My "Aha" moment

It has been awhile since I've been able to go to the treehouse but yesterday I spent several hours doing assignments for the fantastic online class I'm taking,-Open Studio with Misty Mawn.  It is an incredible class with tons of information and techniques.  We are in week three of the class and I am terribly behind but enjoying what I can manage to do.  I have been art journaling for years so was really wanting to tryout the journaling assignments.  This is what happened with week one's assignment:

Scary-I know-but so much fun!  This started with a layer of writing-we were to write about what we had learned so far-in this class, in life, whatever.  After that we were to write numbers starting with 1 and ending with our age-ahem-62 and then with the age we think we will live to-92?  After that we chose a shape that we felt was meaningful and doodled it all over.  Then we were to sketch a self portrait (?), color it in with markers and water soluble crayons and after that paint in any manner we wished, either hiding or letting layers come thru.  I really enjoyed this because I feel this is what art journaling is all about:  the process with no idea of the final outcome.
Week two lessons were more about nature and realism so we did some landscapes.  The journaling assignment was to draw a landscape line and in the bottom half write all the things we would like to bury if we could such as bad feelings,not so good secrets, trials, tribulations, negativity, etc.  It's hard owning up to some of that but freeing to get it down on paper knowing that it will be covered up.  The top half was for better thoughts,dreams, desires, etc. that could "grow" out of the ground.  Along with some doodling and we were ready for paint.

 

 I used acrylics and inks,added a few collage elements and this is how it all turned out.

so now for my "aha" moment

I also do "morning pages" ala Julia Cameronhttp://paperartstudio.tripod.com/artistsway/id3.html and I have always torn them up or shredded them because they sometimes are not what you want anyone else to see-that's the freedom of them.  But Misty just taught me how to cover up and layer over my thoughts and still include them in my journal.  So I wrote in my art journal instead of the composition book I usually use-

and since the other palette I used was pretty subdued I chose to use brighter colors and go with the flow-trust the process.  Out of nowhere came the desire to use hearts for my meaningful shape
---I am usually not a heart kind of girl but oh well- and then since it was my "aha" I figured I'd use a bright yellow I RARELY use and paint a light bulb.  Well the top of the light bulb was just dying for a face--- and here's what came lurking out of the shadows- 

This was a wonderful process-so not what I usually do or how I approach a journal page but a great learning experience.  I have many more assignments to do so keep stopping by.