Evolving is Positively My New Mantra!

Evolving is positively my new mantra!  Let me explain. Last week's Sketchbook Skool assignment for Polishing Klass was to take art I already had created and modify it.  Other than that, there was to be no planning ahead, just trusting the process, and a theme would evolve.  

I struggled to find a piece that I wanted to modify, so I dug through all my bits and pieces of scraps and thought I would start there.  The little rectangles are what I chose.  They are pieces I had cut out of a previous journal to make windows. 

Juliana Coles, our instructor, challenged us to fill in our journal pages with writing, then circle words to emphasize and paint out areas that we didn't want to emphasize.  I chose several words, but ended up settling on the word "evolving".

Next, we were to add layers of pictures, drawings, and words until a theme evolved. I took a picture from a pamphlet from the de Young Art Museum in San Fransisco. The artist is Pierre Bonnard. I rotated his photo upside down and decided to use the colours from it to build my page.

Since these are the first two pages of my new journal, I was hoping to see a theme develop that could represent the journey I hoped to experience in this new visual journal. I want to see my style and technique and skills evolve.  As the page evolved, I also became more excited about the assignment.  

Done?

Nope!

I thought I had completed the pages yesterday, but in the true spirit of evolving, and in following Juliana's advice of continuing to evolve as an artist, I decided to continue to add onto the page today. 

I modified the female's lips and made her smile to show more happiness about evolution.  I also added a border around the outside perimeter of the pages, my rubber stamp self-portrait, outlined the boxes and words and added a relevant Ojibwe quote...

" Life continually gives us opportunities to grow and become.  For the most fragile flowers push and grow out of the hardest rocks."

I am positively going to enjoy this new mantra and art journal!  I don't know if these pages are finished.  I wrote the starting date and will add the journal completion date when I have filled the entire journal.  Most likely I will add more journaling about the journey at the end too!

Happy Paint Friday!