Emotion & Journaling (Week of 3/12/2017)

Hey guys, I'm back with another week's worth of pages, and this time around I get a little more deep and emotional with them.

 Art has always been my way of letting out my emotion and feelings, but this week especially that sensation has been multiplied by a hundred. I'm at the end of an art block I was experiencing (and still pushing myself through) and that left me with a lot of overwhelming feelings to get out of my system.

Almost all of my pages this week took a ton of layers to actually bring to completion (I think because I already overworked them a bit), but I managed to get things pulled together in a way that was manageable.

This is one of my favorite pages, though it is potentially the most chaotic. I had already dumped a bunch of layers onto this page when I started to work with the face. I used white paint mixed on a piece of plastic with water based markers; I wanted to see if I could make my own paint colors. As it turned out, it worked beautifully.

The actual face itself was a representation of how I was already feeling when I started to draw, and there is a substantial amount of journaling on this page, both legible and not. It was a lot of fun to just let go of the fear of creating and just put layer on top of layer.

I think that the finished page is fairly busy, but that's what I love about it. It's a rather accurate representation of how I was feeling.

This page was actually an attempt at being a bit more conscious with my journaling. I tend to overthink most things in my life, so forcing myself to just sit and think tends to be a fairly dangerous thing to do. I use the phrase "stuck in my own head" to describe this sensation.

However, this was a nice way of forcing myself past that; I allowed my mind to wander, my thoughts to reveal themselves, and then I dumped them on the page. It was a relief, and something I'd love to experiment with more in the future.

 

I apologize for the darkness of this full shot, but you can see the true colors better in the detail shots. I'm not quite sure if I'm finished with this page yet (considering some neon pink oil pastel), but I thought I'd share it regardless.

 I put the finishing touches of this page on this morning, and I find it amazing just how meditative all the doodling and paint layers can be. I'm starting to find my groove, and that's a nice feeling.

I also find that bright colors and abstract shapes make me happy.

The final page I have to share with you guys today is actually the first that I finished this week (but the furthest into my journal). This was the page that I think really pushed me out of the block I was feeling last week. I got caught up in this page and pretty much completed it from start to finish in one two or three hour evening sitting.

It's not my favorite face I've ever done, but I love the effects I was able to get with colored pencils, and how relaxing and soothing it was to work on.

I hope you all enjoyed seeing my pages from this week, and I'll see you all next week!