Fond du Lac Barcamp & Art Journaling

I attended my first barcamp at Sept. 20th, 2014 at Marian University's Stayer Center in Fond du Lac. I facilitated an Art Journaling session. I think next time I will name it Visual Journaling instead. As “art” seems to imply some type of “artistic” talent needed.

It is an experience hard to describe. To start, this is their facebook description “ …a participant-generated idea swap meet for the infocurious. It's an unconference, folks!”
Here is the link to their website - http://www.barcampfdl.org/

This group of people was very diverse and included computer based technology enthusiasts, educators, visual artists, and performing artists.

From Wikipedia “Although the format is loosely structured, there are rules^[19] at BarCamp. All attendees are encouraged to present or facilitate a session or otherwise contribute to the event.^[17]Everyone is also asked to share information and experiences of the event via public web channels, including blogs, photo sharing, social bookmarking, Twitter, wikis, and IRC. This encouragement to share is a deliberate change from the "off-the-record by default" and "no recordings" rules at many invite-only participant driven conferences. It also turns a physical, face-to-face event into a 'hybrid event' which enables remote online engagement with BarCamp participants”.
Thanks to Mel Kolstad for the above picture.


I jotted down some notes while attending the sessions. Unfortunately I didn’t have my current journal and had to resort to working in my “Fragmented” journal instead. It took several tries to print a quality picture on my laser printer. (see first photo). To waste less paper I printed on both sides. To further lessen waste I added bits and pieces to other journal pages.


Three salamanders crossed my path on the way to Barcamp and another one after I arrived home. They, along with a waste copy of the first photo in this post, were the inspiration for this page.


I added some different shades of gray colored pencils to give a little more depth to the salamanders.


A journal page from my Relief Printing session facilitated by my friend Mel Kolstad and Beekeeping session by http://dsbees.com/.

Journal Page – Transformation

 

This is a journal page about transformation. It speaks to me on several levels. The salamander template was the last collage item added. The page was almost finished and the geometric triangles had briefly reminded me of MC Escher’s art piece with the lizards but I didn’t have that in mind when I let it sit for a few days.

Then, when I seen the salamander template from the previous salamander page I knew where it belonged. The journaling and quotes were added last.

Looking at the photograph, I now want to extend the stems of the dandelions to the bottom of the page. The upper right corner looks a bit bare too! Perhaps something will find it’s way later.

Salamander Journal Page

 

These two salamanders were seen by me the other day.  It’s been quite awhile since one has crossed my path. Whenever an animal interests me I like to research them, look up their animal totem meaning and draw them.

“The appearance of a Salamander heralds transformation. It also announces assistance with this change from a source somewhere outside of ourselves.” http://spirit-animals.com/salamander/ Something to ponder... This is one of many paths of self discovery that I follow in my journals.

First I applied a color wash using a mixture of Nickel Azo Gold and Dioxazine Purple (Golden Fluid Acrylics) for my background. Next I drew the image of a salamander on a piece of copy paper. Then I cut it out to use as a template to trace, making two matching salamanders. I colored the Salamanders with several layers of Prismacolor colored pencils. Finally I added the journaling.