Today: Get Messy Art Journal | Brave, Weeks 4-6

Two posts in one day!  It’s a miracle. I’m making up for the fact I’ve been MIA.  Time for another peek at my art journal!

Get Messy Art Journal | Brave, Weeks 4-6

Materials used: Embroidery floss and a giant, unsafe needle; Golden liquid acrylic and high flow acrylic paint; Blick liquid watercolors; Crayola crayons; Sakura watercolors sketchbox; black paper; Sakura white gel pen; salt water in a little spritzer bottle thing; washi tape

So this set of pages is basically a mess.  Which is fitting, this being Get Messy and all.  It took a while to let each layer dry, so it was sort of an exercise in patience (specifically, in Nick being patient with me leaving all this art crap all over our condo, all in the name of “building layers”).

I think I’ve shared this before, but I am weirdly in love with my own handwriting.  Not normal.  And not at all humble.  But true.  The quote is from composer Mohammed Fairouz’s recent interview with Krista Tippett on (my favorite podcast of all time) On Being.  You can read or listen to the full episode here, but the text I include comes from this exchange:

MS. TIPPETT: I read somewhere that you were — you began composing music at a very early age. And I read somewhere that you were setting the poetry of Oscar Wilde to music at the age of 7. Is that right? I…

MR. FAIROUZ: Yeah. It’s a song on a poem by Oscar Wilde that is called “The True Knowledge.” And it’s a beautiful poem. I took a stab at it when I was 7. And I have to admit, I didn’t understand the poem at all. But I gave another go at sort of trying to revive it. I revisited it in, I think, 2002 or something as an early piece and tried to fix it. And I’ve since stopped doing that because I realized that as a composer, we leave very important traces of who we are spiritually in the pieces that we compose. And so it’s actually best not to tamper with who you were ten years ago to be who you are today. Accept and perhaps even try to love who you were ten years ago. And be kind to yourself. But also look forward to who you want to be in a year.

Beautiful, right?  Every episode is this good.  I often listen on my commute to work, and have been forgoing safety and wearing headphones (always be aware of your surroundings, people!) between the parking lot and my office, so as to not have to stop listening.   

Materials used: Tissue paper; black gesso; Instax photo; Faber Castel Pitt pens; magazine clipping; scrap from one of Grace’s daily day care reports; label maker

For this spread, I incorporated the shapes and household objects (tissue paper, aluminum foil) prompts from Get Messy.  I used aluminum foil to apply black gesso… but it didn’t pan out very well, so I ended up going back over it with a palette knife.  With so much changing (and so soon), I wanted to capture a bit of daily life in these pages.  We’ve been having so many fun adventures now that the weather has improved, including a recent walk around Houghton’s Pond.  The scrap is a note from one of Grace’s teachers and includes details from her day.

It feels scattered, but that’s the kind of week I was having.

Materials used: Black gesso; white gelly pen; Sharpie white acrylic paint marker; card stock letters; liquid acrylic paint; detail brush; palette knife

Per usual, I saved my favorite pages for last.  This spread was the result of several happy accidents.  I’ve been reading a lot of Hafez lately and this poem was floating around in my brain, so when a blob of black gesso smudged from one page to the next, I immediately saw a bird.  And I got to work adding feet and feathers.  

The letters were originally all on the same page, but kept falling off… that’s how I realized the reverse side would look sort of cool on the opposite page.  Plus, YO + BIRD = Kind of fun as a stand alone page.  Here’s to happy accidents.  And birds. Or whatever.

To see more of my art journal: Love Weeks 1 + 2, Love Weeks 3 + 4, Love Weeks 5 + 6, Get Messy blog hop, Brave Weeks 1-3

Also On Tap for Today:

• For my quest to go green-er: 10 Ways to Clean With a Lemon via The Kitchn
• Packing for a quick (last!) work trip to Alabama (of all places)
• 6 Watercolor Resist Techniques to Try via The Artful Parent

Are you a podcast fan?  What are you listening to lately?