Amber Gibbs - Art Journals, Collage Art & Mixed Media Adventures

Art Journal - Birds and Butterflies

I'm finding more time to journal now. Kavya is very happy to sit with me while I journal and she colors. Well, the art part of journaling. (Writing would be much harder with the non-stop stream of talking we have and the interruptions, so I continue to write in the bathroom and at night.) She has to sit in my lap sometimes and I will read or will play with her plastic animals, but I do get a bit done. I'm so happy to be able to do this again.

I liked this bird page a lot better before the writing - the negative space was important to the flow. But the point of my journals is also to chronicle my life and Kavya's first years.

Art Journal - Sunflower

This is one of those "lots of layers" pages. First attempt at the page I hated, so I covered it with a pretty wrapping paper and scrapbook paper. Then gessoed over that. Then I tried Teesha Moore's method of cutting out letters from magazines to spell something, and that just didn't look right to me. So I pasted this transparency of a sunflower over it and somehow that worked.

I am still sorting through the India pics, will be posting more soon.

Art Journal - Houses

Created this little sketch page purposely ignoring my high school art teacher's futile lessons in perspective. I just wanted to make it be crazy.

I have such a hard time creating this summer. Meh, need to get back into the grooooove.

Summer Heat & Morbid Art

I really like this page - but I know people have this thing about skeletons. They see them as really morbid. And I get that, there is definitely an imagery link between death and skeletons/skulls. But I find them fascinating. Our bones are crucial to so much of our daily lives. They go everywhere with us. Yes, they represent death, but to me they also represent life and the circle of life. This was a lot deeper in my head before I started to type.

Maybe it's the heat. We are in the midst of our summer heat wave. We get one every summer, sometimes it is worse than others. I always try to remember that come winter time, I'll be wishing for 100 degree heat waves. But it never works, I always whine and complain.

But other than ridiculous heat, I love the summer. Hello BERRIES! Hello all sorts of fruit that I love! Time to make ice cream! And sharing it all with a toddler is a lot of fun too. Even when I went berry picking alone with her and she eventually refused to walk and I had to carry her and the berries, it is fun. (Next time I'm taking a wagon!)

Wading Back In

My first set of pages in my new journal. I loved this collage and then I drew on top of it, hated it, added more color, hated it, poured ink all over it and then realized if I added anything else, the media would just start to slide off! So that's how it is now.

Oh my!

I knew I'd been absent from this blog for a while. But wow, seriously, I have not posted since the beginning of April. That's like, um, 3 months, isn't it?? 

I have excuses. Yep.

Let's see:

1) Life/Work/Baby - all of these things take time. Even tho I only work part time (thankfully), it has a way of consuming all non-baby minutes of my life.

2) Baby is actually now a toddler. And since it became nice outside (in um April), we tackled gardening projects and sampled dirt and leaves and some edibles from around the yard. Unlike last year where she wanted to be solely attached to Mama, this year, she is running around free. It's amazing how fast they grow up, but that first year is a hard one to get through. Now we are almost through year 2!!

3) After I finished my last journal (see that April entry), I lost my journal mojo. I started another journal, but floundered. Now I am starting back up, so hopefully I'll have some new posts soon. I realized I kinda need to get some thoughts out on paper to save my sanity and alleviate anxiety.

Here's something completely unrelated to my excuses. This is a drawing I did in the winter when I decided to work on my drawing skills (one of the few good enough to show you). I colored it in crayon and then did an ink wash. Crayons are pretty baby friendly now that she doesn't put EVERYTHING in her mouth.

Suzi Blu explains Moleskine love in one of her youtube videos. Like she said, if you get it, you get it, if not, there's not much we can say. It's not a big deal if you don't and want to journal in something else. That's the beauty of art journaling, you go your own way.

Anyway, gardening season is winding down for me (more my enthusiasm than the actual season), so I hope to post more. But we've got a big trip coming up (international travel with a toddler, weeeeeeeee! but we want to visit relatives and stuff), so I'm still not sure how much I'll post. This is why I recommend getting a blog reader. I like Google Reader. I used to have bloglines, but I prefer Google Reader now, it's far more reliable.

The End of the Moleskine

It's finished. The art journal I started when I was first pregnant with Kavya, then abandoned for most of my pregnancy, then returned to when she was 3 months old, it is finished.

I learned so much with this journal. The most important lesson was to make art for myself. This is a completely non-commercial venture. Which possibly is what all art should be, but as the daughter of a used car salesman, I have trouble separating the two. But this I created only for me. Well, also for my daughter, someday. It is a record of the first year and a half of her life and my struggles and triumphs as a mother. I know I make it sound like a monument. It is to me.

I left a few blank pages - a few pages I started and couldn't finish. A few blank pages at the end to record notes and for modern ephemera.

And now, the Binky Queen herself will give us a guided tour. (She really wanted to "help" which meant "look at the journal and try to pull pieces of glued paper off the pages".)

And so it ends. The first art journal I've ever finished. (Tho I've started plenty).

Art Journal - Orange

Wow - last page in this Moleskine. Well, I have 2 pages that aren't finished, but after torturing them and myself, I decided I was done with this journal. Two or three unfinished pages in an ENTIRE journal shouldn't prevent me from moving on if I need to. And I need to. I plan to take photos of the finished journal, bulging with color soon. Whenever I can find time.

Amano Books is featuring some of my journal pages on their blog. Bridgette, the owner of Amano Books, has a lot of great ideas in the blog, so check it out. And it's an honor to be featured. I try to journal only for myself now. Something for me, something for my daughter to look at, to enjoy. I put aside the desire to be published, to be known for my journals. Aside from this blog and a few art sites, I don't put them out there. So I am always happy when other people enjoy my art journals.

Speaking of my daughter and art journals, she LOVES to look at my art journal. And she also loves to try to tear things out of it. She ripped off some photos of her and me when she was just a tiny newborn. I glued them back in, but they are very "distressed" now. Hehe.

Art Journal - Baby and Me

I really liked this one - until I tried to add some color to the black and white photo. And yeah, it looks really really funny. Oh well, live and learn - that's what an art journal is about :)

Art Journal - Purple Doodles

The colors on this are off, it's really less orange and more yellow. But as my journal nears the end and the pages get swollen, the scanner has a difficult time getting the colors correct.

I am really loving those Sharpie Poster Paint pens. Teesha Moore has them on her website, as does DickBlick. Unlike other sharpies, they are not smelly. They are really opaque over the other stuff, which makes them ideal for layers.

I hope everyone is having a good new year so far. I am so busy this time of year, but I've been grabbing a few moments to art journal here and there. Still doing my journal writing in the bathroom (during the baby free moments I have while her daddy watches her). Silly, huh?