Friday, June 10, 2011

I've been busy...

but I haven't scrapped a thing! I've done some art journaling though. Almost have a whole book done, another one started, and then there's the ongoing/neverending junk journal. My goodness have I learned a lot just by doing it! Over and over and over, I've watched videos on YouTube, Live Shows on UStream, I've taken this workshop and that workshop, and I never really felt like I GOT it. Really, truly, GOT IT! This person says believe in yourself, that person says just do your own thing, they all say "you're an artist because you (pick one...or two) say so, I say so, you create art, you took art classes, you drew this, you painted that". Well, guess what?

I'm NOT an artist!!

I never was and I never will be. I can't draw a thing, the only painting I ever did was by numbers, and if I were graded on all of the workshops I've taken.....ohh, a dismal failure...I can't even doodle.

But I'm having FUN trying, damn it! Yes! I like playing with paint and paper and stamps and colors and cutouts.....sounds like scrapbooking doesn't it? To me, it's very much like scrapbooking, I'm just not adding family pictures and trying to make them look pretty. Don't get me wrong, here....just because I don't consider myself an artist doesn't mean art journalers aren't artists, because most of them are. They're fabulous artists. People like Kelly Rae, Christy Tomlinson, Traci Bautista, JournalArtista, Inkwell, all fabulous Mixed Media Artists that I admire and have learned from.

Geez, my pages wouldn't hold a candle to what these women do. If a page looks good, I had a lucky day....or several days, as it takes me a while to "create" anything. The good news though, is that I'm finally seeing some improvement in what I'm doing. Maybe I'm getting it afterall because it feels like a light bulb went off, or it's the wonderful workshop of Christy Tomlinson's that I'm taking now. It's making a lot more sense to me.

More about these artisans and some of the workshops I've taken later.