A Hobby I Haven't Mentioned

That title probably sounds a lot more nefarious than it should.  Is now the time I admit to devient behavior?  Nah, not this time.  This is the time I admit that I have a paper journal that I keep (with not a lot of regularity either.  See?  It doesn't just apply to the digital format!).  I've read a lot about visual journals and the tips and talents out there are staggering.  Looking around, I started to feel that mine paled in comparison.  Now I acknowledge it for what it is: a learning experience in progress.  So I've decided to excerpt some of my favorite pages (w/ all the truly personal whining blocked out) and mention some of the techniques I use (just in case there's something helpful here)!  The first two excerpts just show use of colored clip art.  I know my drawing skills can be lacking sometimes and really, it's pretty satisfying to photocopy some clip art and just sit down and color!  The second excerpt shows the direction I thought I would head: entire pages devoted to favorite quotes.  For some reason I got out of that mode and now just write them on pages (usually interlaced w/ other things) in a different color so I can pick them out easily.

A lot of the pages are just pictures of things I like w/ some form of decoration around them.  The thing I really had to get over was not always being able to think of something decorative right then.  There are several pages even now that have a picture or two glued to them and are blank all around, just waiting for some pretty filler. 

In some cases, I've pre-painted the pages just because, but I tend to veer away from that b/c who wants to be writing about something sad on a bright yellow background?  I'm just odd about stuff like that, I guess.  I also used to veer away from putting jokes and stuff like that in my journals, but thenI read that da Vinci did that, so now I'm over that.

I've found it's a good place to experiment w/ new rubber stamps, too.  So random doodles, random things I like out of magazines (like the lady in the astronaut helemt from an AARP mag), random rubber stamps, and random doodlings.  Fits me, right?

Of course I do actually keep track of my personal ideas here, too.

This is a pretty picture-heavy post, so I'm going to just stop for now, but I'll probably post some more pages in a few days just for fun.

Comments

[Julia]

I love it! I keep a visual journal too, but mostly I just draw and doodle stuff with colored pencils. I don't worry about whether it's "good" or "art" or whatever. I just try to express whatever wants to be expressed (which seems to be what you do too!). It's a very intuitive process.