Aloha Borgs,
I’m late again. Oops. There really isn’t much to say. I’ve
been reading more and the week kind of got away from me. It happens. This week
I was a little more focused on a particular theme, which mainly consisted of
flowers and complementary colors. I also really wanted to focus on allowing
myself to be “messy” and spontaneous (something I did not do too well with).
What I was…
Watching: Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Rocky Horror Picture Show
(1975)
Listening to: Through the Deep Dark Valley Album (The Oh Hellos), Sunset Lover (Petit Biscuit), Calvin Harris
& Disciples – How Deep is Your Love cover (Sabrina Claudio), Willow Smith –
Female Energy cover (Sabrina Claudio), Gnarles Barkley – Crazy Cover (Sabrina
Claudio), Radiohead – Creep cover (MusicIvyRose), Warpaint – Billie Holiday
cover (MusicIvyRose)
Note: All the above songs (besides Through the Deep Dark Valley by The Oh Hellos) are from
SoundCloud.
So these pages are very image driven. I was coming off my
entries from the week before and still very much had anxiety on my mind so
while I was watching Rocky Horror Picture Show I kind of just let my mind
wander and ended up with a bunch of eyeballs on the page. Fun fact about me, I love
to draw with Microns and I love to draw eyeballs. A lot of my work in high
school was very much eyeball/black and white driven so I guess that’s a little
homage to high school me. Those dots you see in the background were made with Sakura Souffle pens. On the right, well I decided I wanted to attempt
another watercolor flower because I really wasn’t satisfied how my last one
turned out. So I grabbed some watercolor and just went to town. I really tried
to focus on not trying to be perfect, rather let myself make mistakes and be
okay with those mistakes.
For the right side up writing I used an orange Souflle pen, and for the upside down writing I used a tattoo pen that I got from the 99 cent store. I kind of went into a
study of duality, prompted by the preciseness of the left page filled with
eyeballs and the right page which was messy and spontaneous. From that I
wandered into some existential territory and started talking about my personal
duality. I’m afraid it doesn’t make much sense, but oh well.
These are probably some of my favorite pages. Starting with the flowers, they are golden rods, I really like the stem, like really, really like it. I think I did a good job free handing the leaves and everything. The actual flowers, well…those leave something to be desired (no pun intended).
So I’m a little bored of recapping what I wrote because I think it’s kind of redundant so I think I’ll just kind of explain where my mind was when I wrote it…if that makes any sense. Basically I wrote this as a way to wake myself the fuck up because I’ve definitely have not been kind to my body recently and I really needed to start seriously focusing on what I’m doing to myself. I go through these period of time where I just don’t have the wherewithal to tell myself not to overindulge or under-indulge…I’m not making much sense am I. What I’m trying to say is I haven’t been taking care of my body and this was a wakeup call.
On the left we have one of my favorite exercises. Basically
I store up a bunch of photos, either one’s I’ve found online or in a magazine
or something, and I cut them out and put them in a box. Then when I’m feeling
uninspired I take them out, paste them in my notebook and go full stream of consciousness
just writing whatever flows to my mind. It’s a really fun and easy way o fill a
page and, in my case, it teaches me to be more forgiving with myself. A lot of
times I get so nervous that what I write is not good enough or profound enough
and that stops me from writing anything.
On the right, we have a quote that I found on tumblr. I
decided to cover it with geometric shapes because I wanted to and because
leaving it blank made the page look boring. The color scheme basically is a
bunch of oranges. I chose this color scheme because I wanted to play off the
blues in the photo on the left and create a complementary color balance between
the pages.
On the left is the continuation of the quote from the
previous page, only I decided to color the background with yellows. I don’t
know about you, but I find that I never really have a good variety of yellows
in my colored pencil arsenal so I reached for a highlighter and boy did that
ruin everything. I was going to scrap the whole idea but I buried my desire to
do things perfectly and continued on. I had to type in the bottom portion of
the page because the actual text got lost in the scanning process, I think the
color I chose was just too light to show up.
On the right we have another attempt at a watercolor flower.
This time, it was purple carnations. Now, I don’t think the picture looks
anything like a carnation, in fact it resembles a dandelion more than a
carnation, but I like it. I added the extra flowers to make the page less blank
and finished it off with a purple background. Again, I balanced the two pages
with complementary colors.
Lastly, we come to the wonderful full writing pages. I was
feeling like I didn’t have enough writing on the previous pages and decided to
pull out one of my favorite pens and get to work. If you’re wondering why I
started on the right page and finished on the left it was because I was waiting
for the left page to dry since I’d just finished painting the carnations. I’ve
decided in my next journal I need to find a better balance between art and writing.
I really like the convenience of the writing portion of my journals but I enjoy
the tactile nature of the art section. I think finding a balance between the
two will make this process even more enjoyable than it’s been.
Alright, another week down. I’m just going to go ahead and
issue a warning. It is not likely that I will be posting new pages next Monday.
I have a pretty big load on my shoulders this weekend and that’s when I get a
lot of my work done. Also I’ve been really into reading lately and we all know
how much time that occupies. I will try my best but I make no promises.
Much love,
X
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