A loyal and dedicated merry band of art quilters meets at
The Country Quilter on the first Thursday of every month and last night's meeting was rousing and inspiring. Our professional topic of conversation was visual journaling. Several members have been journaling this past year and they've inspired the rest of us to give it a go for next year. It's a good time to start planning a long range art project with January fast approaching.
Now that the Journal Quilt Project is officially over it seemed like a good time to launch our own initiative. Some of us are planning to create something once a week, and some once or twice a month. We discussed the advantages of creating a set of self-imposed "rules" or a framework to lend structure to your results. Rules can be things like a theme, a common size or orientation, a medium, a color palette or a combination of things. And since they're self-imposed, you can change what doesn't work if you need to. I've decided on a common size and base - a
6" x 6" x 1.5" pre-stretched canvas is my starting point for every piece - and I plan to mix media at whim. I ordered and received a big box of the canvases so I'm ready to go.
For the meeting I researched artists who journal and post their results on their sites or blogs. Some ambitious souls journal every day!
Jeanne Williamson is an art quilter who has been journaling since 1999.
Randel Plowman creates a 4" x 4" collage every day and offers it for sale on his blog.
Teesha Moore offers a wonderful peek into her process with a look at her journal pages. She also includes a link to an article about journaling and techniques.
Noah Scalin is making a skull image every day for a year!
I also compiled a list of sites that offer challenges and prompts to get you started.
Think Monday, Think ATC presents theme ideas once a week for atcs.
Monthly Postcards and
Fluffy Fatbottom's Twisted Tuesday are two challenge sites for those who love making fiber postcards.
Theme Thursday is a paper art challenge site.
For the photography enthusiasts, here are two sites,
Moody Monday and
See it Sunday.
Mixed Media Monday is just what it sounds like.
4x4 Fridays and
Skinny Saturday are both size-restricted challenges.
And finally,
Inspire Me Thursday and
Illustration Friday offer prompts that you can interpret in any medium you wish.
Most of these sites encourage you to upload your results to a blog or photo-sharing site and post a link for viewers. The feedback and comments can be helpful and validating, and the connections built between artists can be enriching.
As promised, here are the results of the art homework project I gave my family for our holiday dinner party. At each place at the table there was a miniature easel for each guest to display their mini canvas. After dinner we cleared the table and lined up all of the easels to take pictures. It was really fun to see what everyone made.
These were made by my daughter Sam and her boyfriend Jesse. As a wonderful bonus, Sam told us during dinner that she made the Dean's List at college this semester. I'm so proud of her! And I think their canvases are very cool too.
My parents made theirs at their vacation home in the Adirondacks. My dad loves to kayak and he cut that little kayak in half and affixed it to his canvas. Mom used fabric, of course, and a little bit of metallic foil for the water.
My sister's family all created self-portraits. My brother-in-law Chris loves to cook so his portrait is made of food items - cloves for hair, pasta for a nose and a manly stubble of spices. Linda's is hand and machine sewn on fabric with some twigs as found objects, it's very her.
Five-year-old Sage created an abstracted watercolor version of herself - with a rainbow, she said. And twelve-year-old Whitman showed his drawing skill and love of anime and manga.
Carlos and I went with an insect theme and I had a hard time dragging him away from his current, very, very large abstract oil painting long enough to complete this miniscule-by-comparison project. His colored pencil and wax pastel butterfly and my printed and collaged beetle are very congenial.
I would definitely do something like this again. Watch out if you're invited to dinner at my house! There might be homework...
