Journal 52, Creating Art at the Speed of Life, Derwent Academy

Journal 52, Week 28, Technology. As you must realize, a person with three blogs MUST love technology. Since I retired, I have jumped, with gusto, into the Internet's abundance of learning tools, groups, websites, challenges, dares, and so on. I love every one of them. Sometimes, just sometimes though, I get a bit overwhelmed by everything I have committed myself to. I was afraid that retirement meant boredom or even death from the lack of mental stimulation so I plowed into everything I could find to do. During my working years, I never had the time for my artistic interests. No more. If this sounds like a negative post, it really isn't. It's just an explanation for this journal page. My guess is that most of you can relate to this :)

Then, I finally finished the lessons from Creating Art at the Speed of Life by Pam Carriker. I loved doing each one of these. I learned so much and I would recommend it to anyone beginning art journaling. So many techniques were used and many times I just used her suggested materials and just went off on my own. The last lesson, however, was difficult for me so I kept putting it off. We had to do a self portrait with a lot of smearing of the black and then pulling back with an eraser to get subtractive works. Well, I finally did it and almost hesitate to post this because I hope I don't really look like this:

And, finally, I have shared this on Facebook, but if you don't follow me there, you should know about this. Derwent Academy is a site that, for free, offers art lessons. If you complete all six of the assignments and pass them, you get a diploma and a tin of your choice from Derwent. So, for me it was a win win win situation. I love taking classes and I love pencils and I love FREE. This is the set I got and they are beautiful pencils. They are a cross between colored pencils and a pastel. So soft but more precise than pastels. And, they also blend with liquid gamsol.