Creative moments come and go. Sometimes it takes a while for something to coalesce in my mind before I go back to creative work I hadn't finished. Last February I took an art journaling class from Janet Takahashi, but I put the book aside while we prepped our house for sale. Among the art supplies that I remembered to bring with me to our temporary home, I discovered the unfinished art journal that I started in her class. The journal's theme is the alphabet, an abecedarian book with letters and words that start with each letter.
Some of the pages I had filled to the brim in the class, while others just had a penciled letter in the bottom corner to remind me which letter to work on. My first page, the letter A, is easy. A is for Alphabet. Oh, and A is for one of my favorite influencers: Iris Apfel, the 102-year-old New York City fashionista known for her huge black glasses and colorful outfits. I want to be like her at her age.
B stands for Brain (left and right), Brush, Blending, and the Blues. B is a reminder to Begin.
F we need because it represents Form that Follows Function, Fonts, Flowers, and a peek behind a Fold-out.
S covers many drawing techniques: scribbles, stipples, shapes, sizes, spirals, and shadows.
V stands for Violet (think the colors of shadows), Vignette, Viewpoint, Value, and Viewfinder.
An art journal is a place for me to experiment. It's the perfect solution when I have packed away my usual implements and materials thinking that I would be able to unpack them sooner than now. Using different materials and techniques has opened up a new creative space in my head to explore. I had been overwhelmed to try to fill the art journal pages with something new in every space. Now since my supplies are limited, I have gone back to older work which I've copied onto plain paper, and am now filling the pages with these old ideas in new ways.
L is for Letting Go.
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| cover of my Abecedarian art journal |
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