At the beginning of the month, I joined Julie Fei-Fan Balzer’s Art Journal Every Day community. I have wanted to start art journaling for a long time now, but I’m as far removed from “artistic” as you can get. The family joke is that I can’t even draw a good stick person. And it’s not really a joke. It’s the truth!
Add to that the fact that I haven’t tried to draw since I was a teenager and had to draw in Art class.
But I want to create an art journal like all those gorgeous ones you see out there, but I didn’t know where to begin. Julie has inspired me to try, though. She’s taught me that it’s not about where you begin, but that you begin, period.
And begin I did!
Remember when I said I wasn’t artistic? Well, the thing I’m afraid of the most is drawing people. And painting. And showing people what I created. And I don’t know what brushes to use, or what kind of paper or journal to use, or what paint goes best on what surface.
But today, I just let all that go and drew this. And I don’t think she’s too terrible. I actually kind of like her.
I know you’re wondering about the words all over her. Funny story about that.
I had intended to just play around with some watercolor pencils and oil pastels while trying to draw a “long-necked girl” like I had seen in Violette’s book, Journal Bliss: Creative Prompts to Unleash Your Inner Eccentric
. And since I can’t draw worth a darn, I didn’t want to waste my precious watercolor paper. So I grabbed an old desk calendar from a stack of “scrap” paper that I keep for such stuff and opened to the first page, which is glossy paper.
I thought to myself, well, I’m just practicing and will probably throw this away so I’ll just use this first page.
And so my long-necked girl lives with “Pfizer” stamped on her chin and the years 2008 and 2009 for eyebrows. Ironically, my daughter had to point out the eyebrow dates. I was so focused on getting the facial features to actually look human that I was no longer registering the words on the page. How funny that they ended up perfectly over each eye! I think I like it, too.
But that “Pfizer” is kind of bugging me. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll get some of that gesso Julie is always using and try to cover it up.
Or maybe I’ll just leave my long-necked Pfizer girl the way she is.
