Welcome to International Fake Journal Month 2013!

What is IFJM?
Please read the page "What Is IFJM" for details.
Learn the difference between Faux, Fake, and Fake Historical Journals.

2019 IFJM Celebration
IFJM has been suspended indefinitely. Please read the pinned post about this below.

Participants who Post Their Journals
A list of 2018 participants who are posting their fake journals this year will appear near the top of the right side bar of this blog around April 6. Lists of participants who posted their pages in 2010 through 2017 appear lower in the same column. Please pay them a visit and check out their fake journals.

View a Couple of Roz's Past Fake Journals
Roz's 2009 fake journal takes place in an alternate Twin Cites, where disease has killed the human and bird populations. (It ends up being an upbeat tale of friendship.) Watch a video flip through of Roz's 2009 fake journal here.

Read an explanation of Roz's insanely complex 2011 fake journal.

Tips on Keeping a Fake Journal
Click on "tips" in the category cloud.

Remember, "Life's so short, why live only one?"


Saturday, April 25, 2009

A Look into Trudi Sissons' Fake Journal



Above: A page from the 2009 fake journal of Trudi Sissons (©2009 Trudi Sissons). Click on the image for an enlargement. Read below for additional information.


Trudi Sissons wrote a couple days ago to tell me she had just stumbled upon this blog and immediately sat down to participate. I love to hear that!

Here's what Trudi had to say about her process:
I have had an 'alter ego' for a few years now. Her name is 2 and she is the artist in me wanting a simple life with two dresses - thus the name of my blog - Two Dresses Studio. Two summers ago, I completed two workshops (no pun intended) with Nick Bantock on Salt Spring Island. He taught me to let go of my 'inner critic' and I have done a paragraph or so about the death of the IC (as in "iK') But, I realized he'd been born again when I read through some of your posts, so I thought I must have a little talk with IC.

I wasn't prepared to take on a bird, but I loved your 2009 IFJM journal, so I started with watercolor (H20 Twinklers) and mapped out a feather. My IC was alive and well, and initially even bigger than I ever recall. But slowly, Two got the best of him and eventually, the brush moved outside the lines and complementary colors went the way of the dinosaur. Well, even the feather morphed and up popped Mother Earth. You never know when you let yourself go!!!
Trudi has posted another page to her fake journal at the web link I've provided above. You can also see her photography and collage work, plenty of fun things to look at and be inspired by.

But perhaps the best inspiration from Trudi today is the way she just jumped in and didn't let the internal critic hamper her!

All of us get a little cocky sometimes. We think that we have things under control because we have been productive creatively for long periods. Then we see something, a glimpse perhaps, if not a full-blown situation, which shows us the internal critic is alive and kicking. Don't be discouraged by that quick glimpse, just use it as a check point to do diagnostics and get tuned up again. Silence the internal critic at the first whimpering or needling noise. It's faster and easier than waiting. All the time you gain is time you can put back into your art and life.

Oh, Trudi did one other thing that I have been recommending, she kept her time expenditure under an hour. Don't set out to spend hours and hours on a new project such as this. A missed session will put you overwhelmingly behind.

Remember, 15 minutes, even 10 minutes a day. That's all it takes.

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