“I’ll do that when I have time” – Day 10 project

Before

It’s 9.56 am and I’ve just had a flick through The Art Journal Workshop by Traci Bunkers. I bought this book many years ago because the artwork looked interesting and kind of scrapbook-y. I didn’t fully appreciate that “visual journalling” is a thing, so I may have to spend some time working out whether to do this as a one-off project or start a book to update it more often. I have yet to read more on the subject.

I have an increasing niggle that, to do this properly, I may be a tad ill-prepared and perhaps the dried-out surface wipes I have earmarked as a substitute for the baby wipes, which seem to feature a lot in this kind of project, will not suffice. Oh well, it’s been a while since I’ve used paint, surely this will be a fun day, as well as a messy day …

After

It’s 10.10 pm. I finished late this afternoon and was exhausted from all the artistic effort, hence the late post.

As you can see, it’s a bit crap, but I enjoyed this project a lot. I even got paint on my hands, which made me feel extremely artistic. I hadn’t really appreciated that art, or visual, journals are intended to be – well, as the name suggests, a journal. I was not prepared to think of a brilliant, innovative theme so I decided on a subject for today, which when I thought about it was about how to relax. Every colour, stamp and picture reflects things that make me feel good. The yellow is the sun, blue is the sky (but I didn’t get around to mixing paints until later on) and green is nature. That’s obvious, right?! There is an old piece of map, letters from a magazine, a few magazine pictures, stamps, washi tape, a bit of chalk, white gesso and other paint, acrylic tubes. The bits I wrote are mainly activities I could do that I would find relaxing.

Some high and low points of this project:

1. Dried up kitchen cleaner wipes appear to work as well as baby wipes for reconfiguring acrylic paint. It is easy to get carried away, smearing and wiping.
2. I have a lot of craft stuff, far more than I realised.
3. If you lie on a laminate floor to “do art”, your back hurts and your lovely pedicure (project 2) wipes off your toenails and onto the floor in big pink skid marks, leaving bald patches on your toenail.
4. It is very tedious washing rubber stamps and paint brushes.
5. Thick paint takes longer than expected to dry. Rubbing on transfers on seemingly dry paint results in paper coming off your “canvas”.
6. Washi tape is your saviour when you remove a chunk of your canvas. Left-middle tape cleverly conceals a chunk of missing paper.
7. An old credit card (or, in my case, Everyman cinema membership card) used to smooth out paint is a surprisingly addictive activity.
8. Cutting out letters from magazines makes me feel like a kidnapper and it’s ever so slightly exciting.
9. You need a lot of space for craft/art. I did not have a lot of space.
10. It feels like it takes longer to tidy away an art project than to actually create one.
11. It is easy to be distracted during art, planning your next projects, though my wall-painting art tangent was scuppered by the paint company seemingly not taking orders at present despite their website announcement to the contrary (I know, really, first world problem).
12. Art (because now I’m clearly an artist*) is not conducive to snacking (see project 9) due to paint on fingers and concentration. *I’m so not.
13. Thought as to the subject matter of my journal page would have helped.
14. I would not say my project is a thing of exemplary beauty but it was an enjoyable distraction and it felt good to be actually cutting and pasting and painting and creating.
15. I will do this again, it was easy and fun and a manageable amount of mess.

So that’s it, my ten projects finished within my timescale. There are a lot more projects on my list, and the list is growing, though I need a break from being so ludicrously diligent. Now I know I have the discipline to do these projects, I will, maybe in a few weeks and fewer per week, continue with them. Despite the ravioli low, the botched hair cut that was the subject matter of my edited video and losing my camera SD card and Fitbit, I have enjoyed this use of my extra free time, I’ve been far busier (mainly in a good way) than normal on days off work and it is satisfying to finally have done a small proportion of the things I so often hear myself saying, “I’ll do that when I have time”.