focusing on a theme for my art journal

I think I'm starting to get a feel for art journaling.  At least more than I did when I decided to jump into it a few days ago. As I look at the work of experienced art journalers, I find that the journals that interest me the most are the ones with clear themes.  And since the page before this one (see last post) depicts a chameleon musing on mental and physical health, I was trying to choose between a reptile theme and a health theme. In the end I chose both. Now, you may be saying: What the heck is this creature? No reptile that I ever saw!

I'm glad you've never met this creature. Really. Because this is a kappa. Kappa are creepy youkai that live in ponds and streams, and if you get caught by one of them, you will get the life sucked out of you. Read the grotesque details here.

A Kappa has a depressed "dish" on its head that it keeps filled with water. If the water gets spilled or evaporates away, the kappa loses its strength, and maybe even its life. Keep that in mind if you ever get caught by one. There are some hints in this article about how to trick the kappa into spilling the water in its dish. This peculiarity of kappa is what inspired my choice of words, and connects in a wordplay-sort-of-way to the theme of health.

The idea for this etegami came to me when I was watching a health show on TV this morning about the dangers of dry skin and dry mouth. And you know how I Luv Word Play.

sister hands

The first four kids in my family are girls who were born within a five year period. This summer, three of them gathered for a brief time at the home of the third sister. I am the eldest of the four, but it has been almost a decade now since I had the health and mobility to cross the ocean that keeps us apart.

I was nursing my isolation with a mental pout, when the second sister sent me a poem she'd written that drew me into a metaphorical sister hug and wiped the pout from my mind. The poem begins with the line "Three pairs of sister hands." But I, too, was there at that kitchen table-- in spirit anyway. And my hands were a fourth pair reaching out to theirs. The poem begged to be illustrated, so that's what I did.

SISTER HANDS

Three pairs of sister hands
Reach across
The kitchen table
For open display.
Curious
But tentative
Embarrassed
Yet satisfied
At our lines
Spots
Blemishes
Bumps, knobs and twists
The hilly blue veins
We compare the wrinkles
Of our well-worn lives
Five decades each.

My young niece
Thirteen
Watching us
Instinctively offers
To paint our nails.

(poem by Vicki Patschke)