Inspiration

Artist's are often asked where they get their artistic inspiration. I have read so many answers from a variety of artists, including some who say that inspiration has nothing to do with it, rather it is a matter of simply building a practice of making art every day. I personally need inspiration. I have written in the past about how I can get a spark of inspiration from simple things. Things in nature especially inspire me as I reflect on God's Creation. But even things as simple as a pattern in wallpaper or the shape of an architectural feature can spark my inspiration. One of the most important things I have learned about myself, and especially the artist within me, has been discovering how closely connected my emotional energy and my time spent connecting to God through His Word and prayer are for my artistic inspiration. When either of those two things are out-of-whack then my artistic inspiration is also and I experience dry times. So, for art, as well as other aspects of my life, I have been learning that I need to constantly work on and adjust my rhythm or pace of life in order for me to maintain a healthy me - emotionally, spiritually, and artistically. I find a vicious circle at work in times when I have not kept balance to my emotional and spiritual pace and health: because I am drained of energy I struggle to create, and I create and play with art as one of my ways for emotional balance and to restore emotional energy. This is one reason why I chose {renew} as my word for this year. Learning what renews my energy has had a significant impact on my journey out of burn-out and this year it feels like that journey has gained upward momentum. So, I have been praying for God to renew some of the areas of my life that were affected the most by the burn-out I experienced in the past few years.

In July for Take Me Deeper, the weekly devotion and Bible study at His Kingdom Come, our theme has been honor. I really connected with some of the verses in the book of Revelation that point us to giving glory and honor to God, so those verses became my theme for my art journal pages to go along with the devotions. Another theme popped up as I made my pages - leaves. I usually do my pages one at a time each week, but I had had a spark of creative energy and decided to make my page backgrounds in one sitting. I selected my passages and I made my pages for the whole month all at the same time. I'm going to show them all together...and spoiler alert: Even though this Friday is week 5 of the July devotions, I am showing my art journal page for that day early in order to show them all together. 

The leaves didn't end up on every page but seeing this theme emerge made me think about how leaves really symbolize renewal for me. I love Spring. It's the season of renewal. I love to watch the trees daily become full as the leaves grow. There are so many shades of green in the Spring. The world is fresh and new again after the cold, gray winter. So, it seems that leaves make a perfect symbol for my word this year.

In the past week I've had the pleasure of finding out that I have been inspiration to others in their art. Valerie Sjodin mentioned that she had been inspired by posts about my use of circles on my art pages, You can see her art here. And then the other day I got a note from Leigh Ann Napier that she had mentioned in a Facebook post that she had made a piece of art inspired by one of my sunburst collage pages. Leigh Ann used her sunburst collage to make a vision board for her family's values. Here is her piece:

Inspiration is one of the main reasons I decided to accept the invitation to be a part of the foundation team for the His Kingdom Come community. I wanted to be a part of a group that inspired others to go deeper in their relationship with God and to express that faith through creativity. I hope you connect with the things that inspire you this week,

Welcome March!

"When March comes in like a lion, it goes out like a lamb."

I sure hope this saying is true! Three days into March and we've had a small snow storm and now snow and freezing rain. February was one of the coldest on record. I'm so ready for Spring!

We are now 2 full months into the year and the Take Me Deeper weekly faith art project in the His Kingdom Come community. That means that next Friday we'll begin a new monthly theme for our devotions. And Sunday a new set of prompts for our word was posted on the Logos365 page. The HKC foundation team launched its first collaborative class this past Saturday, Faithart 101. We each took an area of the techniques we use in faith art and provided videos and written tutorials and gave examples of our art and our process. I took on the area of Bible study techniques, teaching some inductive style study techniques and how to use online Bible study tools. I also shared some of my art process and tips AND I gave a mini tutorial on my hand-lettering (a frequent request). You can join the class anytime and you can take one of them or all of them. Here are a few sneak peeks at my class:

Pages from February's Take Me Deeper Faithart project:

February Week 3: Love Your Neighbor

My take on the study techniques from the Scripture Snippets class
by Paula Parkison on the HKC site.

February Week 4: Love Yourself

This last photo is a Scripture quote I made for a slide in my class video so I glued it onto a page in my TMD journal.

February was a busy month with deadlines for the class and future TMD devotions and my father-in-law has had health problems which have required all of us to pitch in. Last week this little one turned 2. She is the first of our God-grand children that we've know since birth. Her family has been a part of our life for almost 7 years and they are such a blessing to us. Enjoy your week!

Art Journaling a Song

As I mentioned in my last post, I had a song stuck in my head that we had sung at church and decided to get creative with it. I made an accordion page out of watercolor paper. I buy my watercolor paper in a large 18 x 24 pad in order to have more flexibility in how I use it. So I cut a piece 8 1/4 x 24 and then scored it every 4 inches. Once folded it gave me 6 - 4 x 8 1/4 sections per side. In the previous post I showed my pages in the prep stage:

I spread the verses and the chorus out on the 4" sections on both sides.

This was a fun project. It gave me opportunities to play with my Gelli plate and to experiment with some different colors - such as the navy background behind the earth. It also was fun expressing a song through art journaling. And I enjoyed working with 4 inch panels. I now just need to work out how I will attach it into my journal.

For Take Me Deeper at His Kingdom Come this week we responded with art to Matthew 22:37..."love the Lord your God with all heart, soul and mind."

#TMD2015 Feb week 2

And I worked on some goals for January and February in conjunction with my Logos365 word for the year: Renew. I'm going slow and trying to work toward lasting change that will lead to renewal, so I'm just focusing on one area at a time. Right now it is health.

I don't scrapbook and haven't done Project Life but a friend gave me a package of these graph project life cards and I'm enjoying using them on my art journal pages. Last week I made a little gift of prayer cards out of them: I already posted a picture of them but will do so again since I'm talking about the graph cards.

It was a great way to use up scraps from, Gelli printed papers. I've ended up using one on the current page I'm working on for TMD. I'm hunkering down this weekend and staying inside as much as possible as we get a visit from the Arctic with frigid temperatures. It's a good excuse for playing with art. :) Have a good weekend!

My Word for 2015

It's no secret on this blog that I continually struggle with issues of burnout. I think it may go hand-in-hand with the ebb and flow of life in full time ministry - or at least in my life in ministry. In the past few years this struggle has become more and more evident and, at times, incapacitating. It is a huge part of why I got connected to art and to art journaling as a way to help create balance and energy. At times my schedule is packed full of activities and events. In the midst of this there are kids and people with needs that need ministering to. My emotional, mental and spiritual energy can get drained and I have tried to find ways over the years to keep this all in balance.

In the past year, with the help of some spiritual companions, I believe I have started to really get a handle on understanding what I need to keep my energy and my outlook in balance and have started to put some practices in place that help. So, I felt the Lord telling me it was time for renewal in 2015. It sure feels like it's time! A negative attitude and outlook has crept in over the past few years and I haven;t felt like myself as a result of that. But slowly in the past year there have been some shifts.

In a sense I have been renewing my mind over the past year and am anticipating renewal in many areas in the year ahead. 

I posted my page with my theme passage of Scripture last week, but am posting it again with some explanation this time.

There are quite a few places in the Bible where renewal is talked about, but the passage in Isaiah 61:1-4 really connected with me. Jesus quotes this passage from Isaiah and applies it to himself in Luke 4:16-20. This passage describes a Savior who heals brokenness in whatever form or circumstances it is found in us - poor, captive, in darkness, mourning, grieving, despairing - He heals us. In healing He rebuilds, restores, and renews our lives. I'm looking to be renewed this year. To have my energy (emotional, mental and physical) renewed. To have my passion and vision for ministry renewed. To have my health renewed. To have my spirit renewed. To have my emotional equilibrium renewed. It all starts with having my mind renewed and this I cannot do myself. I can only place myself before God and position myself through spiritual disciplines and practices in Christ, ready and willing for transformation.

I completed a few of the Logos365 prompts we posted on the HKC site:

Definition page

Goals page

In order for habits to change and transformation to take place we need to be intentional and set goals. I decided to select 5 areas where I feel I need renewal to take place. I am going to set small, manageable goals monthly in some of those areas. It is said that it takes 6 weeks to make or break a habit and that slow is best in order to see lasting change. I'm interested in lifestyle changes not simply in behavior modification. I think the key to change is in making small baby steps that lead to lasting change, rather than trying to look at the full year and then giving up not too far into it. That may have been why I was able to complete the 52 weekly art calendar pages for the Documented Life Project when I usually struggle to complete projects. It was easier to just look at each week as it came rather than thinking about a full year of weekly projects and trying to plan it out.

To make things more manageable I am combining my Logos 365 word projects in my Take Me Deeper art journal.

Are you participating in one of the many word-of-the-year projects? If so, share your word with me in the comment section below. :)

My Take Me Deeper Journal

As I've written over the past two months, my main focus for 2015 will be the projects we have running in the His Kingdom Come (HKC) community: Take Me Deeper (TMD) weekly devotions and art challenges and Logos365 word for the year prompts and challenges. Today I want to share my journal for these projects and some of the pages I have made so far. If you want to know more about the HKC community and our projects you can check us out here.

First, a little slide show of the stages of making my journal:

Last year for the year-long DLP project I ended up using two journals to fit 52 weeks of pages in. So, this year my plan is to make a journal per quarter as I believe I may have more content for my 2015 projects. I already labeled this first journal volume 1 with that in mind. I purchased this book at a library book sale and I loved the book plate on the inside cover so I didn't want to cover it up entirely.

Our purpose with the TMD project is to use devotions and deeper studies along with creative expressions to  go deeper in our relationship with God this year. Our theme for January is transformation. Since I like the metaphor of journey foe the process of spiritual transformation and growth, I think transformation will be a theme in my journal throughout the whole year. It also fits well as a foundation for my word this year, renew. My intro pages:

My Logos365 word and Scripture passage page:

Both side of the January tab page:

My page in response to the first devotion which I wrote about in yesterday's post.

I would love to know if you are taking part in the HKC projects. Let me know in the comment section below and, if you are, leave me a link to your blog as well. Enjoy your Saturday!

*Also, make sure you check out my Etsy shop where I have vintage paper and ephemera packs custom made to your Logos365 or OLW words.