Color My World
Surfacing

Playtime

Here's another art journal site, John Copeland.His journals have a raw power that exude energy and a very masculine point of view.

I am still painting journal pages, content with doing layered backgrounds in acrylics without worrying about what I'm going to put on the pages later. I'm up to elbows in paint,. The nightstand is littered with brushes and pots of water and the bed is neatly organized with boxes of paint bottles and tubes. (No matter how well-equipped the studio, I end up working on the bed.)

This all began when I was trying to recreate the beautiful paintings I saw at my favorite boutique over the weekend. In the same misguided notion that leads people to say: "I could write that!", I said:" I could paint that!" Granted, I have a passing familiarity with art techniques, but let's face it, I'm no figurative painter.

But what came out of this misguided attempt? I am starting with the basics, learnings to mix colors, refine my palette, try out different brushes, and discover what I can and cannot do with paints. I am into contrasting hues at the moment. My page spread may be mango opposite paprika, and iris blue opposite cadmium yellow. Over both pages I am writing in teal green, creating a background of marks and squiggles that will give texture to my journal pages, or stand alone as experiments.

Working art journals, pure experiments in process and technique. I'd forgotten about that part of art. I'd become some result-driven: What can I hang on the wall? What can I I submit for publication? What can I scan in for the new weblog?

Instead I am spraying pages with bursting pink segments of grapefruit, dribbling the crimson of blood oranges, waving the green of Palm Sunday fronds, and cracking open colors of Easter egs. I am tumbling stones of amethyst purple, writing in icy sheens of platinum, and playing marbles with rubies and opals that glint and glimmer across the walls on my room.

Spring in my step, spring in my soul.

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