Monday, July 18, 2011

The Mix Tape Journal

Yours truly is a fan of having a reason to draw... you might have noticed this given my penchant for drawing and then donating it for projects, especially charities. It gives me an excuse and a deadline, so I leap at such things. This is why I've decided to try a second year of The Sketchbook Project, but holy wow is that a post for another time.
Twitter being the wonderful resource that it is, I stumbled across a few people chatting over a traveling art journal project they'd come up with. I went to the blog of one Brown Paper Bunny who was instigating the entire thing and read over the rules/guidelines to see what it was all about. And then, in a moment of OHMYGODIWANNADOTHATTOO!!!!!1!one!!11!eleven .... I submitted my name.
And they said yes, we would love to have you.
And I thought oh crap, what have I gotten myself in to? Some of these volunteers are professional illustrators...... oh god....
Well, I had enough time between then and about 2 weeks ago to forget A.) that I had volunteered and B.) that I thought I was not a good artist. I'd had plenty of time to get mildly cocky regarding that whole thing, so that when the official Mix Tape Journal showed up, I squealed with delight and bounced up and down in my kitchen with all the fury of a 3rd graders on pop rocks and Mountain Dew. My husband kept his distance and said he was excited for me, bless his soul.
I'll be honest, I let the journal sit for a good 2 weeks just pondering what I wanted to draw. I'd put thought in to it initially and had a really good idea for both my double-page spreads I was supposed to work on, but after seeing the previous drawings in it (6 total to date, done by 3 different individuals) I was a bit intimidated. There was a 3-D paper piano on one page, and everybody was following the theme of blue beautifully. I wanted to do something that held on to the idea of blue, but also had a little sway. I also wanted to draw my favorite place I'd ever been, seeing as this was a "traveling" journal.
What resulted were the following 2 images. I took one day each to do the pencils, then to "ink" them in sakura pigma markers, and then a final day to apply colors with pitt artist markers. IT WAS A BLAST.



and also...



So I found a way to slip in my favorite city/mountain in the world AND my favorite flowers even though they weren't blue.
It was a ton of fun, and I'm sad to see the journal go. It makes me want to work on my own traveling journal, except that perhaps I focus on images from all the places I've been.... it would need to be thick and the paper sturdy, let us say that. I was quite the gypsy in my day. And perhaps best of all, I got to improve my technique when coloring with pitt markers, which I've had but hesitated to use out of inexperience.
It now moves on to the next individual, as all objects that travel must. I really look forward to seeing what everyone else comes up with and how they apply the guidelines. And in the end, I'm really hoping that my efforts have added artistic value to the journal as a whole. That's all I really want to get out of this endeavor.

By the way, Brown Paper Bunny is quite a lovely lady and if you are of the crafting sort she has a most lovely blog. Clicky the name and you shall be there!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I love what you've done in the book! Thank you so much for being a part of this fun little project. :D

Red said...

Of course! It was super fun and I'm hoping to find more projects now to collaborate with! There really is a special energy that comes from lots of different enthusiastic heads all coming together! :D