How many more?

I get on color kicks... Limited ones because I carry limited supplies with me... And, limited as I feel they are - artistically - they weigh a lot, so I'm considering limiting myself even more!

I'm really into the apricot/lime/blueberry.

That's a line - I'm gonna grow and glow... - from a Billy Joe Shaver song. I love Billy Joe. He can shoot people and get away with it.

I love cinnamon, and Vietnamese cinnamon truly rocks. It's dark and really spicy. It's odd for someone who came of age in the '60s to be able to buy stuff from Viet Nam... You'll see a line on the right hand page: HORRIBLE NEWS... That's referring to the closing of Magnolia Grill in Durham, NC, one of the finest restaurants I have ever eaten in. Whenever I ate there, I saved the menu and pasted it in my journal, noting who had what alongside the entrées. Plus, I could always give gift certificates from there to my family and know that they would be used and appreciated. Alas!

 I never read Sendak books, except to my youngest child. Heck, I didn't even read Dr Seuss books when I was a kid; they were beneath my reading level when they started coming out, so the only time I saw them was when other kids had them. I thot they were silly.

More...

More pages...

Ricë gave me the little coffee pot below. I love it! I use it to make cold press for iced coffee.

I highly recommend Saint Misbehaving if you haven't seen it. It's on Netflix. It's got some stuff about Wavy living in the Village in the early '60s...

Two of my favorite guys. And they have their own ice cream. Now that's famous!

Phoenix and beyond...

I did return from Phoenix... Just in case you were wondering why you hadn't heard from me. I returned with a new guitar - a Taylor 714ce - which I hadn't meant to purchase, but there you go. It spoke to me. Of course, I'm sure it had something to do with spending an afternoon in several of those 'humidor' rooms that guitar stores have for their good guitars. I think they add something to the air that makes you want to buy... Or maybe I just like guitars?

Now you may notice that there's a page 'missing' here. I go from 73 to 77. It's actually not a missing page, it's just me goofing up numbering the pages. What can I say? Shit happens...

And just to further prove I make tons of mistakes in my journals, page 79 should've been cut out. It's one of those waste sheets I sew in to the journal... But in the darkness of the Jester Room, I didn't notice that. Or maybe it had something to do with the two shots of Maker's Mark I had?

Here I am, playing the Taylor at the Jester Room! It was a fine gig and thanks to Zonal Rick and all the fine staff at Pranksters Too. The food was great and the music was fine!

 

I'll get caught up in the next few days...

Funny thing about getting the Taylor home. I flew US Airways there and back. I flew there with a big suitcase, which I checked for $25. I had to fly home with two things to check, the suitcase and the guitar, which would be $25 for the first and $35 for the second. I wanted to insure the guitar against theft. You used to do that at the counter, but not any longer, no. Now you have to do it at the US Airways website... 24 hours in advance! Of course, I didn't know that. There was no way I was going to put my new guitar into the baggage system uninsured! It's insured against breakage, but not theft - a policy from the place I bought it does that much. The US Airways counter people were as surprised by the 24 hour advance policy as I was, and thought about as much of it as I did. They suggested I 'gate check' it, which meant I carried it through security and then down to the gate and down the ramp thingy and then handed it over to be put into the bowels of the tiny CanadaAir jet. That was fine with me. It took awhile for them to uncharge my credit card for the second bag, so I had to run down to the gate, but everyone at US Airways was nice! Nice! Nice! They put a first class baggage check on the guitar so it would come off first and away we went.

Extremely helpful folks!

Latest pages...

Lots of writing, not much arting, but then the arting comes and goes. I still haven't finished the last of the black Artistico pages. I'm saving it to work on when I fly to Phoenix tomorrow. Or when I get there. Not that I won't have stuff to do when I get there, but it's always good to have a reward ready.

Why, you may wonder, am I going to PHX? Actually, I have a gig there, at The Jester Room of Pranksters Too. Now who could resist playing at a club called Pranksters? Cover is only $10 if you're in the area! I go on at 9...

Actually, I think the songs were written by a friend of Bruce's... I'll have to go back and add some marginalia there. I do that frequently: go back and add stuff in the margins... People's names, corrections, updates. Margins are wonderful things to have in a journal!

 

I doubt I'll post from Phoenix because I'm not sure if I'll have a scanner and the software I need to do it, but I may be able to post something. Who knows?

Sheesh, I'm running out of titles...

More pages... The first is kind of sad, so don't read it if you can't handle something sad happening. Not much art, but there is some. I do find that I'm doing more art because I'm posting more. Which is really cool, in an odd way.

Skip this page, if you don't want to read the sad part...

All OK, from here on, I think.

Writing in your diary about other people's dreams posted on Facebook?

And, finally my take on Albert Camus. The Henri Cartier-Bresson photo appeared in The New Yorker... Article by Adam Gopnik. I loved Albert Camus when I was in  young!

Más...

I haven't worked on anymore of the Artistico pages - I'm hoping to treat myself this afternoon - but I have been journaling, never fear...

That's my attempt at Neuland, a hand I really like. Bold, chunky, fun!

 

The number '49' is another number I love. Maybe it's because I'm a mathematician's daughter, or maybe it's because I'm just nuts, but I really love certain numbers. Especially odd numbers and prime numbers, and their factors. They're not just numbers to me, they're characters. But then so are words. I tend to anthropomorphize pretty much everything I come into contact with...

Ahh, yes, and here's another thing. Many people write me about how I do my journal pages. Do I write everything out first and then copy it into the journal? (NO!) How come I never make mistakes? And here's one on this very page: the page number, that lovely '49,' is wrong. This is actually page 51 (3x17), which is why '51' is written in above the very pretty 49.

When you make a mistake in a journal, you handle it just like you do in life. You admit it. You process it, you notice it. And then you move on. You're always going to make mistakes.

When you visit schools these days, you have to get a pass at the office and be escorted, unless you're a regular visitor. It's very different than it was in my day...

I love tins. I love roosters. So a tin with a rooster on it is going to come home with me... And this one contained Olive Oil, another thing I love!!!

I've started putting more photos in my journals. I'm doing it because when I read biographies or journals, I always want to know what the people in it look like... What the places they're at look like. If they're famous enough and have famous friends, you can find pictures, but otherwise you're out of luck. I don't want to subject y'all to the same experience!

Three down, one to go...

I finished the spread in the black Artistico pages. It came out of a discussion with my friend, Nancy, about how bloody hard it is to paint roses. Other flowers are much easier, at least for me. Of course, antique roses have fewer petals... And that makes them much easier.

It's done with the NeoColor IIs: lots and lots of layers.

And here's the latest finished page:

Mostly Pentel ColorBrush... With little dots of Maimeri gouache...

The first of the missing pages...

Back to page 35, one of the missing pages on the black Fabriano Artistico. It's supposed to be a portrait of Roscoe Holcomb, but it doesn't look like him.

Still, I like the illustration. It's done with NeoColor IIs. I just like layering the colors up. It's coated with Krylon's Crystal Clear, in a probably vain attempt to keep it from leaving color on the opposite page.

I've got to admit it's getting better...

Thank you for all who've inquired about my back. It's much better, thanks to the OTC drug, Backaid, placed - oh so conveniently for those suffering from back pain, on the bottom shelf at the HEB... I told you I'd post a pick of the book covered with the goldfish paper, and then forgot, so here it is...

It's a flat spine book - like a kid's book - which you can't fold completely backwards, but is still quite a nice style for a journal. Because it's not 'shouldered' the pages all open flat-flat.

Here's the page I did yesterday after I posted... More music and color!

In the first 'M' of YUMM!! There's a spot of gold. It's Maimeri Gouache, which I love. (It's also coloring the OH, YEAH and BTW.) I carry three tubes of it (the deep and light golds and the silver) in my little tool caddy with me almost all of the time. My friend, Nena, gave me the little caddy thing. Well, actually, she gave me three, and I have the others loaded up with other art tools...

I cram a LOT of stuff into the little thing...

You can see a Niji water pen, some Pigma Graphics, a passel of Zig Calligraphy markers, four Pentel ColorBrushes, three Prismacolor Premier Markers, a couple pencils, a Sheaffer calligraphy pen (with a shadow nib in it), a bone folder and a partridge in a pear tree.

¡April Fool's!

There are four pages missing in this post. In the middle of a couple of signatures, I sew in a sheet of black Fabriano Artistico, because I love doing colored crayons (the NeoColor II's although Roz is making me want to try the Stabilo Woodies) on black, or, really any darkish colored paper. But I never do these in sequence, because my journal is a pretty fast thing, and that kind of illo takes me awhile. So we left off listening to Rafe Stefanini channel Roscoe Holcomb...

I got this paper to use in my bookbinding class at AMOA. Usually I post the page with the foldover as a detail, but I love the colors on this spread, so I posted it this way! There's enough paper on a sheet of this to bind a smallish book - say 6 1/2" x 9 1/2" - using one side for the cover and the other for the endsheets. I did do a little book in the class with this (but not doing the endsheets with it), and I'll post a pic of that at the end of this...

page 34

I'm not showing 34 & 39 next to each other because that's not how they appear in the journal... One of the most fabulous things about living in ATX is the music. Bands play for free that are just wonderful. Sometimes the guys are sidemen for more famous guys, sometimes they were sidemen for famous guys, whatever... But they can all play the holy shit out of stuff. Caspar Rawls is one of those guys, Ernie Poole Ball, who played with Johnny Cash, is another.

My back has gone out three and a half times in the last year, and it's a PITA.  But that doesn't stop me from journaling!

 

I'm about to go out to the blugrass brunch at Opal Divine's. Maybe I'll do some more journaling there. 

I'd say it's pretty likely...

All caught up!

Yikes! We'll be all caught up by the end of this post, unless I wake up in the middle of the night and write something, which seems bloody unlikely...

Note the decorative paper - it's actually two strips, pasted side by side, of a paper I covered a little book with earlier this week... I'll post some pics of it at the end - that is actually a wrapping paper, I think. Not a traditional 'decorative paper' by any means, but really pretty.

Page 29 was written at a club in the dark, just in case you're wondering about the sloppiness. I have to do that frequently, write and draw in the dark. It's kinda fun, actually, like when you play Cranium and have to draw things with your eyes closed! My family plays Cranium when we go to the beach. I'm pretty good at drawing things with my eyes closed. My family is even pretty good at guessing what they are! It's the Humdingers that are our downfall with that game. We never know any of the songs, so we all submit songs that we do know and might possibly be able to hum to chose from instead.

This is one of my favorite recent pages. It's got drawings. Heck, it's got drawings that are talking! And it has another of my favorite things for journals: an autograph. Admittedly, it's an illegible autograph, so I had to write the guy's name over it so we'd all know who it was. I spelled his name wrong - it's Rafe Stefanini - so I'll have to write about THAT in my journaling tomorrow!

Oh yeah, the little bookie wookie pictures I promised!

It's got another one of those beaded headbands, and the white leather is actually vellum.

Yet again...

Here are the next batch....

Now you might just wonder why someone would 'celebrate' their 25th anniversary with someone they are no longer married to. And you might wonder why someone lets their ex sleep in their guest bedroom.  (He likes to say it's on the couch, but, really, he has his own room.) I'm wonder myself at times. Of course, when you marry someone, you marry their whole family, and the short answer is that I'm still married to the family. (The shorter answer is that I'm nuts.)

 

And finally, because, frankly these pages have been a bit boring, one with some art on it...

 

...which takes us up to the beginning of this week. I should note that the color in the illustrations is from Prismacolors. I neglected to mention these in the list of art supplies yesterday, but I use them a lot. They're what I color the center of the shadow nib lettering with, among other things.