The Nine Weeks of Summer - Week 1

We're back! This summer, we have a project a week with a theme song, based (very loosely) on The 12 Days of Christmas. The first was: "On the first week of Journaling, my muse assigned to me - A Moment to Remember." Did you sing it?

Technique: A single number - calligraphy with a flat sponge brush - in a simple circle. The page awaits its prose. I used both watercolor (blue) and Lumiere paints, which are acrylic. When writing across these surfaces, I will use a Pigma micron pen on the watercolor and a Sharpie over the acrylic.

Page by Carol Zika, June, 2010

Send a postcard to yourself

I am reading Alice Steinbach's book, Without Reservations - the travels of an independent woman. While away, Alice sends postcards to herself, ones that will be waiting for her upon her return. What a wonderful practice! Little books can be made of such treasures, and voila!, your journal has written itself!

Different writing formats

Project: Draw a simple human shape to represent your subject and write about that person within its boundaries.

Materials: watercolor, pen, plastic canvas stencil

Artist: Janet Freeman, July, 2005

My, my, we mustn't rely on standard paragraph form with margins and straight lines for our journal entries. Below are some ways to break away:

Paint horizontal color stripes and use them as lines for text.
Draw or paint wavy lines and write along them.
Write border to border.
Write in a circle or spiral or square.
Write within a shape.

The last example is illustrated in the posted page.

Musingly, Carol

The Curse of the Purse

Project: The Curse of the Purse
This interactive page contains a pouch constructed from fabric, chain and button, which holds a list of the contents of the artist's purse. The clean, yet stimulating design of the pages has much appeal.

Artist: Sherry Pollack


Rather than rely on the vast and tempting array of stickers and other accoutrements that scrapbookers use, we focus on playing with and manipulating art materials. Granted, scrapbookers have some cool stuff, but our use of such materials is selective and minimal. My longest running group admits to having a sickness: we never throw anything away! Oh! I can use that on a page. Or, I can make a stamp/stencil/template/texture, etc. out of that! If we didn’t laugh about it, we would probably cry.

What I bring to the table is a lifetime of familiarity with art materials and processes, an active mind and creative thinking, a love of words, and a sense of fun. This is what I encourage and teach. It’s all about tapping creativity. I have been awarded the title of Muse, and I playfully sign my communiqués: Musingly yours,

Workshops at Ghost Ranch

Page decoration: painted workshop nametag extended into full painted page, with facing page repeating the colors in an abstract design, waiting to be written upon.

Materials and techniques: on left, watercolor with saran wrap texturing; on right, painted watercolors with salt sprinkled into sky to represent the Milky Way (sorry it's not clearer), silver metallic pen

Artist: Carol Zika, 2007

Ghost Ranch, www.ghostranch.org, is an education and retreat center with two locations: Santa Fe and Abiquiu, NM. Northwest of Santa Fe in the high mountain desert is Abiquiu and Georgia O’Keeffe country. Of dinosaur fame, too. It is there that I will be presenting two weeks of Artful Journaling workshops. I can only describe the setting as a sacred space, and visitors return year after year to see old friends, make new ones, and replenish their spirits. Workshop offerings are varied and stimulating to mind and soul. This is a family-friendly place, with supervised programming for youth during adult class times. And yes, one can see the silvery full moon, the Milky Way, and stars upon stars in the night sky.

Artful Journaling I - July 27 - Aug 2, 2009
This first week is a part of the Creative Arts offering, which pulls together a gifted faculty from across the country, and includes writing, painting, music and drama. Imagine five mornings, surrounded by crimson and yellow rock mesas, writing from the heart and playing with art materials! After this first week, participants are invited to stay around for the encore session.

Artful Journaling II - Aug 3 - Aug 9, 2009
The second week can be taken separately, and will be co-lead with poet Anita Skeen, who is an inspiring writing teacher with many longtime devotees. As life-long friends, we have lots of fun with our collaboration, and the class members are the beneficiaries. I could wax poetic about Anita as a teacher, but she’s the poet, so I won’t go there. So, imagine five mornings, etc., etc., with the added plus of a skilled writing muse.

Self-Portrait a la Gustav Klimt

Writing assignment: Self, as I See Myself

Artwork: Self Portrait a la Gustav Klimt

2007

Techniques: Collage, painting with metallic watercolors, stamping, layering


Okay. So we're starting with one of my pages. It was handy. I received an interesting reply from a childhood friend who saw this posting. She said my self portrait looks like my baby sister, and my blog photo is surely my older sister. Betwixt and between, I am in there somewhere.

In the future, I will also feature pages by fellow journalers. Anticipate. Wonder.

"I wandered lonely as a cloud..."

Writing assignment: From a basketful, select a slip of paper with the first line of a poem, then use it as a topic sentence to develop its theme.

Page decoration: watercolor wash, illuminated capital 'I', embellished with gold composition leaf, ink

Artist: Carol Zika, 2006

Artful Journaling is where I have been channeling my creative energies these past few years. As the movement has grown (a surprise to me), I have been fine-tuning my own concept to include creative writing topics that serve as a reflection of one's life, values, thoughts and attitudes in a non-linear and very entertaining way. We concentrate in writing in our own voices, rather than on form, using what writing skills we bring with us. One recent retiree said to me, “I’ve been teaching first grade my entire career. I’ll sound like a first grader.” And so be it, I responded. It will be authentic.