Vivendo discimus Spread

As I mentioned earlier on this blog, I've finally started to art journal, inspired by my very good friend Lenna Andrews. She is doing a bit every single day but I didn't want to commit myself that much. So I'm doing it if and when the inspiration strikes. As I want to try out different journals at the same time, I made a start by gessoing various pages in 3 different journals, one an altered book, one a Moleskine sketchbook with a portrait orientation and a similar one, but in landscape lay-out. As you can see my spread today is in the landscape journal and I've discovered that I can't scan the two pages together as they are too large for my scanner. So that's one disadvantage already, which can be added to the fact that I'm a firmly vertically orientated artist. Almost all my quilts are verticals so I did know that already. But I will persevere in this journal in the hope I might get to like the horizontal better.

This spread was inspired by the Latin words "vivendo discimus" found in a magazine. It means: we learn by living, and how true is that?! I used 2 Klimt inspired stamps of faces, one on each page, and on the first page, seen above, I also added an image taken from one of Klimt's paintings. One of my favourite artists, Klimt was big on decoration and that is inspirational to me. I added another quotation to the first page which reads: A little learning is a dang'rous thing, to which I have added: What about a lot of learning? Learning more about all kinds of everything is one of the main stays of my life, and I'll just carry on learning for as long as I draw breath.

On the facing page I added one of my own photographs, as well as the yellow rose picture from a magazine and a postage stamp. I also added more writing, with the question: What will I learn today? Perhaps we should all ask ourselves that question at the end of every day? Today I learned that there is an awful lot to do in this house on the days John isn't here!!! But I kept ticking them off on my mental list and by doing one thing at a time I've managed to do it all apart from closing the nest boxes in the chicken house, so I'm off to take care of that now, in the streaming rain!