Primal Marks, Riding the Breath, Washes of Color
Now that your journal has the intuitive collage on the outside, we are ready to work with the journal pages inside. We will explore the texture of every page and how they respond to various art materials. You will begin to get a feel for the surface to be covered by adding marks and washes of transparent color to each and every open spread in 20 second intervals.
Get physical!
Jump into the necessary chaos of art making!
Anointing your journal is a bold commitment to your entire journal. You will not only be adding line and transparent color, you will be adding your energy, your expression and enlivening each page.
This act sets a physical intention signaling, even to the shyest of images, that you are willing to be vulnerable, take risks and invite them in.
You may feel anxious at first – “Oh, I don’t want to ruin my brand new journal!” or “It will just look like a big mess!”
However, this journal is not meant to be precious, it is meant to be activated!
Your pages are waiting for you to make the next move. You will make marks and washes right over existing drawings and taped in magazine images. This is the early stage in which the foundation of your work is being laid. Whatever happens now will become integrated with future layers of techniques. Let Loose!
Remember: The purpose of Image Quest Sojourn is to create an intriguing portal that beckons even the shyest images to emerge.
About The Container of Time
In the spirit of play, the connection with each spread is meant to be brief: 20 seconds at the most. You will mark and create a transparent color wash on each page, insert a protective spacing paper (wax paper, bubble wrap or plastic bag) and every now and then add additional textured material (vegetable netting for instance) between the wet pages… then turn the page to begin again.
Timing: Note how many normal breaths you take in 20 seconds and use this as the rhythm to guide the initiation of your journal spreads (2 open pages = a Spread) .
Notice how it feels to make different kinds of marks.
Explore dots, dashes, feeling lines (jabbing the page versus gentle strokes).
Add printing or cursive writing; change it up!
Try an oil pastel, a wide marker, a skinny pencil, or rubbing the side of a crayon down the page.
Try not to turn to familiar symbols that you usually draw or doodle. Experiment with instinctive, primal jabs, lines and shapes.
With light transparent washes you are loosening and softening the interior of your book while simultaneously loosening and softening yourself.
Breathe into it.
As soon as you make a mark, move quickly to apply color washes to each page. Place spacers (wax paper, saran wrap, or plastic bag material) over painted surfaces before turning to the next page. Occasionally insert bubble wrap or vegetable netting for added texture. As you paint your journal pages with transparent color, a rhythm of breath and timed movement sets in.
As color transforms the pages, the sound of brush on paper and the sense of wet paper permeates. This process adds strength to each page, “seals in” the fresh pulp, and puts your energy and mark on each page of the journal.
Make sure every page, front and back, is attended to – this begins the merging between the artist and the pages.
About Breath
Note how many normal breaths you take in a 20 second interval. Use this number of breaths to guide your rhythm.
Awareness of breath is a meditation practice, creating a sense of stability and safety for ourselves. Our vital energy ‘comes home’ on the body’s “in” breath and moves back into the world with its “out” breath.
When we focus on the rise and fall of our breath, a safe place is conceived, a neutral zone where there is no critic .
Coming home to breath allows us to remain an open channel for our images to move through the thin veil of everyday reality and the reality of imagination. Conscious breathing is the artist’s touchstone, facilitating the creative process with integrity.
A quote from expressive arts therapist Sally Atkins provides a fuller understanding of how the breath integrates our body, mind, and spirit:
On a biological level, the breath both brings oxygen necessary for survival and carries away carbon dioxide, the gaseous waste product of metabolism. Metaphorically, this action (breath) may also be seen as the continual process of bringing in what is needed and carrying away what is no longer needed. It can cleanse us of tension, fatigue, pain, anxiety and worry. It can bring calm, energy, peace, clarity, and stillness.