Lynn Fisher - Write Where I Am

She Commmued Darkly With Herself

Just because you're having a bad day..or an entire s-t-r-e-t-c-h of bad days doesn't mean you should drop your pens and paints and run.

Don't stop journaling just because times are good...or, times are bad. I've talked to journal keepers all over that tell me that either they wouldn't dream of putting anything "happy" in their journal or conversely, people who prefer not to belly-ache much on the page. 

Ask yourself, what is your journal for? Does your journal adequately represent you if you if you lean toward only one emotion?

Do your stormy times scare you so much that you're afraid to explore them?

Do you think that writing or creating art in celebration of happiness makes you unauthentic, or appear silly?

Embrace all that you feel on the page. Your resulting journal will be a three-dimensional representation of the real you.

Journal prompt: In writing or art, explore a particularly bad day in the coming week. It can be a day in the past or something that happened recently. Don't worry, no one has to see it. Only you and I will know it's been a very bad day.

Don't forget to give a good day equal time.

Watercolor Mono-print Journal Pages...sort of

This technique is a great way to add color to your journal pages. Later, you can add your own writing, photographs, or collages...really, whatever you like. I call it watercolor mono-prints. It is similar to a watercolor technique that I shared before, but with one difference: you transfer the paint from one page to another via plastic wrap.

It's pretty simple: You are going to paint two pages with any water-based medium (watercolor, acrylic ink, etc.) as long as it is fluid. Paint one page (we'll call it the light colored page) one solid light color. Let this page dry while you make magic with the second "dark" colored page.

For your "dark" page, paint the entire page with one two or even three colors (don't go too crazy the first time or you'll have mud...unless you LIKE that). Working quickly, cover this entire page with plastic wrap...let dry a little.

Let the dark page dry...take the plastic wrap off the first page and while there is still a little paint soup on the wrap, plop that on top of the light page you painted first.

Encourage the transference of color by rubbing the wrap until you think it has all transfered. When it's dry, remove the wrap and let both pages sit open over night. You can write on them in the morning.

Once you get really good at this, you can do lots of pages at one sitting. I love having beautiful pages to wake up to.

Have fun with this.

I hope you're enjoying the bounty of fall!

Fall, and Other Excitement

Fall brings so many great things; writing contests, friendly get-togethers, new publications, wonderful weather and art shows. I'm pretty excited about two of these things already! First, my friend Sue Seeger; metal sculptor and writer, has her very own show in Hudson, Wisconsin in two weeks. If you live anywhere near the area it is very much worth the drive. Here's a little more info below and also be sure to check out her Art Blog. Click the linky thingy! 

 

 

As far as journaling goes, I had a chance to get the very latest addition of Art Journaling Magazine and was WOWed by artist Dina Wakley's Pages. She combines stenciling (which she refers to as silhouettes) with paint and

sewing...pretty amazing...so of course I tried my hand at it (minus the sewing...I can't get my huge journal in my sewing machine, try as I might!) 

Instead, I sponged acrylic ink over a stencil that was applied over a square water-colored center. It worked very well except for the constant curling of the magazine stencil. I found that the more that you put ink on it, however, the less it will curl.

The second one I attempted, I was a little bolder with the color, and then broke out my brand new dip pen. I'm finding that I like the look and feel of the dip pens with FW acrylic inks even though I have always sworn by Uni-ball Signo gel pens for all these years. The look of the script can be as fine or bold as you like depending on the pen tip that you buy.

I love it...not only can I use it in white, I now have a whole arsenal of pen colors to play with. I have loads of FW inks!

I'm also getting ready for the big NANOWRIMO. In November writers all over the map, gather in small groups to write and otherwise ignore each other. It's sort of funny, I've seen NANOWRIMO teams at Dunn Bros downtown, wearing their labeled T-shirts or hoodies, tapping away at their laptops...never looking up or acknowledging each other. What is it about that that makes me giddy with excitement!?

Spaces, Shadows and Symbols

A year or two ago I added a post on creating your own symbols for the purpose of journaling. You can read it again here.

I try to keep my personal symbols in mind whether I'm writing or creating art. The symbols stand for something, and that may change from time to time but my feelings toward them usually remains. I find them to be a useful tools in creating journal pages.

What are some symbols that occur over and over again in your journal pages? If you can't think of any, try simplifying parts of photographs or magazine cut-outs by drawing them or cutting them out of unique papers.  

Don't want to draw...get out your camera and run around taking photo of the shadows that objects make. Don't pay too mush attention to the object but more to the shadow it casts and the spaces in between.

Blow the photo up as large as you can on a color copier, then try writing on the photo. Describe the photo in as many words as you can think of or write only in the shapes that interest you.

Write about your experience while taking the photo, where you traveled to take the photo, and how it makes you feel. Beyond the actual photo, describe each shape the shadows make within the shape itself. What do they remind you of...what feelings do they unearth? That should keep you busy.

Stay tuned. In the upcoming months I have a travel journal to share, a new article coming out, a reading at a local art center, and in November I'll be participating in and posting updates on the National Novel Writers Month. 

 

Big Writing - Tiny Sketches

When traveling or anytime that I'm writing more than I'm drawing...or doing anything visual in my journals, I opt for using tiny sketches.

This is the easiest way I've found to incorporate a colorful background, photos, and any other travel ephemera I may have collected. Seriously, I put it all in there!

The sketches don't have to be highly involved or terribly...good, just something that I'm satisfied with and if need be I can paste something over it if I end up hating it.

These mini sketches are perfect if you don't want to bring a lot of supplies along.  Just get as many pages in your journal ready as you have days on the road that you expect you can journal. A watercolor background is perfect for sketching. Try a variety of colors.

Bring a variety of pen colors to help on darker backgrounds. 

I did a lot of these sort of sketches while I was at a writers retreat for women, Norcroft.

The retreat was wonderful and while not writing I would take a break and do some tiny sketching, something that didn't take that much time away from what I'd actually gone there for.

 Pretty soon I was doing this all the time. I often took a sketchbook (not my journal) out to places that I needed something lighter to carry, (my journals tend to be "honking big", as Roz Stendahl puts it) and would sketch in india ink markers (Pitt Pens) and later color copy them, and Uhu-glue them into my journal.

On trips where I don't know when I get to be alone and journal, this turned out to be a great idea.

I could then then arrange the tiny sketches and where I wanted, and then write around them. Lucky me, almost everywhere I go has someplace with a pretty good color copier.

...get those pens out, and see if you can add a tiny sketch or two to your journal pages.