Winter Comes on

Winter Comes OnIn our art journaling class last week we had a go at blowing runny paint (mixed with some kind of flow medium as well as water) with a straw. I ended up with a background that reminded me of winter branches. I took the background home and stared at it for a while. Then I was looking through an old diary called “The lover’s diary” and I came across this couple in a painting called “The Garden of Eden” by Riviere. They are in a cold looking bleak background, yet her face is lit with love, they seem to be in their own little world. I imagined them on my winter tree background. Before dinner I had a sunset walk on the beach. The winter is almost here, the evening falls earlier every day, but the sunsets in May are spectacular. Nevertheless, I felt a bit depressed when I was driving home, as I often seem to do after sunset on a winter’s evening. I wonder if it’s a kind of seasonal affected melancholy, perhaps it is an ancient coding in my genes? My husband , who does not get depressed, finds it hard to understand these feelings. But he is always there for me, being solid and kind and supportive. So my gratitude to him drags me out of any feelings of depression, and by the time I was glueing down these images I was cheery again. Doing something creative (as opposed to watching television in the evenings) is a mood lifter as well!

Anyway, all of that is what this page turned out to be about. Many different feelings and ideas came together on the page. Art journaling is a wonderful thing.

What to do with a beautiful background

It’s hard to know what to do when you’ve made a background you really like and are afraid to ruin it. I had these two backgrounds waiting a long time, months, to have something else put on them.  I posted about them here earlier in the year. This is what I have ended up doing on these 2 backgrounds and I like how they’ve turned out.

Both Sides Past Lives

Because this page already had the 2 Botticelli faces I had an idea to make the page about the way that I can usually see both sides of most issues. The angels are speaking in Latin, as all my art journal angels do….they are saying “On the one hand (side) ” and “on the other hand”

 

This page already had some ancient looking pillars and an Egyptian statue, but I didn’t have a clue what it was about. It came together more when I added the flying eagle, which I decided represented the soul flying from life to life. As I say in this post, I’m not totally convinced that I believe in past lives, but I am drawn to certain places and time periods, so I was just fantasizing about where my past lives may have been, if I indeed have had some!

Do you think you have had past lives? Where do you think they may have been?