Peace for Today

Art journaling or visual journaling is, for me a way to connect with myself and with my God. I find truth as I do it and am grateful for finding this practice. I have many journals filled with only words. They were helpful at the beginning of my journey. I don't always know how to verbalize my thoughts feelings, images serve me well. So for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, I will share my process for today's post.

 I usually start with a page that already has paint scraped or rolled or stamped or applied in some haphazard way. This mess has a variety of acrylic colors scraped on with a piece of plastic rescued

from the recycling bin expressly for that purpose.. It looks like I also added some paint via bubble wrap and then perhaps brushed on a little water. As I looked at it this morning, I asked what I could see in it. What do you see?

Then, using my faithful Micron pen (I think .08), I outlined what I could see. I use a pen most days simply because pencils can be erased and my Inner Critic insists I use it a lot. Since I have very little time to do these pages, my I.C. must be minimized as much as possible.

What I could see in this background was a a person and some circles, so I began to darken the lines. The weird thing to me is that as I go through the process of the drawing, I begin to see that this dude with sunglasses juggling. He is having to (choosing to?) keep quite a few balls in the air while trying to look cool.  A couple have gotten away from him, but he remains cool. His surroundings are chaotic as well adding to the challenge of the juggling. Keep those balls in the air... Look cool... Hm-m-m... Does that mean something to me? No comment.

Then I see the face of a woman on the other side of the page. In contrast to the juggler, she appears

calm and contemplative. She is looking away from the juggler and the chaos and as I continue to outline her shape, it occurs to me she is peaceful. Her mind is on her Source of peace. She is within an enclosure. She seems safe... She seems to me to embody Peace. Hm-m-m... Is there a message here?

So here is the final image. Peace in spite of the chaos around us. Yep. I'll take that today. 

Love you. Bunches.