I signed up for a free Strathmore workshop for the beginning of the year (there are 3 – I can see meandering through them the first 6 months of the year).  I don’t remember doing that, but an email arrived that said I had, so I decided to go ahead and do it – expand my 2D chops a bit.  Besides, I’ve always admired artists who make journal diarys but never managed to get around to making my own.  No better time than now!

This particular workshop is about reusing old work to create your journal pages.

Into the 2nd week, I’m now starting my 3rd picture because it wasn’t clear where we were going and my 1st two pieces didn’t lend themselves to the technique, which really requires LOTS of white space and working with pictures that aren’t too dark to start with – not exactly my style.

But as with any workshop, I AM learning new things – some from others:  to get oil pastels to blend better, warm the page with a hair dryer.  Some I’ve figured out myself:  instead of using a black charcoal pencil to shadow, if your work is dark use a white charcoal pencil to highlight.

I also learned something totally unexpected.  In one of my posts on the Ning group (several folks were chomping at the bit for the 2nd lesson the first week), I suggested folks check out my coloring book pages to work on since they’re free.  Thus I learned how to add well over 100 people to my list in less than a week. 

I noted while participating with Creative Every Day in November (CED2010), that my blog hits went up and my list grew by a nice number of folks so incorporated that information into my marketing plan for this year:   Find an interesting group, sign up, play with new techniques and build your list and web following while you’re at it – or go play to work!.  What this means is that I must now (really, finally and now) figure out how to use the newsletter on my autoresponder so I can keep in touch with my new followers.  And since they came in as artists, I also need to figure out what will keep them interested.   Which feeds into another lesson I learned last year:  women love Wylde Women’s Wisdom quotes, but sometimes daily quotes overwhelm and I’ve lost subscribers not because they don’t love the quotes – they do – they just have too many things going on in their lives right now to keep up with them.  My answer to that is to create a once a week mini-workshop … maybe start with 3 months and run it up from there.

And there I must stop, because I have a very full plate now planned out for the year: 3 workshops and a retreat (the first workshop is Saturday:  Vision Masks, and is full); deck of cards or book, mini-workshops, keeping up with adding to the current Wylde Women’s quotes, learning and writing newsletters (that will be weekly I think…we’ll see if I can keep up with that and blogging.  Blogging for whatever reason is way less daunting than a newsletter.  For some reason I’m a bit in awe of newsletters.  Which is perfect since this is my year to face my fears and to live in the question of who I am being).

Here’s one of the bloggers who took me up on my coloring book offer – I LOVE what she did with the picture.  Here’s mine on the right – click over to see hers.  It is so different!  And I love what she has to say about coloring another person’s work:

Almost every artist I know loves to color.  Anything.  Everything.  I’m no exception.  Coloring your own images is great.  But so is coloring someone else’s.  Really.  It’s something I learned in a drawing class in college.  If from time to time you take the time to color an image drawn by someone else, you’ll find yourself working in curves, spaces, crevices and other areas that are new and uncharted territory, and you’ll have to do what artists do best:  Make decisions.  Decisions that you wouldn’t encounter if the image was your own, with your own preconceived idea of color placement [emphasis mine ]

That’s where the play comes in:  hanging out with creative folks who are generous in sharing what they know and what they’re learning as we work through the processes being presented, and who are adventurous and playful. 

No experience necessary – why not join in the fun?

Wild Women’s Wisdom:

Making a visual diary will help you uncover the forms that are yours.  If you can incorporate diary making into your daily life, you and your art will have an ongoing relationship [with formerly]  mundance notions such as shopping lists, appointments, and phone numbers along with philosophical commentary, overheard bits of dialogue and other things that come your way.  Nancy Azara