When I was at school I enjoyed art. I wasn’t particularly good at it but I enjoyed losing myself in a palette of colours once in a while. One of our projects involved going to the RAF Museum at Hendon, sketching various airplane parts and then painting a “collage” of aircraft. I spent a lot of time on mine but then made a fatal mistake – I drew round all the outlines of the separate bits in thick black paint. It was this action that resulted in my art teacher telling me choosing art would be a waste of an O Level option – so I gave up.
Over the next ten years or so I didn’t do so much as pick up a paint brush- even my doodles of cats and dogs were unrecognisable to my kids! – but when I was in my late twenties my daughter’s school ran a Beginner’s Art Class for parents and I went along and discovered that I still liked art and guess what – I wasn’t even that awful at it after all! However, despite getting a watercolour set and sketchpad I still didn’t do anything creative – I simply didn’t know where to start.
Skip forward to July 2012 and a friend tells me about the art journalling workshop she was organising. I’ve heard the phrase “art journalling” a few times but haven’t really understood what it was, so I Googled and liked what I found. Here was a type of art that used paint and paper and collage and stamps and scraps and all sorts of other techniques and materials, rather than relying on you being good at drawing.
I was keen to get going so even before the workshop I picked up a journal pad and had a go at creating some art pages. The results are comical really – at one stage my daughter (now 18, and also trying out art journalling) said my five year old niece could have done better! Undeterred, I went along to the workshop and had the most amazing day learning new techniques and playing around with paint. It was great fun and better still, I created some pieces of art that I was really proud of.
I’ve now bought some supplies and have completed another journal page. When you compare the first two sad efforts to my latest work you can see how far I’ve come already, and I’m excited about learning and developing new skills in the coming months. I’m really fired up with this new hobby and am planning a few special gifts for people – watch this space!
This also counts as thing 75 on my list – Learn a new craft and make something with it – now completed!
The gallery below shows my work so far, and I’ve also created an Art Journalling page where I will “showcase” (i.e. show off!) everything I produce.
