Thursday, January 26, 2012

The Art of Journaling

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I wasn't expecting such a response to that last one and now I feel a little sheepish. *Ahem*. Thanks for coming in!

Speaking of giving up...

I know I mention all of these things somewhat frequently, but bear with me. The other day, I considered quitting art journaling. For reasons like:

- These books take up way too much space and there will only be more and more of them.
- I have been disappointed by the process lately and don't put much effort into it.
- I don't get to write as much, and if I have something to write about but no page ready, art journaling becomes a chore.

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Love this rainbow journal! I covered it entirely with stamps.

But I still like them. They are more interesting to flip through than the written ones. Sometimes I can't even read the written ones.

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Started pasting things in after a while. Yeah, I guess I wrote about a murder. Huh. Welcome to the neighbourhood!

The thing is, there is some pretty cool stuff out there! Like... journals are waaayy cooler now than they were in high school. I can't tell you how often I go into a store and see some sweet imported japanese whatever and think "If I wasn't art journaling, I could be journaling in this book!"

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A discounted LOTR journal. It's covered with leaves and several coats of paint that kept chipping off.

Like this! The teenage me would be all over this.

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I wanted books that had interesting papers. Gorgeous covers with harsh black lines inside just disappoint me.

Written journals have more story to them. I just flipped through two pages that described in detail a horrible thing that happened at work and feel like... maybe that was therapeutic. In my art journal I have limited space and an unpleasant surface to write on. But maybe it's also better to be vague and to the point?

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Hello sixteen year old me!

I don't know, I'm just going to keep on keeping on. Maybe all those nice books I find could make decent sketchbooks?

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If I don't find anything with nice papers, I bought plain notebooks and then recovered them.

So we have the idea that it might be cool if I had my own laptop instead of using the slow one John borrows from work. I'm finding it extremely difficult to justify such a baseless purchase when my camera is slowly dying and I might want to get a car someday... or something. Or maybe my cat will keel over soon. Who knows?

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But I am also intrigued by the idea of having my own personal computer space for the first time in my life. With a built in cam/microphone which would be cool for skyping. Or anything. And the thought that I might just be paranoid about money. Yeah. Just a little.

3 comments:

PoetC7 said...

A new computer may just be the impetus you need to inspire you to your next creative level.
Does that make sense? We keep changing, even as we grow older, and as we change, our art changes, too. You might find all kinds of things that lead you someplace new and exciting if you have a new computer. Good luck!

jhez is a bathtubgoldfish said...

you know, computers (and laptops) are not as expensive as they used to be (the one i have now was less than half the price of the one i bought in 2007 with triple the memory and double the hard drive space) and having a computer space of your very own does do wonders sometimes for your own personal growth, not to mention artistic, creative, etc.etc. i totally know where you are coming from on the money angle though - but think of it as an investment, i guess. also being able to skype more with you would be awesome!

Melissa said...

I'm not sure it would be particularly "inspirational", but I'm just so tickled by this year's cosmic wave of contentedness that I think I might just go for it. At least I know it will be used quite often!

Especially since the lower priced ones even are slightly more advanced than our desktop which blows my mind. I can't even think of "laptop" without thinking: Sluggish, slow, always crashing, only have three tabs open, one program at a time, can't play games.... This will change everything.

I can skype perfectly fine as it is :D but at least I won't have to balance a camera on a pole. Will totally get a lappy, karma permitting!