Above is the video flip through of my 2015 Fake Journal, made for this year's celebration.
It has taken some time for me to put the flip through together because I was dealing with a series of respiratory infections. If the embedded video doesn't play please see it on YouTube.
In this video I talk about how my fake journal this year became something quite unexpected. (They usually do, but this one was "unexpected squared.")
I talk about how I came up with the image and tagline I used for this year's celebration and how the desire to get back to painting, after a shoulder injury, led to a focus on painting.
My fake journal this year was actually completed between February 17 and March 18. I was working on another group project and the fake journal took it over in the most serendipitous way.
I find that every year when I do a fake journal something like this happens. It's what keeps me "faking" it every April.
This year, it was not only serendipitous, but fortunate, that two projects merged in February and March to become this year's fake journal. April was a series of family health crises which needed as much attention as we could give them. Sometimes I find that I do my best work when the only time I can work is in the middle of a crisis, this was true in 2009, and again in 2013. But this year my own physical health was so depleted, that April was instead a reminder of limits, and a reminder to set limits to protect oneself.
The video also contains my thoughts about prompt-based projects.
I hope you'll take some time to sit and watch the video. I worked in a 6 x 6 inch journal containing gray Stonehenge paper. (This journal is not available commercially at this time.)
I set up a format of a smaller rectangle on the center of the right hand page. At the top and bottom of the image I stamped the text. On the opposite page, after the image had been posted to Facebook I printed out the text I'd posted with each image and added that to the left page of the spread. It's in that text where the character comes out most clearly.
My wrap-up for 2015 IFJM is contained within this video. I will repeat emphatically that I will never do another fake journal with a character so CLOSE to my actual self.
See my regular blog, Roz Wound Up, on Monday, June 8, 2015, for a closer look at my internal critic, a topic that came up within this project.
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11 comments:
Thank you so much for this. Fascinating!
Hi Roz, That was a fascinating experience you had! I too feel immediately constrained with journal prompts, though I know many who love using them. I have several favorite subjects that I return to again and again when I sketch and always feel that prompts are interfering with my creative flow and exploration of those things. Perhaps the newness and randomness of the prompts is too disconcerting for me, too jarring. (I take a long time to warm up to an idea that comes from outside myself). I had exactly the opposite problem in terms of character. I had a really hard time actually journaling as someone else. Thus my character was very much "me" only with a different background and much older. Perhaps just "me" in a different life. I tried to write in a different voice in the first entry of my IFJM journal and hated it. What I wrote and the humor I tried to create fell flat, so I switched gears and came closer to home so to speak. However, I think it would be amazing to write as someone else and think that each year during IFJM I will try to move a little further from myself and maybe in four or five years I will have mastered that. There were a number of really intriguing entries in your fake journal this year but by far my fav was the finch. Thanks of sharing.
Great job on your wrap-up. I loved seeing your journal pages this way, and I didn't mind stoping and starting the video to read the text, which made me look even closer at your pages. Thanks for sharing your experience and your work!
Thanks Anne, Jan, and Joan, I'm glad you enjoyed the flip through.
Really glad Joan that you didn't mind stopping. I thought of different ways to do it, but once I got well I just wanted it to be finished! I'm going to post some of them as illustrations to other posts on my regular blog, just because they work with the topics, so you'll see some of them in "crisper" and static form.
Jan, thanks for the commiseration on journal prompts. I too have favorite subjects I return to and feel that prompts interrupt me from doing just that. Since I've been journaling for so long I also find that most prompt lists are things that I've drawn a million times before and it's even more important that I get on to what I love. I think it's great that you know you take a long time to warm up to an idea that comes from outside yourself—that means you can stay focused on your favorites.
I'm glad that you were intrigued enough by the process to consider trying IFJM again and again! I look forward to what you come up with in the future and how you might play with the voice. In many ways I can hardly wait until next year because I feel in some respects I got robbed—it's the residual grumpiness from being under the weather so long. Just today I felt that my legs and lungs finally worked in unison on my bike ride!
Glad you liked the Finch Jan. I usually don't have a favorite, but I think it might be the blue painting I made of my Uncle Dick, which didn't turn out like him at all, but I like it.
Thanks to you all for taking a look!
I don't think that you came off as complaining or grumpy at all. I actually liked the fact that you explained what you were doing and why. I really like the way you designed your pages. Glad that you shared it all with us.
Michelle, did you get a chance to read some of the entries I wrote for Facebook? Or were you going by what I was saying in the video. I'm pretty whiny in the written entries. If you saw those and still don't think so I think I need to get you're phone number so I can call you when I have a bad day because you are just the right mix of sympathy and empathy I need!
Thanks for watching and I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'm glad you liked the page layout. I actually really enjoyed taping the up each day so the margins would be the same. It became a fun ritual. I didn't even mention that—I was so busy whining!
HAHAHAH.
Roz
I read them, Roz. Maybe I just whine more than you do. LOL!
Thanks Michelle, this is too funny.
I have only just stumbled across IFJM and am so disappointed that I have missed out on this years event....2016 seems so far away! I like the concept of a fake journal because I do find it hard to express myself with either the written word or the scribbled mark...plus I tend to hate and dismiss anything that I might draw or write as not being worthwhile.Plus I tend not to like these "gloopy" art journals with lots of sentiment and heartfelt angst.So,perhaps taking on the persona of someone else and talking through them my "creative blockage" can be released through their droll sense of humour and ironic look on life.At least I have a good length of time to round my character out!!
Thank you for sharing your work and thoughts very inspirational and thought provoking.
Urban Rustic, I'm glad you enjoyed the flip through. I hope you'll join in April 2016.
However, please know that you can do a fake journal any time. And if you have the creative blocks you're describing it would seem to be a good fit. Why wait until April.
Good luck. Thanks for reading.
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