My first real collage — I think it is called “Woman.”  12×12″ canvas, acrylic, found objects, hand drawn artwork, trash.

I only managed five pages, six if you count the double spread.  I can’t do a page a day.  It requires more thinking to put these together than one would think.  I took a break from journal pages, and created my first “collage this last week,” other than journal pages collage. I thought I could whip this out in a day or so, but found it has taken me the entire week.  I guess I will never bear the title “prolific.”  This is on a 12″ square canvas and I used things I found,what I often call “pocket trash,” including many little items that most people would toss in the trash.  I purchased a little plastic box full of little things from my favorite online Flea Market , www.MantoFev.com which always has an array of small items good for mixed media.  I also added used dryer sheets, cardboard packaging from the inside of my new camera – a New Year’s gift from my daughter and her husband.  My old one was beginning to have issues about focusing the whole composition, and I began calling it Hal.  Hal seemed to be developing an aversion for seeing the whole picture, so to speak, and wanted instead to focus on one small corner, or the entire top half or vice versa, but the rest would be totally out of focus.  Hal may have seen it as art, I saw it as frustration on my side of the lens, and arogance on his.  So he has retired in his original box with all his extras and I am becoming best friends with my new Sony Cyber-shot W220, a point and shoot, but its lovely and focused and doesn’t mind incandescent lighting, and doesn’t seem to have a dark side as Hal did, so I am getting these very warm and intimate  shots of things and I kind of like it.  I know Iwill never be a photographer – I know that.  I know nothing about f-stops or any of that other technical stuff.  All I want is to be able to take simple but well focused photos of my art projects, plus an occasional snap of my friend, Cookie Moon every now and then.  So anyway I failed on the page a day journal plan.  I figure if I can get 4 or 5 pages completed from each month, I would have a nice big bunch to put together at the end of the year and I could put together an art journal  for 2010.  February will be pink.  I have been drawing every day, which I had let go by the wayside this last year.  I have hung out a new Disintegration Bundle which I plan to take down on May Day and I will make another piece from what I have left after the winter.  Even my neighbor has put a bundle together and hung it in her tree.  I love this!  Getting people involved in art.  She doesn’t think I am strange at all, maybe because she is a little “strange” herself — we recognize each other, and we know its okay!  I want to thank Roxanne at www.RiverGardenStudio.wordpad.com.  She suggested I could try doing collage because I was having trouble going back to painting – and she was so right on.  It is easier than a full painting, and the process of collage is very engaging and almost soothing.  Thanks Roxanne!