Cover

Since my first entry in the journal was a self-portrait, I decided to do a second self-portrait for my last piece, the cover. I tried to refer to colors that recur throughout the journal. It's acrylic and digital.

Lots of beauty, and some unanticipated ugliness

My husband and I moved into our new house this weekend, so for most of the week I was toying with ideas for making entries about my this new environment -- the house our daughter will (as far as we can know) grow up in. It is the sweetest of houses in a small Minnesota town, and I am so happy here already. Unlike in the Cities, it is utterly silent here at night, and dark. The streets are quiet. Because it's summer, everything is green. And our land has fruit trees on it -- cherry, apple, plum. I even discovered that the land was once owned by the founder of this town, John North, in the 1850s, which is so neat.

Our new town seems like the perfect place to grow up, and I can already imagine our little girl exploring all of the things contained in this house and in this town.

So, basically, this is one of the happiest times of my life, full of hope and excitement and real joy. I've been writing (and drawing) about this wonderful time all week (all summer, really, thanks to the visual journals class), so I decided to do something different for my entries this week. I decided to document (in photos, because that's a medium I knew I could work quickly in, and I had to be cruelly realistic about time management this week) some of the ugly and unpleasant things around me right now, because these "thorns" are temporary -- the boxes will eventually be unpacked, someday we'll replace the horrible linoleum, my studio won't always be a disaster area, the house will get clean. But right now, those things are unattractive and chaotic and stress-causing. I decided to capture some of those things because, unlike my happy family and our plum tree, they will soon disappear.

Here's the first set of images. Gross!

Floor and more

Ugly 1970s flooring, plus a dim and gross corner of the house... the dark side of home ownership!

Moving while trying to be an illustrator

I happened to get a freelance illustration job for one of the big children's magazines -- my most important freelance job so far -- smack in the middle of the busiest time of my life (busiest up until now -- I know it will be even crazier after the baby is born!). I wanted to document the ridiculous state of my new studio as I try to finish the freelance assignment, unpack the basic things we need to survive at the new house, finish my three summer courses, mitigate my pregnancy-related exhaustion by occasionally resting, and keep a sense of humor about all of it!

Three new entries

First, my calendar. I thought about things I took away from my class experience as well as what was happening in my life and, of course, with my pregnancy.












Next, I pursued last week's proposal a bit more. Part of that proposal was to dig deeper into my feelings about the pregnancy and my changing life. To that this week, I read Birthing From Within, which I finally got my hands on this month. That book prompted me to consider the fears that I have about the experience of giving birth in a hospital, so I created an entry documenting those fears, using acrylic paint and Photoshop. I hope that I can begin to address the fears in the coming months by calling them out (and talking to the doctors and my husband and etc). I did redact a couple of them because they were a little too personal to share here.









After my "fears" entry I needed to do something lighter. I switched to watercolor, graphite, and ink, and did a few cute little things that reflect some of the maternal and domestic feelings that seem to just keep getting more intense as the months go by.

Pits!

Landscape and narrative seemed like fitting elements for a two-page spread dealing with visual flow. Since I did most of my writing for this week's entries under an oak tree at Lake of Isles, I went ahead and sketched a little version of that scene, taking some text from the writing I did. Sketchy graphite, ink, and marker.

Feet

With this entry I kind of lost the thread of what I was doing aesthetically and stylistically, but it's part of the "raw sketch" series of entries intended to help me continue to loosen up with my visual journal. It turned out kind of dumb and I probably didn't put enough thought into it. But the text and subject matter came from the writing element of my process this week.

Two free entries

These spreads are the first two entries I've created in pursuing what I laid out in my proposal, inspired by some of the work in this week's readings. Observational sketches of my crazy environment during this crazy time of packing, house-buying, and pregnancy!

How he feels about it

The other challenge I received was to create a journal entry about how my husband feels about all of this. I really struggled here, because I know how he feels -- happy, excited, nervous, a little scared -- but I didn't know how to represent these things. It occurred to me to have Ben create the entry himself, but that just didn't seem like the right solution somehow. What I ended up creating is a sketch of something that I think encapsulates how happy, excited, and involved he is. It's just a graphite sketch of him reading the old Winnie-the-Pooh stories to me (and the baby), something he's been doing each night. Those stories are so wonderful, funny, and un-Disney, with awesome illustrations by Ernest Shepard. And our baby can now has functional ears, so she can hear her dad reading to her -- and me laughing at the funny turns of phrase in these stories. I love the part where we learn that Pooh once lived in the forest under the name of Sanders.

36 textures

Candace challenged me to incorporate texture into my journal. Since my journal is a blog (so, digital but with handmade elements), I created a digital entry by documenting 36 things I associate with my pregnancy so far. The array of textures is kind of interesting. It's not exactly in the "pat the bunny" vein that I think Candace had in mind, but it's me!

Some of the textures are secret and mysterious, but some I am happy to share! For example, some are foods that I've been eating a lot of (fig bars, edamame, tortillas), some are things to which I've had aversions or am not allowed to use during pregnancy (coffee, Listerine), and many are items made of cloth (favorite maternity clothes, a belly band, a shirt of my husband's that I've hijacked, two pillows given to me by my grandmother before she died and which I use to achieve a tolerably comfortable sleeping position at night). Other textures I documented include the basil plants I planted when I found out I was pregnant -- a sun hat I need to wear outside -- the bike helmet I won't be putting on again until next summer -- a lawn chair I've been chillaxin' in on the deck -- a shoulder bag that looks really cute over a pregnant belly -- a flowering plant Ben gave me for our wedding anniversary -- and a certain record I listen to almost every day).

Girl/boy/neutral

This drawing is another response to the experience of registering for baby gear last week. My husband and I were taken aback by manufacturers' labeling of nearly every product in the store as "girl," "boy," or "neutral." We expected some of that but were a little disturbed by the magnitude of it. Color as a marker of gender identity is so weird and so widespread in the U.S. (is it elsewhere in the world?). Even my mother waited until I told her the sex of the baby to buy decorations for the baby shower she's throwing me. And today when my husband and I found out that we are having a girl (!!!smiles!!!), the staff at the doctor's office immediately marked my file with a pink symbol.