Switching Gears: Scribal Journal Reflection
After doing three scrolls in 4 months and another on the horizon I felt the urge to do something different. Do you ever feel the pull to do something outside your normal? To explore?
I returned to creating in my art journals, which I haven’t touched in years.
Art journals vary dramatically between artists and even between pages in one book. My visual journals are cathartic mixed media experiments using any materials and tools I choose. They’re expressive, playful, and emotion releasing. While scroll creation is an orderly process, each step planned to a degree. Its text, art style, methods, materials, and tools are controlled efforts. Even the recipient and deadline are not my choice.  |
| Working on several spreads in multiple books while listening to TV. |
Art journal pages are about the doing rather than the creation, the journey not the destination. It’s art you make for yourself. Its techniques are freeing, busying my hands while I listen to TV and idling my analytical thoughts. My mind is quieter as the surrounding world slips away.
My journals include sketches, old photos, printed text, stamping, paint and my handwritten feelings. You never know what you’ll combine. It’s paint-moving, stenciling and writing are expansive even disjointed. The parts spontaneously come together and have no deadline. They are only complete because I say.
Art journaling combines outside activities too; hunting, gathering, and scavenging gets me out of the house paying closer attention to my wider world. Organizing my supplies and finds even inspired me to clean and sort all my crafts. That spread to doing the same other places in my house.I’m looking forward again to creating the next scroll. To its planning, calligraphy, gilding, details, and deadline. My scribal passion and confidence renewed.
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An Itinerant Scribe 