On the other side of the spectrum was the White Book. I've let you share in my struggle to make it work and I actually found some nice ways to fill a page and learned to enjoy making spreads or separate pages without thinking too much about writing. I liked the new type of pages I did in the White Book. I liked them a lot.
But what's happening now is what has happened every time after a while of trying to separate my journal writing from my more visual journaling and that is that I miss the combination of the two as I usually put them in my books. And at some point I always return to my old way of doing things.
It seems that for me there is only one way to work that really makes me feel like keeping a journal and that is to combine the visual with lots and lots of writing. I may do this in different ways through the times, but still it boils down to the same thing. I cannot seperate my writing from the visual aspect.
Well, I can, but only temporary and it never feels like I'm keeping a journal. My White Book became more like a photo-album and my written journal became like a diary. It's only together that for me they are like a journal.
This is a very personal thing and you may wonder why I even bother to try different approaches, but at the time I make these decisions I really need to step away from my usual way of working so I can broaden my horizon a little. And I have learned some new things in making up a page and in writing. This is good.
Compare it to traveling. You need to see things outside your own world in order to really appreciate what you have and...you take what you saw back home with you and it influences your life. I think for instance that the one page collages I did in the White Book are something I really want to keep up from time to time to give room for bigger prints of my own photographs. And I liked playing with magazine images to make a collage. The White Book could just be a next step to a combination of ways of journaling.
But the writing must return to it and so it has. In this post you see four finished spreads and two spreads that are still waiting for writing. I so enjoyed going back to that way of working. This is the cool part about being an artist and a journaler or maybe just about being a person in the free world: you are allowed to change your mind. And guess what? You are allowed to change it a hundred times over!
The journey of my journaling keeps putting challenges before me, but I must stay true to myself and if at some point I need to turn back to where I came from, so be it. I will bring the experience with me and this way nothing goes to waste!
Wishing you all a wonderful and artsy Wednesday!
(PS Because it's a bit of busy week for me I will only be posting once this week. See you next week!)