I AM WHAT I ART
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Pages From My Visual Journals
صفحات من دفاتري للتدوين الفني

There is no Ground. Page inspired by the following quote: "The bad news is you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there’s no ground." Chögyam Trungpa

Process, tips, materials:
  • Acrylics and collage on recycled A3 product catalog.
  • I echoed the sail boats by drawing in a few more in the background.
  • I used stamps and stencils with spray paints.
  • I added splatters to the top part only.
  • I wrote the quote alone the left margin using black unipin pen.
  • I used black brush pen to make the woman's hair longer.
  • Letting your paint and marks extend over the collage and paint and other elements brings the whole composition together.
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Your Inner Child Is Stronger. Children are a lot wiser than we give them credit for. I think the reason is they are more observant, they pay attention to all the small details, they speak their mind in all sincerity to how they are feeling at the moment they uttered their words.
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Process, tips, materials:
  • ​​Lots of collage elements, including the little girl drawn by a little girl  :-).
  • Acrylics, ink, stamps using an old carton cylinder. 
  • After laying down some colour, I gessoed over it to push it into the background.

When you come close to selling out, I hope you will reconsider. The prompts I use are not always quotes by famous people. Sometimes there are things I hear "regular" people saying. Sometimes, I like a line from a book I'm reading. Sometimes my mom or my son or my husband might say something that feels so profound.

Process, tips, materials:
  • Acrylics and Gesso
  • Stamps - Arabic text
  • Black ink brush pen
  • Markers
  • Stamps
I collaged first, using recycled paper to create depth and texture. The trick is to keep layering. Make sure your support can handle the layers! (support is whatever it is your are painting and creating on).
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Here's what I used for this spread:
  • Acrylics
  • Stencil and texture paste
  • Collage
  • Stamps
  • A metal spring I found in the street which I'm now using as a stamp
Earlier this year I decided not to buy any new journals, rather I would make my own. This journal is a recycled fashion / product journal - repurposed and I'm loving it.

If you've been following my posts on social media, you might recognize this art journal as the recycled fashion / product catalog. I ripped out pages to thin it out so that it could take all the additional thickness of collage and layering and paint. I made use of the images already there on some of the pages. You'll see them peeping through occasionally.

For this spread, I used acrylics and black ink brush pen, and yummy gellatos from Faber Castell!
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Silence is Beautiful
​This time I went for a thin layer of acrylics, letting the background peek through slightly. I added the face with a Uni Pin black pen and white corrector pen.

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I created this whole journal from signatures made of recycled paper shopping bags.
Collage using art left overs and unused paint. Always making something from nothing..

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"In my mind live dozens of houses, and in those houses live dozens of insecurities"

This is the AUB booklet I'm recycling. I used acrylics to paint the background. Mostly Wedgwood blue, I added strips of the scrap paper I have under my work as I paint. These papers are usually so colourful and textured as a result of all the paint dripping on them.

For the face I used neon paints and gold, black and white markers. For the houses, too.

I Stand By You​#pages from my #artjournal 
"Whatever you are facing.. I stand by you." Recycling a booklet into an art journal. For this page:
I tore off a strip from the right of the top two pages.
I glued together 3 pages on each side to make them thick enough to take all the paint and glue.
I painted the spread with turquoise chalk paint, gesso, and i dripped two shades of acrylic greens on top.
I drew the face and bird with black molotow marker.
I added white gesso to bird body, plus some glitter glue.​Wrote my words with the #molotow pen.
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It's Okay to Be A Woman​It's okay to walk barefoot 
It's okay to love your breasts 
It's okay to love your body 
It's okay to love you 
It's okay to be a woman 
It's okay to be a woman 
It's okay to be a woman 
It's okay to be alone 
It's okay to love alone 
Its okay not to be a man

#pages from my #artjournal 
Collage. Charcoal. Acrylics.

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December 04th, 2016
​Learn to live with the confusion.
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I Hate Waiting​
​If you know me, you know I hate waiting, we ride this adventure together or we have separate adventures, but don't ask me or expect me to wait!

Mixed media visual journal pages
​Acrylics on recycled newspaper, machine stitching and crochet and other elements.
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June 17th, 2016​

Forever searching 

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Abandon

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Everything with abandon or not at all. 

June 04th, 2016

Mixed media collage.
I started with turquoise acrylics, and once dry, I covered with a thin layer of white gesso.
I added the torn piece of a sunset from a magazine to the top right corner with gel medium.
I added cadmium orange - loooove that colour - here and there. Sometimes diluted with water or gesso.
Using a stencil, I added texture with texture paste mixed with touches of the turquoise acrylic.
I stamped on some text and inked around the edges of the page.
I added the text with orange market, and lined it with black - unibal fine point.
Remember to let the layers dry unless you want to get a little colour mixing going on - like I did with the cadmium orange at the top.​
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Wed, Dec 23, 2015​
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​Forever seeking to create bluer skies.



One To Many​

One thing at a time. Many things over time.


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Layers​

Despite the layers we build, we remain transparent and vulnerable. 


Strange Things

​It's amazing what things surface when you least expect it. any yet you know them well.

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Paradoxes​

We can hold many paradoxes at a time.


Joy​

I really want to explore. I don't care what us real, give me joy anytime.


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Clouds

Tonight, I'm hanging out my clouds.



I won't come just because you waited​

I like abstraction, simple materials, finding ways to create stories from thin air. Although that's not a rule! I'm also trying to avoid - as much as possible - buying art supplies which I can find substitutes for. At the moment, I still sometimes use bought journals, but I have also made my own from recycled magazine, newspapers and brown paper bags. 

I don't always know how the page will end up. I work with the composition first I play with placement, moving the strips of paper around. Changing my mind about orientation and position, and I sometimes end up excluding a scrap of paper I previously thought was great (but I don't trash it. I have a box for these unused bits - they get a new life in a new work). I work fast usually. I stop and look to see how they pieces work together and what possible stories could come up. 

Once I'm happy with the composition, and a story formed, I glue the pieces down. Finally I added the black and white pens which integrate the pieces together and pulls in the final story - I won't come just because you waited.
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Love, Brave​I

I created this page in Sabrina Harrison's journal which I bought at a bookshop (she created this journal with background images using her art). It's a good exercise in not being so precious about the backgrounds you create and braving through into layered work.


I used gel medium to glue the collage images to the page. Tip: if you tear out the images instead of cutting them with scissors, you get really interesting soft edges that are easy to blend into the background surface. Another tip is to layer images and words so that they touch or even cover bits of each other. Helps the work look more complete and integrated. I added - with my fingers - white acrylic or gesso around the edges and let it cover bits of the collaged images. Finally I added text with my black uni pin fine line pen. It's perfectly fine that you can't see the original background any more or, if you can, you can no longer distinguish it from the compelted work.



My Body Remembers​

My body remembers everything
You say, you do; you don't; you are; you aren't; but mostly, every ruffled feather you stroked.
Pages from my art journal.

جسدي يتذكر كل ما قلته، كل ما فعلته، كل ما كنته، كل ما لم تكنه، والأهم، كل لمسة لونت حياتي.
صفحات من دفتري
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Where Do I Start?​

The question I want to ask is where do I start?

Tue, May 26, 2015

I forgot how much I love sketching. 
Simple breakfast with a touch of laughter.
Scenes from Cyprus 
Pages from my art journal. 
 

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Tue, May 26, 2015​

The address was no.5. so we stood in front of this house wondering how to get in. Our taxi driver refused to leave until he was sure we were at the right place. What a sweet guy. He waited 30 minutes with us and made calls from his personal mobile. 

I was sketching.
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Turns out it was not the right place after all.

Release
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Trust

​Trust is an adventure and the heart loves adventure. Pages from my art journal.

الثقة مغامرة والقلب يحب المغامرات. صفحات من دفتري.  

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Zen Magic Carpet​
Journal pages inspired by exotic and ethnic carpets & fabrics.
​
Black waterproof pen #.5 and water colours on your average writing journal paper. As usual, the paper crinkled under the water colours, and now every painted page sings. I love that sound. It makes me want to use these "normal" journals more than the thicker ones intended for water colours. ​
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© COPYRIGHT 2015. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Blog
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