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

Time Flies

Oh my gosh, have I really not updated this since January? January!!! Seriously, I'm not sure how I let nearly half a year slip by without blogging here at all.

Well, I have some idea . . . here's the list:

• work - my free non-child time has been eaten alive by my work since . . . well, January. I've had deadline after deadline and no time to breathe. I'm also really burnt out now. So I'm taking a break in July, hopefully. If I get my work wrapped up enough in June.
• Kavya, my kiddo - toddlers are soooo much fun and they have so much energy! She has been on a nap strike lately too. She says "Not sleep time, time to wake up. My eyes are open!" Of course, after several days of this, then she falls asleep sitting in my lap at 5pm. She's never been the kind of sleeper to sleep anywhere, so for her to just fall asleep while sitting in my lap, wow, she's tired. But naps are a battle, nighttime is a battle. And day time is just filled with ENERGY. But the reduction of afternoon naps means my work gets pushed to the evenings, which is when I used to art journal.
• sickness - we've had a huge variety of colds and the flu. I blame daycare - she goes 3 days a week in the mornings, during which time I work. But yep, she also brings home germs. I catch more of them than she does, despite hand washing all the time.

My apologies to any readers of this blog that are still around! I will try to be here more in the future, but I think I said that in January *cough cough*

I did still time to find art journal in the past few months, just no time to scan and share.

Today Kavya and I did art, she painted while I cut and pasted a bit in my journal. I didn't get much done because I spent more time giving her the water bucket, the towel, more paint. She LOVES to paint. Today tho she watched me work in my Moleskine journal and declared she wanted one. "Own journal?" She asked. I have a spare Moleskine so I think I will just let her use it. I suspect it will be filled up in about two minutes because she goes so fast. It's mesmerizing to watch her draw tho. She's into circles right now, which is beautiful.

Happy New Years!

Happy New Year to everyone! Hope 2010 is wonderful for you.

You might have noticed I wasn't around much (blog wise) in December. In November, I started taking Suzi Blu's Goddess and Portraits class and I became obsessed with drawing faces. I really enjoyed her class and felt like I was able to take her teaching and really make it my own. So while I was busy drawing faces, my art journal was rather neglected. I realized in December that I didn't have any entries done and I didn't have any place to write! Usually how I work is I finish the art part and then I write my entry. I don't finish pages in a front to back order, I usually skip around so I do the same with my writing. Anyway, now I'm paying attention to my art journal again.

I've set myself some art resolutions for the new year:

- learn more about drawing faces! I'm taking Misty Mawn's portrait class (online too) next. 

- do more art journaling. I had art journal fail from March to July. Not again.

- get rid of art supplies. Argh, this one is hard, but I've been inspired by Rice Freeman-Zachery and her destashing journey which she's documented on her blog. I have a room upstairs that is a dedicated studio . . . filled with stuff I don't use. I mostly work downstairs anymore because it is close to the kiddo when she is sleeping and when she's awake, she'll go upstairs but there is so much up there I have to watch her around that I can't work. Plus frankly it is a mess and I couldn't work up there anyway. This is probably my hardest task for the year. But I'll try to document and share the progress with you. And I'll probably list a few treasures on Etsy and mention those.

India 2

One of the amazing things I did in India was to see an ancient Hindu temple. This was my 4th trip to India and the first time I had the opportunity to see a temple or building that I'd studied in my art history courses in college.

We visited the Konark Sun Temple in Orissa. Dating from the 13th c., the entire temple is covered in detailed sculptures carved in sandstone. The design is a chariot, pulled by 6 horses with 12 unique and exquisite wheels.

Sadly, proximity to the ocean and air pollution have not been kind to this temple. This is the only remaining horse. My mother-in-law remembers more horses standing from when she visited 10 or so years ago.

Here is one of the wheels.

I adore the graceful female sculptures from Indian art. They really capture the feminine form well.

You can see a lot more of my photos from the Sun Temple here on Flickr. And the rest of my India photos are also on Flickr.

India (or why the 2 month blog absence)

We've been in India. No, not for 2 months. But preparing to take a 2 year old to India requires a lot of work. Most of say August. That and trying to get work done in advance of being gone and knowing I wouldn't have a babysitter upon return. (My babysitter is pregnant and expecting in early November so she didn't want to sit through October.)  So that's where I've been.

India was interesting. I've been to India 4 times, this was my 5th time there. First time there with a child. My husband is from India, so to see his family, we must travel to India. Otherwise, India would not be my first choice of vacations with a toddler. Mostly because it is a loooong set of flights. Try this on:

1. Leave at 5AM for the airport
2. Make 7AM flight to Seattle
3. Layover of 5 hours in Seattle
4. 10 hour flight to Frankfurt Germany
5. 4 hour layover in Frankfurt airport
6. 8 hour flight to New Delhi, India

But my kid did really great on the plane. She napped, she played with sticker books. She watched Elmo DVDs. It's just REALLY long.

But once we were there - and finally at our vacation destiation - Puri (which involved another flight and a car drive), we were able to enjoy the beautiful beach. Kavya LOVED the ocean.

I had a lot of fun taking pictures of the unusual things on the beach. I did not, however, get a picture of the camel on the beach. There are a lot of tourist things in Puri, India you'd find on the coast here in the US - tacky shell trinkets, ice cream, sweet vendors - but I've never seen camel rides on the beach.

You can see more of my beach photos on my flicker account.

We also got to visit an old temple (FINALLY) and I took a ton of photos of the beautiful stone carvings. Which I will share with you. Soonish :) And I'll be back to art journals soon too.

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.

Goodbye Summer

Goodbye Summer, how little we knew ye (this year).

Usually I look forward to Autumn. October has both our wedding anniversary and my birthday. And then there is Thanksgiving and Christmas to look forward to. I love the crispness of the air, the pretty colored leaves . . .

But this year I am really going to miss summer. We didn't really see summer until the first of July. Usually June is a mixed bag, with some rain and some sun. Mostly this year it was rain, after a long hard winter it seemed like summer was a long time coming.

Kavya is just beginning to walk, taking her first few tentative steps. In a few weeks, I think, she will be walking. And then it will be mostly raining. I'd love for her to be tottering around in soft grass and there is another reason I will miss summer.

This is the last page in my art journal - tho I'm not done with that journal yet because I skip around and do pages in sections as I feel like it. Seems fitting for this goodbye to summer entry tho!

September Weddings, Birthdays, and Art

Oooh, I've been gone for a while - both from my art and from this blog. September was so busy for me. First my in-laws arrived and adjusting to having people in the house took a week or so. My daughter turned 1!! We had a family-only party for her.

Then one of my beautiful sisters got married. Lots of family was in town for that and I hosted several people (including my other beautiful sister). I was in the bridal party, and even the tho the bride did take it easy on me because I have a baby, I did have a lot of things to do to get ready for that.

Here's my lovely sister Beth on her wedding day:

I did finish up some journal pages at the beginning of September.

This was an experiment of layers. I kept drawing and adding to it - paint, ink, collage. Eventually it was just too much, so I ripped off a few of the collage elements. The result reminded me of a building, so I added the church overlay.

Here is a closeup so you can see the detail:

Summer Time

Every winter, I sit and I think about all the fun summer activities I am going to do. Sit outside in the grass, pick berries, enjoy the blue skies. And every fall, the rains roll around and I'm regretting everything I didn't do.

This year, I am seeing summer from another view point - 5 AM. I'm not a morning person. But this is a stage that babies go through . . . a painful one for more.

But even if we've woken up at 5am, I am still trying to enjoy summer all I can. Today we sat out in the yard and looked up at the tree. Well, I did. Kavya looked for a second then promptly rolled over and starting crawling towards the dirt. But the grass is fairly dried out and therefore prickly, so she tries to crawl with her knees up. Evidently that is a precursor to walking, but I think the grass is just prickly. Then she tried to eat some dirt. Yum.

Tonight I'm trying to stay awake long enough to digest my dinner then sleep. So I'm playing with some photo filters. I should be in the shower, but my husband ran in there ahead of me. I really need to learn how to go to bed early.

Art Journal & Life

 

This page uses a bird from Parrots collage sheet available at Alpha Stamps

I remember when I used to art journal . . . it seems so long ago, when actually it was like a few months ago.

Most days Kavya and I are outside, doing this:

Kavya LOVES to swing. On our daily walks, we walk through a little park with a set of swings. I've stopped  a few times to let her swing. Recently, she remembers this and knows when the swing is coming up and she starts to cry when we walk by without swinging. I used to always think that when we walked through that little park that someday I would have to stop and let her play . . . I just didn't think it would be so soon.

I am still creating things . . . or doing creative things, I'm just not finishing them. I'm doing more crochet, and planning to make some mini art quilts. Fiber seems maybe to be safer than little papers that Kavya likes to eat.

I'm embarrassed that I did not update at all in June. Perhaps July will be better? I know I have a scrapbooking thing with fellow moms. I don't scrapbook, but I thought I'd take my art journal and just do something. Maybe I'll actually finish something!

PS - I am going to add some inspiration (visual) in the next few days. I have some awesome stuff to share.

Update

A small picture-less update (even tho I hate those). Life is quite busy right now between baby and work. But I hope to return to paper arts soon. I have unfinished journal pages but my baby has turned into a paper fiend and LOVES to eat paper. So I have been crocheting instead as she cannot eat a ball of yarn. I will share some of my creations soon.

And to clarify on my artist voice post, I think it is FINE to copy and learn from other artists - as long as credit is given and more importantly, the work is not being sold. That is where I think the line should be drawn.