Sometimes that happens.
This is actually much more pink that it appears in photos, but instead the photos instead prompted several people to ask if I'd been making sacrifices in my studio. :D
I promise not even to the gods of pens and paper.
It was the start to the second journal project I had, which involved including a quote.
I selected instantly a quote from Neil Gaiman...
Go and make interesting mistakes.
Make amazing mistakes
make glorious and fantastic mistakes
Break Rules
Leave the world more interesting for you being here.
Make.
Good.
Art.
~Neil Gaiman
First, I love him. I think he is amazing, and second.. that quote spoke to me from somewhere deep inside, which means it's the right one.
So that was to be these pages...except it didn't feel right. I made a face and went to set it aside to think on it and dropped my journal. Ooops. I'm kind of a klutz sometimes, and it fell open, onto the pages BEHIND my watercolor creation that may have been inspired by my 12 hour criminal minds marathon.
And I made another face...
Because I saw, all along the left side of one of the pages a smear from my red watercolor. Dang it. On my nice, pretty, supposed to be CLEAN pages behind it. Ugh. Double Ugh. Now I wasn't happy with 2 things in my journal and I was only 4 page in...
And the inner monologue starts...
The little voice in my head that I like to keep locked in the closet started to say things like, "That isn't supposed to be there, take those pages out, they're not good enough, isn't this the 2nd time in 10 days you've messed up in something you are supposed to post? You keep making mistakes...."
Cool me responds back with... "Whoa there brat voice, what did you just say?"
And then I realized... I'm making a lot of
With that, comes things i don't like. I once had someone tell me that all art goes through an ugly stage, an awkward, teenage, adolescent stage and that my quote was about it being ok to make mistakes.
So I came up with this. I messed the pages up a little more. Every word has something I'd have "fixed" in the past. I splattered some ink, and then I did in fact ooops again and closed the journal when I didn't mean to so it transferred.. and came up with a glorious mess.
I don't really like it, but I think I will. And whether or not I "like" it right now.. I love it. I am going to add in pieces of art that didn't go as planned throughout the year. Things that in the past I'd have relegated to the back of a drawer or tossed in frustration. They now have a place on these pages.. the pages that give me permission to make mistakes.
That's a really nice gift to have given myself.
This art journal thing might be pretty good for me.
It is true, we should allow ourselves to make mistakes and say it's ok, it's part of the growing process. As a preschool teacher I would say all the time that it was ok to make mistakes, but when I made them, I would beat myself up and become very critical of my actions. This was a reminder: Thank you. It is ok to make mistakes.
ReplyDeleteI have also been working in my journal today. It's coming along nicely. :-)
ReplyDeleteI'm just so thankful for this challenge. As I would not have been doing this journal and not drawing nearly as much without this little daily push. I'm loving it!
I love that Neil Gaiman quote. I've had it taped to the wall in my craft room for a while now because I want to paint it on the wall.
ReplyDeleteI think I had a couple of victories over some mistakes today! Hurray!
I appreciate this challenge too, partly because it keeps me regularly creative and partly because it is expanding my definition of creative. Bless you for all your hard work in setting up this challenge.
ReplyDeleteI had a marathon session today with my die-cut machine. The pieces I posted are snowflakes (AKA mandalas) sized to use as masks on the round Gelli plate.
ReplyDeleteJust made it. Busy weekend for me. I did finish a Zendala, all 3 tangles*a*day and the beach cottage. I'm off to bed early tonight. So many things to create Monday!
ReplyDeleteToday I spent the day cooking! I prepared meals for my husband who works out of town for 2 weeks at a time. To reward my hard work, I adfed Bread Pudding with yummy Rum sauce. Which is my creativeness of the day...plus it's so yummy!
ReplyDeleteToday's submission is a culmination of my entire week's progress. Two of them have already been submitted, the others have not.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely enjoying myself!!
Monday morning, Let's post the tile I did for the String challenge.
ReplyDelete