The Art Journal Caravan verb this week was “simplify” and you were supposed to journal about yourself. While this doesn’t look like it is about me, in a round about way it is. My mom and stepdad square dance. I’m thrilled that they have such an active social life. A few years ago they tried to recruit us to join and learn. It was sweet…but so not anything remotely of interest to us.

Anyway, one evening Neal was otherwise occupied and, I decided on the spur of the moment to take the girls by a dance. I just love that recreational center, it is a huge room with gorgeous old wood floors and “church-style” benches all the way around the room. So quaint. In fact, we had our rehearsal dinner there. It was simple and laid back. We had red checkered table cloths and catered barbecue. My MIL picked sunflowers that morning and put them in old tin pails. It was completely understated and we loved it.

This was the first time I’d been there for a dance. It was really sweet watching all the couples have a ball dancing. And even sweeter letting Granny show off her grand-babies.

In this photo Danielle is joining her Granny for a line dance. She had recently seen the Hannah Montana movie, so she totally thought it was COOL! She wants her granny to make her a big fat skirt so she can go dancing again. I love it that *she* thinks it is cool!

And, I want to make it a point to take her back…it is just always after bedtime…such an effort to get there…but such simple pleasure once you are there.

Here is the photo I used to “paint” with:

Here is a photo of the girls dancing on a break:

For the journal page I scanned in a page from a very old songbook. Next I used my Wacom pen to trace an outline of the ladies in the photograph. I tried to be slightly more precise on my main subjects and purposely jagged on the background dancers. I then brushed with a slightly translucent wet black brush roughly behind the people in the collage. That layer was clipped to an off-white painterly brush stroke by Dianne Rigdon. It helped tone down the music in that part of the collage, I was going for a “wash” effect. Then I “painted” with slightly translucent wet black again on another layer, this time staying inside the lines of the people. I wanted the colors from the photograph to show through so I clipped that layer to the photograph. I love how the reflections of the dancers show on the wood floor.

The alphabet is a music sheet alpha by Blythe Evans. “Simple” is blended as a linear burn and on “Pleasures” I deleted the base layer of music to let a pink paper show through with the blending options.

I hope this is a reminder to me to force myself to do stuff even when I really don’t *feel* like it!

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