Friday, October 8, 2010

Settled Back In . . .

Yes, I have now, finally gotten settled back in and relishing my charmed life at home. I'm updating my journal . . . attempting to catch up all the incomplete pages from my "Women's Journaling Retreat" at Lake Alpine Resort (http://lakealpinewomensjournalingretreat2010.blogspot.com/) in California. Here's one I just HAD to re-do.

This was from a Mandala exercise and the image I received was of a hawk. He was very up close and direct, not necessarily confronting, but honest. Boy, have to tell you, on the spot, my mind could NOT conjure up the face of a hawk.

So, I did my best. I wrestled because I wanted a closer viewpoint, but ended up with this sad rendition of what looks like to me, a parrot with a "bad bead" day. I was further bother by my use of wax crayons, making the image speckled because of the cold press watercolor paper. ARGH! I just kept apologizing to the "Hawk Spirits" and as soon as I got home ... one of the first things I did was correct the vision of what I'd REALLY seen.

I did keep available for viewing the under drawing ... just to remind myself that I've not mastered the memory of a hawk and need pay more attention to creatures of nature. I hinged the left corner and then, using a thin ribbon, made 3 slits. One slit was in the edge of my new piece and the other two are in the journal page itself. Tying a knot under the new piece, then threading the ribbon thru the bottom up, affixed the ribbon to the movable piece. And then I could weave the ribbon down into the first slit of the journal page, coming back up thru the second, forming kind of a "tension" fastener.

The sweet lil Aspen leaf was from the hike my co-instructor, Jean Warren (http://www.jeanwarren.com/), and I took. It was our first full day at Lake Alpine and we'd wanted to drink in the lusciousness of the area. I knew of a mild hike (4 miles) that took us to Duck Lake. There were the gorgeous beauties of Aspen trees that had inspired this image many years ago. All of them had gained much circumference, just gaining power and beauty in my opinion. As we were leaving the meadow, I found this sole yellow Aspen leaf and, of course, had to revere it in my journal. I used "Mod-Podge" to seal it into the journal and preserve the leaf.

It's a perfect way to punctuate the ending of one of my journals . . . on to many more . . .

3 comments:

Humberto Dib said...

Hi, I just popped in to say hello, great blog, congratulations!
You can visit mine if you feel like.
Cheers from Argentina!
Humberto.

www.humbertodib.blogspot.com

Unknown said...

The new hawk is exquisite! Very clever of you to thread that painting into your journal like that. And I admire your persistence in getting it right!

Reed Stevens said...

I laughed out loud at the "parrot head" and "ARGHH!" How interesting and useful to see the sketch and the explanation of the coarse paper followed by the fine, finished hawk. Watercolor?