This weekend was filled with making and drawing and eating and art journaling with creative polyglot, Katherine England.  We spent day 1 making the books with birch board covers, 140 lb watercolor paper, linen thread, and leather spines.

Day 2 was filled with how to fill our brand new pristine books with well, stuff.  Arty meaningful stuff.  Or not.  Despite the high level of creativity competence in the room, this was a struggle for many of us, myself included. Perhaps creativity on demand was a tall order. Maybe we were comparing our potential works and thinking we’d never measure up to Katherine’s amazing stash of personal journals.  Stop judging me silly brain!

I know my little brain was challenged with learning a new way of exercising new creative neurons, with every fiber of my normal well worn pathways protesting vigorously.I don’t really have a third eye. But I drew the self portraits below with my eyes closed and without lifting the Sharpie off the paper (ok, maybe once).  Then I colored the spaces in..  Then I taped a lady on top of one of them.  And I doodled around.  And then I played with wetting down the watercolor pencil.   It felt like fooling around and there was definitely something awesome about it.

There were plenty of other exercises as well.  Draw your hand without picking up your pen.  I dare you.I ended filled to bursting with ideas on how to doodle, draw with abandon, write, diagram, and download my messy-filled-up-monkey-mind. At least a little bit.