Lots of activity here in Rhomany’s Realm this month…

We just finished Art Journaling Issue #2 and are now working on a Holiday Special.

I’m 5795 words in to my fanfic for NaNoWriMo – only 800 words to write today to remain on target and I’m already 650 in.

This is Day 1 for NaNoJouMo. I have Day 2 & 3 bubbling away here too in my usual ‘bit here, bit there’ way.

The Sketchbook Project is coming along too. I’ll have some bits to share soon.

My Mantra for November is: I must not commit to any more projects.

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.

I’ve gone back to my 8×10 for NaNoJouMo, partly because I want to finish it (so I can start a new one, obviously) and partly because I just felt like working large for a while. Every so often I crave the expanse of the 8×10″ paper. This is a coptic bound book with 3 signatures of 6 pages, 140lb cartridge paper (heavy drawing paper in the US). I like this thickness of paper because it takes wet media as long as you’re not too sloppy but it also takes heavy embellishment, glues and inks.

+So here’s my completed pages so far (click to view large)

Day 1: Freedom – I already uploaded

Day 2: Purity – the prompt didn’t do anything for me so I just finished up a spread I had already started.

'Im-purity' LHS, 8x10" art journal page

'Im-purity' RHS, 8x10 art journal page

Day 3: Inspire – I liked this one and had a lot of fun just listing things off the top of my head that inspire me.

'Inspire' LHS, 8x10" art journal page

'Inspire' RHS, 8x10" art journal page

Prompts for days 4, 5 and 6 are underway (beauty, solitude and felicity) in fact, Day 4: Beauty has been worked on this evening, and is nearly done.

I’ll probably start day 7 tomorrow and work on 6 & 7 together tomorrow afternoon.

Art Journal Page: Freedom. Nelly had had enough!

My page for the Nov 1st prompt ‘Freedom’

Can’t say I like sharpies any better after this (especially since they bled through the back of my page – grrr) but it was fun to have a go.

Here’s what the pages look like so far.

Art Journal Page: Halloween LHS

Art Journal Page: Halloween RHS

In Part 2 I’ll be doing some more collage work and adding more bits of colour, then some journaling.

In the meantime I’m putting the finishing touches to a couple of PDFs and working on my NaNoJouMo pieces. Oh and watching Teesha’s videos of course, just like everyone else. OK, OK, I’m on my 4th go round. But honestly, I love watching other people art journal. If someone set up a TV channel of just videoing people art journaling and painting and drawing and every so often they stopped and told you about the techniques and materials they were using? I’d subscribe. In fact, it would never get switched off.

This from the person who’s last TV watching session was at Easter for the Doctor Who special.

Everyday she’ll post a word and you journal about it in whichever way you journal, all through November.

I’ll be joining in. I can’t possibly do an art journal page every day with the Craft fair only 3 weeks away, but I do write in my written journal quite a lot, so the ones I can’t do as art journal pages I’ll use as my written prompt instead.

If you need a journal for it, or if you jsut want to learn to make one yourself for that someone special for Christmas, don’t forget my Cryptic Coptic Art Journaling Workshop is still going strong, with several new members just this week. Also, the girls started getting stuck into Eve to Eve yesterday. Sign ups are still open if you’re interested in joining – you haven’t missed it.

In other news, I’ve spent all day clearing up my pit of a studio-come-living-room and now have some semblane of order. The reading books ahve been banished upstairs, since that’s where I read them anyway and I’ve gained 3 shelves of space which has made a whole heap of difference. For a start, my desk is tidy.

No really. I even know where both my rulers are.

Where I work. I estimate it'll stay this tidy for about... oh, an hour.