Friday, February 24, 2012

Stolen Ideas Project 2 - Extreme journaling

I think it was Juliana Coles who cornered the term 'extreme journaling', at least she's the one who advocates it most as far as I know. But never mind who came up with it first, it became the focus of my second Stolen Ideas Project! And not through Juliana by the way...

As you know I have the resolution to try new things this year and my Stolen Ideas Project is how I intend to do it. By stealing other people's ideas, prompts, nudges and techniques I can venture into a whole new world of art making (or just adapt my own tiny world a little). Now I know I said that I would use my box with the lottery tickets with all my suitable artsy books on them for this, but I figured there's no need to limit my expteriments to that.

What if I saw something interesting on the internet for instance or in a magazine or what if a friend told me about something I might like to try? Well, there's no need to be stingy and leave all those options out, so this Stolen Idea was not taken from a book but from a fellow art journaler. She is known as Artefaque on the web and she prompted this idea on the wonderful yahoo group Blissfully Art Journaling. The idea is to journal quickly and instinctively with a limited amount of supplies. Just go go go. Don't think about it, just do!
You can see some of Artefaque's pages over here, and here, and here. Is that cool or what? I had to try this!

So, on an empty Sunday morning I took out an extra large moleskine cahier (really there's no need to use one of those, I just happened to have one lying around unused and it is a nice size for this kind of thing), some simple supplies and leftovers and worked for three hours straight without stopping, just filling page after page after page. I have never journaled so fast and so wantonly in my life! Here's the result (yup, that's a lot of pictures).

























I only filled the front of every page and I filled a total of 23 pages! It was amazing! It's very liberating to just go at it without any reservations, ideas and a minimum of supplies. It really frees your mind to work this way and broadens your horizon.

Still, I don't know if I would always want to work this way. Although I'm not a person who plans a page in advance, I do like to work more deliberately than this. I do like the whole layout of a page to be pleasant to my eyes and I like to work a little more slowly and calmly.  I like the process too much to rush through it.

It was a wonderful experience though and it feels like it might be a very good way to get out of an artistic rut. I wasn't in one at the time, but it still felt like everything shifted in my head while doing it. So, I totally recommend you try this Stolen Idea at home and go extreme in your own little way!

Wishing you all a wonderful and very artsy weekend!