Journaling Topic: Memoir

I'm beginning my tour as co-moderator of Blissfully Art Journaling this week, and kicking it off with a memoir study to inspire our writing.  Using the book When I Was Young in the Mountains by Cynthia Rylant as a springboard, we will have a week of journal prompts to trigger childhood memories -- something we can then easily journal around. 


The text of the book starts out this way: "When I was young in the mountains, Grandfather came home in the evening covered with the black dust of a coal mine. Only his lips were clean, and he used them to kiss the top of my head." She goes on to remember the simple pleasures of her country life in the mountains of West Virginia: the swimming hole, taking baths in the kitchen, and meeting up with a snake.


I'll post a quote each day this week of something I'm thinking of, along with a specific journal prompt.  If you'd like to join in the fun, come back each day this week for a new quote and writing prompt.  You can journal your memoirs, too.

Quote:  When I Was Young and Still Growing, I often visited my grandma. She lived around the corner so it was a short trip. I loved to watch her bake bread. She would make a volcano shape with flour on a wooden board, and in the middle she would pour eggs and oil. Her kitchen always smelled so good.

Writing Prompt:  Do you have memories of visiting a special relative?

Art Journaling

texture and window image courtesy of Elizabeth Golden
at http://thelastdoordownthehall.blogspot.com/

I'm not much of a writer when it comes to visual art.  My self expression usually arrives as an either/or proposition, either written word or images I've created, but not usually both at once.

But since reading and writing are such a huge part of my life,  my art is often inspired by something I've read.  Conversely, an image I create often causes me to reflect back to a favorite book or a quote.

My art journals have become, for me, personal treasuries of snippets I've saved:  receipts, napkins, photographs, ticket stubs and paper bags, mixed with favorite quotes, song lyrics and expressions I adore.

Do you keep a journal?

The bully-victim cycle

I read this post on Seth Godin's blog, and I thought it was something to share:

The bully-victim cycle

A bully acts up in a meeting or in an online forum. He gets called on it and chastised for his behavior.

The bully then calls out the person who cited their behavior in the first place. He twists their words, casts blame and becomes an aggrieved victim.

Often, members of the tribe then respond by backing off, by making amends, by giving the bully another chance.

And soon the cycle continues.

Brands do this, bosses do it and so do passers-by. Being a bully is a choice, and falling for this cycle, permitting it to continue, is a mistake.

I've seen this cycle when I was a classroom teacher, seen it in online forums and chat groups, and in my adult life. After the fuss, most people just want things to just go back to normal, so they try to forgive and forget until next time. I left an online reading group I had long enjoyed because the moderator didn't call bullies on their behavior, but allowed them to do exactly what Seth describes.

I think it's important that each of us takes a stand on this. How can we expect our kids to stand up to bullies if we don't model that behavior in our own lives?

Spring Weekend

I had a busy weekend experimenting with art -- drawing and painting mostly.   

I watched a movie about Jean-Paul Basquiat and thought about how complete creative brilliance is such a delicate dance between inspiration and insanity.  I don't know if it takes bravery or just complete abandon to open one's mind that much.

 We also watched the second installment of the Showtime series The Borgias.  The costumes and lighting were so inspiring -- I find myself wanting to draw and paint Renaissance people.  

At Women and Books we are about to read These is My Words (for May). Come join us!

Love is strange and mysterious, 

just like jelly beans.

Shadow and light in acrylics

 Kim Klassen magic textures on a

Magnolia Bakery shot

Practicing watercolor

faces

Pencil Sketch

Girl with Headband

"Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields...Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness."

-Mary Oliver

Lizzi and Thauna at Besprinkled, asked 

for a list of five things for which we are grateful.

I'm grateful for the love of my family and friends; without them I would be nothing.  I'm grateful for each sunrise and each sunset.  I'm grateful for animals and children--their honesty makes my heart smile.  I'm grateful for people who are kind, when life is unexpectedly generous to anyone, and for butterflies, who are born from tiny cocoons and learn to soar.

Playing with Photoshop

I love playing with the effects I can get with Photoshop.  Below is my original journal page.

This is the same page but with a Black and White film filter.

 Here it is again, this time with a crumple filter

This is a television filter. It's meant to be horizontal, 

but I like the distortion when it's vertical.

 This is a bottle collage, made with layers, texture and opacity changes.  I 

made this one as a reflection after the Triangle fire centennial.

Shrinky Dinks

Aren't these great?  You can use them as necklace or bracelet charms, or even hang them from the edges of your handmade books!

Have you played with Shrinky Dinks lately?

First there were the Shrinkies you played with as a kid.  Then there were the ones you (may have) played with as an adult, where you drew pictures onto the film,  colored them in with markers or colored pencils, punched a hole or two, and heated in your oven or with a heat gun.  Now you can print them out on your ink jet printer, cut out and shrink away.  The possibilities are endless, including printing out photos, clip art, and words.

For the printed version, you need to use specially treated film sold by Shrinkydinks (the regular Shrinky film won't work for printers) and lighten your image by reducing the opacity to about 60%. (It darkens when it shrinks).   You can get the inkjet printer film at Hobby Lobby or Michaels, or online.  http://www.shrinkydinks.com/

If you don't want to do the work of preparing images yourself, you can get some terrific PDFs from Country Living magazine: http://www.countryliving.com/crafts/projects/how-to-make-a-shriky-dink-bracelet  

I used these to make the charms at the top of this post with great success!

This will give you some idea of how much they shrink.  

Let me know if you try them and how it goes.

Playing with Textures

I was experimenting in Photoshop tonight with Kim Klassen's warm sun texture, seeing the effect it would have on a couple of pictures.  I wasn't trying to "improve" them in particular, just to see how using texture and adjusting other levels would affect the image.  Here are my results:

Image after softening texture filters

Image before filters

Image after softening texture filters

Image before filters