Finally, we add colour to our neighbourhood. Now it all comes together. What do you think of my finished spread? The sky feels a little empty still, and it needs more depth, it's got a very flat cartoony look to it that I'm not entirely sure I like, but I'm not sure what it needs, so I'm calling it done for now, and I'll come back to it in a few days/weeks and see what I think with a bit of curing time.

This week we had to collage over parts of our neighbourhood picture, and then redraw our outlines over the top. I like this effect. I used a little bit of house from a picture book on horses, and the rest was words from a page of The Hobbit. And before you say anything, the page was already loose, and it was an old, beat-up, broken spined, copy I got from the op shop for 50 cents, specifically for papercrafting.

This weeks task (now that I've finally gotten around to it again!) was to draw our home, make a pocket, and draw our "outside world". It's mostly outlines and simple shapes at this point. More next week.

Yes, I am aware I skipped day 8. Day 8's task was to sand down the tapes page, but since I did a zentangle instead, it wasn't really possible.

Task number nine was to go back to our inchies pages and give them a light colour wash, then embellish with a pen when the wash was dry.

Write 8 words describing your pictures.
Circle one picture
Draw a messy square around four
Draw a dotted line around two
Draw a broken “stitch” line around one

Now I wish I'd stuck to the grid, and either used more pages or less inchies, because it did feel a little overdone/crammed once I'd done all of that. Too many words, and I really don't like the circle amongst all the squares. I really like the broken "stitch" line though, and I'll be using that more often I think!

Today was supposed to be more hidden writing, this lot hidden under as many different tapes as you have in the house. Well all I have is clear, and that kind of defeats the purpose. So while I go shopping for coloured and zany sticky tapes, I'm sharing a zentangle spread I did instead.

Now it was time to trim the images from last week's scavenger hunt down to form inchies, and place them on the prepped background pages. It was supposed to be in a grid layout, but grid seemed too stilted, so I just put them where it felt right.

Today's assignment was to do a colour wash to prep the background and then do a scavenger hunt for some images out of magazines.

I'm really happy with the "A" I got especially - you can see it at the start of Art on the blue pamphlet on top.

Because the soul armor I showed you last week was a two day assignment, technically there is no day 4 page. But I had an idea for a painting come upon me, while driving home one night, looking at how the night seemed to eat up all the lights. So I did this double page spread. It's my first painting in over a decade, and while it's got a few niggly bits that annoy me, I'm still pretty proud of it.

The text says "Sometimes a light in the dark only serve to illustrate the depths of the blackness"

This week was all about our soul armour. What does our creative spirit need to protect us from outside and inner criticism? Sarah encouraged us to write a list of words that nourish our artistic temperment, and then use them to embellish a drawing/painting/print-out of a suit of armour which would become our soul armour.

Here is mine:

Once again I've overdosed on the shiny, but around the armour, and on it in some places, I've written in gold: unconditional acceptance, permission to be messy/silly/"wrong", belief, memory of strength, best friend, motivation, guilt eraser, self worth, courage.
I couldn't find a picture of armour that "fit" me, so I drew my own based on a few different pictures I found, and what I thought it should look like :)

So the full page spread is now:

So day two's next step was to cover all that writing up with gesso. I don't have any gesso, so I used watered down white paint, which was a pain because it took a few coats to get any coverage. I went ahead and did white over all four pages of writing since I skipped ahead and saw I'd have to do those pages too, so I may as well do it all in one(ish) go. I used purple and gold on my front page, though. I painted over the large dragon in the middle of the page to give it more definition, and gave it a glitter glue "shadow". I'm pretty happy with it.

After the 'gesso' had dried it was time to claim my journal. Specifically, filling the space up with my name and making it quite clear this was my journal. I wrote my name over as many times as it comfortably fit, then decorated the edges. I think I went a little overboard with that step, but it is perfect for this, because I do that, and this step was all about me. (hence the prevalence of rainbows)

I'd love to see your pages, if you'd like to share. Post in the comments your links and I'll visit them all. Fun, isn't it?

I bought myself a tiny little journal in an art shop a while back. I wanted something to put random art inspiration into, drawing, paintings etc. It's an awesome journal - really thick, stiff covers, spiral bound, heavy weight paper (watercolour weight in fact) and only cost me $10. It's also A6, so it fits in my handbag, and not just in the big backpack that doubles as a shopping carrier/handbag/nappy bag.

But I hadn't done anything with it. And that saddened me, because I used to need to haul around a sketch pad/book everywhere. Mind you, I used to get out and do more inspiring stuff back when I was a 19yo living on my own. Still, it remained that these blank pages shamed me.

Then I saw a journal-along at Craftster and thought it looked like just the thing to get me started, so here I go! The prompts and ideas all come from Soul Journaling.com

Day one's prompt was to cover 3 pages with pages from a dictionary, and then write over them starting with the prompt "today i feel..." Luckily I had an old, yellowed dictionary I'd picked up at the op shop to craft with, that only cost me 50c. (It's well out of date and missing lots of words, so I don't feel guilty about destroying it at all). Sarah had started with a double page spread, so I did too, but that left me with a blank spot.

I then went back and filled the "title" page with a freehanded dragon over and over (it's the tattoo I just got).

This is all just prep work, background if you will - next week I'll be covering these pages with a final layer.