February 12, 2009
Soul Journal – Day 18 Plus
On Day 18, Sarah gave us some additional assignments. First, she asked us to think and write about what our Soul Journaling experience has been like thus far. Then she also told us to go back and work on our taped pages some more.
I avoided doing any of this for a long time, and I’m not sure why. I didn’t feel comfortable doing anything to my taped pages, and I also really wasn’t sure what to do. I think having the structured directions – even for something like the “collage potpourri” prompts – really helps me a lot. When left on my own, I simply didn’t have a clue what to do. In the end, all I ended up doing was just taking a brayer with rubber bands wrapped around it (a technique I read about in a book), running it through some paint, and rolling it over the pages a couple of times. It wasn’t even a big enough difference to even take a picture of.
But, I did feel like this would be a good time to go back to my earlier “Torn” and “comfort” pages and do some more work on them. I gave the pages some more layers of gesso – and was surprised to find out that the gesso, even in layers, still remains very transparent. My extra layers really didn’t seem to make that much difference.
I felt like the biggest theme of my Soul Journal has been simply that it captures different bits and pieces of my life, so I used that as my theme for this page and wrote that phrase on a dotted game scorecard. I used the scorecard part to declare myself a winner on the opposite page – because I feel like the SJ process has benefited me in many ways.
After this, I added on some more layers of paint, still keeping sort of the basic distinction I originally had on the two pages, with cool colors on the left and warm colors on the right. I also used a dried baby wipe I had leftover from cleaning some rubber stamps, and used it to sort of do a dry brush style wipe of color in several places.
I also decided to do the fork-painting technique, and then used markers to write different words about how I feel about my Soul Journal and the SJ process.
I like these pages much better than the earlier “emotional” pages. The earlier pages served their purpose at the time, I believe, but by the same token, I am kind of glad to be rid of them and have something new in their place.
© amateur-in-art, 2009
An Amateur's Adventures in Art 