Author Archives: ajsartjournal

Unknown's avatar

About ajsartjournal

This blog is to share my adventures in art journaling. It's a journey of discovery and you are more than welcome to join me. A little bit about me … I’m English and live on the Isle of Wight which is off the south coast of England. I am retired and I’m married to the love of my life. We have been together as a couple since 1970 but only got married in 2007. before that we were just getting to know each other 🙂 We have had an amazing life together, travelled to distant parts of the world and lived life to the full. Sometimes when we look back at our life together we say “Wow! did we really do all that stuff?!” My husband has been very unwell for the past 10 years and I am his full time unpaid carer now. When he was younger he worked as an advocate supporting people who were detained in hospital under the Mental Health Act. He was also a musician and DJ. He is still interested in music and on good days our house is still filled with music. Me, I’m much more of a visual person, I love photography and images and now, of course, I love art journalling and being creative. We never had children, but we are now the proud parents to two beautiful cats called Bill & Jack (after Bill Burroughs and Jack Kerouac). They are getting old now and need more care and attention. Want to know anything else? Just ask 🙂 Big love AJ

Ignite your Fire

Posted on by
2

Ignite your fireHello friends!

I hope everything is bright in your area of the world, here all is good.

The page above is from my third Teesha inspired journal.  I really LOVE this style of journaling.  The words on the page are a quote by Osho “Your life spark fires from within your inntermost temple, no-one can reach there but you.  It is your inner sacred sanctum, you are your own master there, only you can reach and ignite your fire”.  So, go on, Ignite Your Fire 🙂

This is a short post because a mountain of ironing is calling to me and has to be done before I go to bed tonight.

Take care everyone and I’ll see you soon.

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

The Seasons

Posted on by
2

SeasonsHello friends!

Hope all is good with you.  My email has been sorted out now (I think) and I’ve been trying to catch up.

Monday was a bank holiday and the hottest day of the year so far.  I spent most of the day in the garden, first helping T to refix the fence to the new posts and then tidying up the garden.  It looks quite respectable now and (for the time being at least), doesn’t give the impression of a ramshackle entrance to our house.  I definitely felt better for spending most of the day outside.

I’ve been decorating my new office at work (called ‘the box’ by my colleagues because it is so small) with some prints of my art.  I am expecting a fair bit of mickey taking about this as I don’t think many of the people I work with will get my art.  But I will feel happier when I have bright colours and positive words to look at instead of plain walls.  The photocopier is still in my office and the senior manager came in to use it today.  I wondered what he would say about all the strange pictures on the wall, but he liked them and one in particular which he came back a few times to look at and to try and memorise the quote.  I think I will give him a smaller copy of it.

The page above is from my 6×6 inch Wisdom Circles book, I miscalculated the spacing and had to squeeze in the last word.  It’s supposed to say “To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring”.

That’s all for now, see you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

Humanity

Posted on by
Reply

HumanityHello friends!

I hope you are all well and, if you are in the UK, enjoying the spring weather.  Today especially has been glorious – sunny and warm.

I was supposed to be helping T put in the new concrete gate posts to replace the wooden ones that rotted away at the bottom.  He finally managed to drill out all the old concrete with the pneumatic drill borrowed from a friend and today was the day to put the posts in.  Unfortunately I woke up with a blinding headache and didn’t get out of bed until about mid-day.  By that time he had completed the job on his own.  What a star!

Gradually my headache wore off and as I felt better and it was a nice day I took Mum and Dad out for a drive and a short walk along the beach at Bembridge.  I think it wore them both out even though we didn’t walk very far, but then Mum is 80 and Dad will be 91 in a couple of weeks time.  However I also know they appreciated being taken out for a couple of hours.

I have been receiving lots of lovely feedback from my workshop last week and requests to do more.  I will do more, but I need to pace myself, because I work full time, have commitments at home, have commitments to Ryde Social Heritage Group and I want to have time for my own creativity.  So it’s not something I’m going to rush in to.

I am having major problems with my email at the moment.  My ISP introduced some ‘improvements’ to the mail service recently and ever since then my email has been messed up.  I was receiving some emails but not all of them.  Yesterday I had a long, and sometimes difficult conversation with a support technician.  I think he may have been in India, at least he had an Indian accent.   He spoke very good English, but his voice kept fading in and out and he had to repeat himself lots of times before I understood his instructions.  I thought he had sorted it out, as I received 150 emails while he was talking to me, but today I’m still having problems.  I am pretty sure I should have received more than one email today and I haven’t been able to send any!   I know I just have to make another call to fix it, but today I’ve either been too ill or too busy.  Maybe tomorrow…

The page above is another page from my third Teesha Moore inspired journal.  It’s a little dark, but I do like the images I used.

Have a great week and I’ll see you soon.

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

AJ the Mermaid Clown!

Posted on by
3

AJ the Mermaid ClownHello friends!

It’s been a while since I posted on my blog, my only excuse is that if I thought I was busy before the last couple of weeks have been mental!

The Mermaid Circus online workshop with Teesha Moore and Jane Davenport is quite sensational, but I’m struggling to keep up with it all.  In the first two weeks we were tasked with making a shaped book and filling it with mermaids and sea creatures with a circus theme.  This was a huge challenge to me because I have absolutely NO interest in Mermaids 🙂  However I have made my book and so far I have populated it with three performing mermaids and the Ring Master who is an octopus.  There are still at least 6 mermaids or sea creatures to create and the cover to do (I will leave the cover till last).

I decided to include myself in the book.  I have a photograph that I took of my face from underwater when I was snorkeling in Tobago and I was going to use that, but it didn’t work.  So I ended up painting the face based on that photo.  Of course it looks nothing like me so I decided to turn myself into a Mermaid Clown and also to give myslf long flowing red hair!

I’m a bit stuck with the shaped book now because the next challenge is to draw a face, copy it and collage it into the next piece.  I’m not very good at drawing so I’ve been doing lots of practice.  I think I’m improving, here is my first attempt and a later one.

first attemptGirl with roses in her hair

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think it’s going to take a bit more practice before I’m really ready to use a face I’ve drawn in my book though. So far I have had about 12 attempts so I reckon if I do another 88 and I might be there 🙂

On top of the Mermaid Circus I also did my very first Art Journaling workshop last Saturday, and it went REALLY well I had a great day with an amazing group of people.  I did loads and loads of preparation and that really paid off. We created journal pages in the style of Teesha Moore – collage and penwork – and everyone completed one page, a couple of people managed two!.  All the pages will be temporarily bound into a book that will go on display during Ryde Arts Festival 27 June – 7 July.  After the festival all the participants will get their art work back and I am also hoping to turn it into an e-book which I will post on my blog.  I was so impressed with the work everyone did.  We had a lot of fun.  Here is a picture of the group hard at work  on the collage elements:

Art Journaling workshop

 

I am hoping to do another workshop with a group of my friends very soon to create something a little different, and I’ve also been asked to give the same workshop as i did last Saturday to a group of young people who live in sheltered accommodation in the town, I’m going to talk to the manager about that next week.

So that’s pretty much all my news, the weather has been lovely this past week too which is an added bonus.

Now I just have to catch up with all the other stuff that I’ve been falling behind with while I’ve been concentrating on the above.

Have a good week everyone and I’ll see you soon.

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

Sunshine!

Posted on by
1

07-sWe have had a whole weekend of sunshine, it makes such a difference, I hung my washing outside to dry this morning for the first time in months and I even did a bit or gardening this weekend.  When I say gardening that’s not really what I mean, I am not much good with plants.  But if you have a patch of ground that needs clearing of everything, then I’m your (wo)man ;-).  I also mowed the weed patch and I am still of the opinion that we need to get rid of the grassy areas.  T is only interested in growing vegetables, fruit and flowers so the grass gets neglected and more and more weeds grow there.  Paving or something that doesn’t grow seem much appealing .

I’ve been practicing faces because I need to have a face I’ve drawn for the next stage of the Mermaid Circus.  Having drawn the face we then copy it, cut it out and collage it onto a page of our book to create another mermaid.  So far my faces are not up to much, although I can see some improvement on my first attempt.  Several artists have told me that to learn a new skill, you just have to keep doing the work.  Like maybe if you do it 100 times at the end of that you will be creating some good work.  I don’t think I have time to do 100 faces but I am trying to do one a day.  I don’t feel ready to share them just yet.

Here is another mandala from my Circles of Wisdom book.  Sometimes words are not necessary.

Have a great week and I’ll see you soon.

Big love

AJ 🙂

Nonsense!

Posted on by
3

NonsenseHello friends!

I am so happy, my art journaling workshop is now fully subscribed!  So in just over a week’s time I will be sharing my love of art journaling, and especially the style of Teesha Moore, with 12 lovely ladies.  Gosh!

The Mermaid Circus online workshop is now into it’s second week and we have already been given loads of stuff to work on.  This is really taking me out of my comfort zone in so many ways, I am finding it quite a challenge, but I am also enjoying it very much.   Teesha and Jane both have a similar philosophy to encouraging people to be creative and both are very generous in sharing their knowledge.   This week’s challenge is drawing faces, something I would normally avoid doing, because that annoying little voice in my head tells me I can’t draw faces.  Well I’ll show you!

I would be enjoying the Mermaid Circus a lot more if my computer didn’t misbehave all the time. 

This evening when I got home from work T said to me “If I can’t fix your computer I’m going to buy you a new one, no-one should have to struggle like that with technology”.  He is on holiday from work this week and he logged on to my computer today to quickly (or so he thought) print something and couldn’t believe how problematic everything was. 

I did get a slight reprimand from him too, he said “You know your computer is like your art room – it’s just full of clutter and rubbish”!   I honestly thought that the maintenance software I have cleared out all the rubbish, but apparently it doesn’t.  T has cleaned up a lot of things for me and it does seem slightly better this evening, but I still think I might get a new machine for my birthday in a few weeks time.  (Fingers crossed)

The page above is another page from my third Teesha inspired journal with a wonderful quote by Dr Seuss.

See you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

 

Opportunity

Posted on by
Reply

Opportunity Everywhere

Hello friends

It’s Sunday again already!  It’s late and I’m tired, but I didn’t want you thinking I’d lost interest in my blog, as I didn’t post anything mid week.  This will just be a quick post before I go to bed.  If there are any typos it’s because I am too tired to proof read properly.

Wow what a busy week!  On Monday the online workshop Mermaid Circus with Teesha Moore and Jane Davenport opened at 6am.  I was there at my computer ready and waiting.  I started to watch the first video and my ‘pig’ of a computer crashed!  Since then I’ve been doing loads of maintenance to keep the damn thing working and have finally managed to see all of this week’s videos.  I bought some good quality paper from the local art shop, made my shaped book and have now started to illustrate it with Mermaids.  This is a huge challenge to me as I don’t really have any interest in Mermaids, but I am kind of liking the way things are turning out.  In any case it’s always good to try things that are out of your comfort zone.

As well as giving ‘life support’ to my computer this week and making art I also had to write a report on my local history group’s activities to deliver at a meeting on Saturday morning.  It all went well and we had a good meeting with an excellent talk by Suzanne Whitewood on Girl Guiding on the Isle of Wight.  Afterwards I wanted to go and help my friends set up the display boards for our next exhibition which goes up in the local library next week, but instead I had to help T put up some wallpaper.  I thought it was a real chore, but he was so sweet when he said “I really like doing things with you it makes me feel more motivated than when I work on my own”.

Today I went ‘all the way over to the other side of the Island’ (which is only about 25 miles from here – to us Island folk that seems like a long way, I’ve no idea why that is) to meet up with my friend H and we went for a long walk up on some hills with fantastic views.  It was great and I was thankful for the opportunity to get out in the fresh air and get some much needed exercise.  I really do spend far too much time in my room and in front of this computer.

I am very tired now and off to bed soon, but I just wanted to post another page from my Circles of Wisdom book, this time with a quote by one of my favourite people ever – Mr Albert Einstein.

Have a good week and I’ll see you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

Embrace your Uniqueness

Posted on by
Reply

Embrace your uniquenessHello friends!

It’s Sunday night and I am just about ready for bed, I’ve been fighting with my computer for a large part of the day and it is driving me slightly nuts.  I wanted to post this image earlier but for some reason my computer couldn’t find my scanner.  The scanner was switched on, plugged in to the computer and clearly working but the computer refused to acknowledge its existence.  Several reboots of the system didn’t sort it out, so I gave up in disgust and switched everything off.

Now a few hours later I have come back switched everything back on and it’s working fine.  I don’t understand ;-| ?

This page is another from my third Teesha Moore inspired journal.

Teesha’s and Jane Davenport’s online workshop starts tomorrow and I am really looking forward to it.  I just hope my computer doesn’t decide to finally give up the ghost before the workshop is finished.  Keep your fingers crossed for me 🙂

It’s been a busy weekend.  Yesterday we had a sunny and fairly warm day for a change.  This was fortunate as my friends and I spent the whole day from early morning until late afternoon at the Pier Head where there was a ‘Party on the Pier’ and we had our exhibition on the history of the pier on display.  We had a great day and spoke to lots of lovely people.

Today it has been sunny but colder.  I took Mum and Dad out for a drive and a walk this afternoon.

It’s late and I am tired so I’m off to bed now.

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

A wonky Mandala :-)

Posted on by
2

A wonky MandalaHello friends!

OK so symmetry isn’t everything and I went a bit ‘off centre’ when I drew this one, but I love the colours which are Inktense Watercolours (mainly) and it’s a reflection of my Universe at that time 🙂

I hope your week is going well, I’m back at work now and enjoying my boring job but having some concerns about some of my colleagues who are very stressed by their workloads.

I heard a radio programme about chanting the other day so I thought I would give it a go.  I’m using the Buddhist chant Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo but I haven’t learnt how you breath and chant at the same time yet – I keep running out of oxygen!  I don’t think it’s supposed to make you light headed is it?  I doubt I will keep it up but for the time being it’s an interesting exercise.

The Mermaid Circus starts next week and I am so excited about it.  I’ve also ordered a copy of Art Journaling magazine because it has 10 pages by Teesha Moore and I just had to have it.  I got an email today telling me it’s on it’s way, so I hope Postie does not delay with the delivery.

I was wondering how I would remember all the stages and all the things I want to share with the participants on my Art Journaling workshop on 27 April, so at the weekend I sat down and drew a map fo the workshop on a sheet of A3 paper.   Of course I am bound to take a few diversions off the map, but if I stick mainly to the route it will all get done in the right order.  Yesterday I ordered the last of the pens I need for the participants to use and they too are on their way to me.  By the time of the workshop I should have 5 journals completed in the style we are using so there should be plenty for people to look at and hopefully get some inspiration from.  I have also made up welcome packs of goodies to give to the people who come along.   So I think I am just about ready to Rock ‘n’ Roll now.  I am feeling slightly nervous and very excited to be running my own workshop.

Hopefully on Monday evening I will get the names of all the people who have enrolled (if not on Monday then it won’t be until Saturday 13 April which is the first time I will be able to get back to the Library).   As soon as I have that information I will contact everyone to share some more information about the event.

I hope you are all having a lovely week and are keeping warm.  It is still cold here and we even had a flurry of snow today.   I keep thinking about that lovely tropical island paradise of Tobago and how much I’d like to be chillin’ out under a palm tree on the beach at Castara Village:

Castara BayIt’s always hot in Tobago and this is about as crowded as the beach at Castara ever gets …. Happy Days 🙂

See you all soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

Confusion Reigns & the Universe Delivers

Posted on by
Reply

Unquestionable WonderHello friends!

Because I work full time having bank holidays is a special treat and this weekend especially as we had Friday and today (Monday) off work.  But the change of pattern confuses my brain.  In the UK we changed to British Summer Time this weekend, the clocks were supposed to go forward on Saturday night, but in this house we put them forward on Friday night.  I think this was because Friday felt like Saturday to me and I convinced T to alter the clocks.  Consequently we spent the whole day on Saturday in a different time zone to everyone else!

I’ve had a busy weekend though.  Lots of art on Friday, on Saturday we went to the local DIY store.  We couldn’t understand why there was hardly anyone there, but now realise it was because we arrived just after it had opened.  Then I spent the rest of the day breaking up a large lump of concrete so we can replace the rotten wooden gate post with a concrete one.  Oh my that was hard work!  It totally wore me out and I had a hot bath and realy night that day.  Yesterday I also felt exhausted all day but I went to a Cemetery Open Day in another town on the Island and then visited my parents in the afternoon.  T had a go at breaking up the other piece of concrete holding in the other gate post, but it was too difficult for him.  We have been wondering if any of our friends have a pneumatic drill, it doesn’t seem likely does it?  Today I’ve had time for more art :-).

The weather this long weekend has been bright and sunny, but still very, very cold, I’m beginning to think I’d like to emigrate to a warmer climate, but then there are the cats to consider…

Talking of the cats, the Bengal Boys were three years old this weekend and had a special fish supper to celebrate.  For the past 6 months there has been a bit of a power struggle going on between them as to who is Top Cat.  I wish they would sort it out because I don’t like it when they squabble.  They are both still very sweet, but not with each other.

Early this afternoon we were visited by our friend Russ who we have known for at least 30 years but hardly ever see.  He said, “I was just passing so I thought I’d drop in and see you”.  He stopped and had a cup of tea with us and said he noticed we had been breaking out the concrete by the gate posts.  T explained what problems we are having and  Russ said “I’ve got a pneumatic drill I can lend you”, he went away and has just called back to deliver it.  It seems so unlikely that that could happen all I can say is “Thank you Universe and Russ”!!!

The page above is the from my third Teesha Moore inspired journal.  I also got some inspiration from the sculpures of one of my favourite artists Jean Miro.

Have a good week and I’ll see you all soon.

Big love

AJ 🙂