Journals from years past

I have been keeping extensive art journals since around 7th grade, averaging one a year.  These are all my journals, sitting on a shelf in our dining room bookcase.  A few weeks ago I went through all of them, looking for pictures, collages, drawings, or ideas I still found interesting and marked them with green ribbons.  I also sorted them by dates and put tags on them so I would know at a glance which one is which.  I scanned some samples of what I found noteworthy.

 I really enjoy making collages, so I have a few scans of those.  The one below is inspired by the Mississippi Delta where I went to college.  The delta seems a large vacant place, yet somehow still maganges to offer so much culture and inspiration.  On the page beside the collage I did a sketch of a crab.

Below is another collage inspired by traveling, photography, and teaching.

This collage is in the front cover of one of the art journals.  I think this one was done in Australia or around the time I went to Australia.  Just some images I found to be beautiful and placed together.

Here is a page about a calendar I intended to make but never got around too.  I still want to make a calendar and put it on etsy.  Will blog the process if I ever do it.

This is one of the first pages I did in Australia.  The chicken is from a strand of blue and white fabric chickens I bought at a faretrade store, and the drawing is an old man sitting on a bench overlooking the ocean at Manly Beach, Sydney, Australia.

This is from one of my older journals, maybe around highschool, senior year or so.  I've never been great at drawing faces, so I chose to leave the child out of my version of the photograph.

A page from college, or late highschool.  Photography ideas, a recipe, and planter idea.  About as random as all the journals are from page to page.

A drawing I did from a photo while in flight to Washington, DC one summer by myself.  I used the Sky Magazine for the image so I couldn't cut it out and put it in my book.

This collage is kind of dear to my heart.  The left page is about my now husband, Matt and his hobbies, and the page on the right is inspired by my hobbies.  I was kind of annoyed with Matt when I finished this collage, so if you look closely, the bottom of his side has English peas kind of hidden in it.  Matt doesn't like English peas at all.

Sketches of shells.

A contour drawing of a girl from a magazine.  Again, not a fan of drawing faces so I just left it off.

There are of course lots more pages from the journals, but didn't want to bore anyone so I just loaded a few.  Hope you enjoyed a look into my art journaling past.