Daily Art Devotions: Day 40

October 27, 2018 Sarah Joyce BryantLeave a comment

I did it! I completed the 40-day #DailyArtDevotions Art Journal Journey with Elizabeth Foley. I have enjoyed expanding my creativity with the daily prompts. I really enjoy flipping through the journal and looking at everything I’ve created. I do still have to paste into the journal some of the entries that I created on separate paper. Along with those I’m going to add some other pieces I’ve created these last forty days, and I believe those together will fill up the entire book. Yay!

So, what’s next? Well, I’ve made a commitment to once again return to finishing my novel. I’ve joined a six-week writing program that offers support, structure, accountability, and fear busting so that I can fulfill my one main goal this year: having a polished first draft of my novel completed by 12/31/18. This novel continues to call to me no matter what I’ve done over the last seven years to avoid writing it. It’s clearly a story that must be told.

I don’t know how much art I will be doing over the next six weeks, but I am considering doing a short blog post each day to share my favorite line from that days writing. I realized today, as I was speaking with Elizabeth Foley, that I love art so much because of the connections I’ve made. Writing is a lonely process and there isn’t a beautiful piece of art to share at the end of each day. Connections get lost, and since I’m already fairly isolated, losing those connections is difficult for me. So, I will have to come up with a creative way to connect even while dedicating myself to completing my novel.

For the final day of this art journal journey, my page represents the gift of gratitude. I put gesso on the page first. Then I filled the entire page with what I’m grateful for in turquoise ink. I then added more gesso and some gold acrylic paint and used a brayer to spread them both across the page. I then added some Brusho Crystals in red and violet and sprayed them with water. Once the background was complete, I added my present made with cardstock with an embossed mandala (which is the first time I’ve embossed anything! Woohoo!). I then added a bow on the top with gold ribbon. And my gift of gratitude is complete as is this special journey ❤️

Daily Art Devotions: Day 21

October 7, 2018 Sarah Joyce BryantLeave a comment

For today’s #dailyartdevotions #artjournal practice we engaged with our inner child using coffee filters and water soluble markers. I marked on the filters with ecoline brush markers and transferred the colors with water to canvas paper and beige card stock that I had previously pasted into my repurposed cookbook art journal.

The colors were lighter than expected when transferred, but the pages are still really pretty. I think I will try it on watercolor paper next time. My favorite part, though, is the leftover coffee filters that I can use in other art projects. They look really cool.

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Daily Art Devotions: Day 8

September 24, 2018 Sarah Joyce BryantLeave a comment

For Day 8 of #DailyArtDevotions 40-day #artjournal #journey with Elizabeth Foley, I painted the cover of my repurposed cookbook turned art journal.

My portal in the center of the cover is a heart as my intention shifts to being heart-centered and open to what wants to come through when I create. My creative time will be respite for my overworked logical brain so that it can get some much needed rest.

For the cover, I used acrylic paints and stencils.

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Daily Art Devotions: Day 5

September 21, 2018September 21, 2018 Sarah Joyce BryantLeave a comment

For Day 5 of #DailyArtDevotions with Elizabeth Foley, I created an #artjournal page that represents my inner creative terrain. I started out with a tree woman that had come to me during meditation, but when I went to pick up my son, I was struck by the limitlessness and clarity of the brilliant blue sky, the wispy white clouds, and a single soaring blackbird, and I knew that that was a better representation of what my inner creative terrain looks like. There was a page in my #repurposed cookbook that already had birds and tree branches, so I added my own interpretation of my inner creative landscape to it.

Lately, I have been hearing song lyrics repeating in my head, some of them I haven’t heard in decades. Sometimes they even wake me up in the middle of the night. So, I added a music stamp and a script stamp with archival ink to represent the words and the music floating around in my inner terrain. I added Bombay inks over a patch of watercolor paper to represent the art and creativity that is inside me, and then sprayed Bombay inks on the original page to represent the expansiveness and texture of my terrain. I then used a mandala stamp with archival ink to represent the complexity and beauty of my inner creativity, and a tree swing stencil with archival ink to represent my inner child artist and my dreamy imagination.

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Daily Art Devotions: Day 4

September 20, 2018September 20, 2018 Sarah Joyce BryantLeave a comment

For day 4 of the 40-day #DailyArtDevotions #artjournal journey with Elizabeth Foley, I created the door to my soul. Creating this art journal page reminded a lot of the vision I had of the girl in the darkness with an angel standing on the other side of the door. All she had to do was choose to open the door and let the light in. Even with the vision, I still forget that it is a conscious choice every day to open the door and let the light in despite or in spite of the darkness. As I was drawing and coloring, I kept seeing a fence around the door, and I don’t know if that is to protect it or is yet another obstacle I’ve put up to overcome before I can open the door to my soul.

I believe my soul is calling me to follow my heart and continue on this artistic journey I’ve started on. But, I have so much daily resistance, perceived obligations, and it feels like I’m being pulled in so many directions, and I don’t know which one is the right one. It felt like my soul was telling me there was nothing I HAD to do, that instead, I had the option to choose what it was I wanted to do, that I would be supported no matter what I decided. Maybe there is no right or wrong decision cosmically. Maybe it is instead about making a decision for the right reason according to nobody but myself. If I am honest with myself, all I want to do right now is make art. My desire to do anything else just doesn’t exist. But I keep telling myself it is the irresponsible thing to do, that I need to do something to secure my future, that I need to be worried about money and security, and stop with all this crazy dreaming. And yet, I still just want to make art.

I really love working in this repurposed cookbook. There is something special about redefining a book by making it your own.

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Daily Art Devotions: Day Two

September 18, 2018September 19, 2018 Sarah Joyce BryantLeave a comment

For day two of #DailyArtDevotions with Elizabeth Foley, I continued prepping my repurposed book for my #artjournal by gluing pages together and adding watercolor paper, different colored cardstock paper, canvas paper, and black art paper. Then I completed the first page with watercolor, gold gesso (which I made by mixing gold acrylic paint and white gesso), calligraphy markers, and a sketch I had drawn on tracing paper that I glued onto the page. Then I worked on a few additional pages in the journal. I added the mandala that I created during the Art of Spiritual Living Retreat into this art journal, and I think I will color it in at some point. The travel page is cut out from one of my favorite magazines, Daphne’s Diary.

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Daily Art Devotions: Day One

September 18, 2018September 18, 2018 Sarah Joyce BryantLeave a comment

Today I began the Daily Devotions: A 40 Day Journey with Art Journaling program (#DailyArtDevotions) led by Elizabeth Foley who also led The Art of Spiritual Living Retreat. For today’s #artjournal practice, we spent time creating the container that would hold all of our art journal pages. For the container, we had the option to repurpose an old book. I was at first hesitant, since I am the kind of person who has only just recently started to write in my books (with pencil so I can erase it). But, I found an old book that has been collecting dust in my garage for many, many years, and decided it would be the perfect container for this 40-day journey. I had a great time gluing pages together and adding in watercolor paper. As I was putting it together, I had an idea that I could leave some of the pages as is and create found poetry as a unique addition to the art journal. I am looking forward to getting back the momentum I had built up with Karen Abend’s Sketchbook Revival and Find Your Flow program. I have decided to follow my heart and refocus on my artistic development and set my writing aside again…for a while.

My intention for this next 40 days is to grow as an artist who is committed to discovering and developing her craft and unique style on a daily basis.

Below: A few pages from my new repurposed art journal (drawings are from the original book and are not mine) and a visit from a hummingbird while I was working on it.