on the blog, but yesterday, on a field trip through my school, I went to the Holocaust Museum here in Florida. It was my first time being in a place like that, and even though it wasn't extremely morbid, graphic, or anything to that extent, it still had a pretty emotionally draining affect on me. I didn't quite know how to react.

For as long as I can remember, I've always felt very deeply for people. It's just something that I've always had. Even fictional characters. I cry in movies and television shows all of the time, even though I HATE to, because it messes with me and gives me headaches. Anyways. Basically the entire trip, I was close to tears. I was trying my best to control it, as I knew it would be extremely awkward for me, and for everyone else if I just started bawling. I realized that I needed to wait until later on to get all of that emotion out. And that's what I did. however, I did it the following day, and through art. 

This spread is what I did. The idea for the tree actually came from a painting that I saw AT the museum. I liked the simplicity and the meaningfulness of it. There was jut something about it that drew me in. So I decided to work with it a bit in my own work. I actually will be adding journaling to this page as well. This is one of those pages that DEFINITELY needs some. To make sure that I don't forget what I was thinking when I made it. However, the journaling that I typed out just so happened to be extremely personal. This is one of the few pages I'm not going to be able to share the fully finished thing with you guys. Maybe eventually I will. But I think I need to let the feelings relax a bit before that point.

The page itself was extremely relaxing, and nice to work on. I had about a million layers before I was finally finished with it, but I like the end result, for many different reasons. I love the meaning behind it, as well as the documentation of a major event in my life.

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. A perfect day for my Heart Investigation series. That page should be quite a bit happier, just for that reason. However, I like using art as a way to express myself, and my emotions, as well as what I've done and been through. So there are going to be a few sad and depressing pages every now and again. However, that's all I have for you guys today. And I'll see you tomorrow! Bye everyone!

Layers

Hello, hello, hello! Today's post is going to be a somewhat short one. I know that my whole "scheduled posts" thing is going downhill fast, but we'll see. We will see. For you never know what tomorrow holds. I am only responsible for today. Today I made myself sit down and make some art. I know that sounds kind of rough, and a lot of you might not believe it. But here's the thing. We all suffer from artist's block. It's horrible. But we do. I'm having a slight case of it right now. It's hard for me to want to find the time to create, even though after I do, I'm glad I did. Today I did quite a bit of doodling with ink, acrylic paint layers, a layer of glitter, a wash, a masking tape layer; I really wanted to focus on this ONE page today, rather than fumbling around with all of my other stuff.

Normally I'll skip around a little bit in the whole deal, but today, I really felt that I wanted to see progress. And that will happen to me every now and then. It will. That's a fact. I needed to see something change. I didn't care what it was, but it needed to be something. Normally when that happens, I'll start a new page. But that's a bad habit. A really bad habit. And I'm trying to break that. Well, that's about all I've got for you guys today, but I do hope that I'll be able to get you guys a nice long post tomorrow, since it is a Saturday and everything. I probably will. :) See you guys later.

India Ink Doodles

So today I was experimenting a little bit with india ink. I've never really played around with this so much before, but I've really enjoyed it thus far. I know when a lot of people work like this, they'll use a calligraphy pen to make thinner lines, but I decided to try this with a really thin paintbrush just dipped into the bottle of ink. I did the piece above on a basic piece of copy paper. That's something that I really enjoy doing, as it's a cheap alternative, and I just love the different effects that you can get on it.

And on this page, I'm showing you the page that I've done another layer on. I showed you this page a couple of days ago, and I just added the ink doodles today. I love the way that it looks, and I did it on top of some oil paint, which gives the page this AMAZING texture, even though it takes forever to dry. On occasion, though not as often, oil paint IS worth it. I'm not really sure all what I'm going to be adding to this page, but that is what I've got today. And I'll see you guys tomorrow.