I don’t like the idea of doing ‘a page a day’, never have. I challenged myself to do it once and never again. Mon dieu! The stress! I prefer to do something each day (which is the whole point of Dawn’s NaNoJouMo in the first place). That something might be painting a few backgrounds, doing some collages on different pages, writing on one page if I’m in the mood, doing some lettering, doodling to fill in white space – it can be as small as writing one sentence or as large as finishing 4 pages.

That’s how I work. Doing a ‘page/prompt/challenge a day’ constrains me and makes me feel claustrophobic. What if what I’m really struck by is a prompt form 3 days ago? What if the challenge for today doesn’t fit with the wonderful picture of a ballerina I want to use? These are the fears I feel when I feel like I ‘should’ be doing things. ‘Shoulds’ make it feel like work and if there’s one place I shouldn’t be working it’s in my journal! My journal is where I let rip and don’t care and just do. It’s about producing something, not how good or bad or large or worthy it is. I don’t even care if it doesn’t stick to the theme at all.

With all the stress and strain I already feel as an artist, the last thing I need is for my art journal to become yet another albatross. It’s my safe haven. A place I can go and see if those inks work with my quill, whether the paint I got yesterday shows up over black acrylic and to try out the new pens on different types of paper. It is not somewhere where I ‘must’ or ‘should’ or ‘have to’. My art journal has no deadlines.

I have but one rule: Every day do something.

The something doesn’t matter, as long as I’ve done it. Sometimes all I do is go back and fill in a blank spot on a page with a ‘To Do List’. Some days that’s all I can manage.

The NaNoJouMo prompts are coming to an end for November, but I’m thinking they’ll probably keep me going until the end of the year. Which is great because a) I’m really busy til the end of the year so not having to think about what I’m doing is a nice change, b) if I do one or two single page spreads I can finish this journal which means c) I get to spend New Year’s Eve making my new journal and watching back-to-back Christmas films and ‘Jules Holland’s Hootenanny’ – a tradition I’ve come to love.

I’m currently working on page 9 through 15, which are in various stages of incomplete. Here are 5-8 which I think may be finished. Click to view large as always.

5: Solitude

There is nothing like a nice quiet cup of tea on a winter’s morning. The fire spreading warmth through the room, the tea causing condensation on the windows, the cats screaming for their breakfast before you dare to sit down…

'Solitude' 8"x20" art journal page © Klair Scattergood

6: Felicity

I actually had no idea what felicity meant. So I looked it up.

'Felicity' 8"x20" art journal page © Klair Scattergood

7: Compassion

I loved this picture and just didn’t want to change it. I wanted to put it in my journal to ‘keep’ for myself. The photograph is from National Geographic Vol 182-1 July 1992 and is by the incredibly talented outdoor photographer Peter Essick. I assume © lies with him or NG, it doesn’t lie with me.

'Compassion' 8"x20" art journal page © Klair Scattergood

8: (not) Emphatic

‘Emphatic’ didn’t really do it for me, so I finished off this page instead. It’s been a work in progress for about 6 months because I just didn’t know what to do with it. Somehow I ended up with a vase and an elephant with no idea how or why or what I was going to do to make them work together. So I gave up and just did some lettering. Sometimes it’s about the pictures you chose being nice to look at, not about making them work as a new piece of art.

'(not) Emphatic' 8"x20" art journal page © Klair Scattergood

I have a nice quiet weekend coming up with nothing more stressful than listing a few things in my shop to do, so I’m looking forward to finishing a few more pages for next week. Or maybe starting a few more, who knows? I go where the muse takes me.

Thursday, November 26th, 2009, 6:17 pm   |   Art Journals  |  RSS feed |  Respond  |  Trackback