I finally found the time to come back to 'Teh Internets,' and thought I'd do so with my take on a creative challenge offered up by Our Creative Corner. This month, the challenge is "Hit the Books," and calls for us to be inspired by old book pages.


 

I had remnant of an old book page left over from another project, one that I liked but really didn't know what to do with at the time. Lately, I've been feeling kind of self-censored because I didn't want to offend or frighten people with some of my visual ideas, and I want to get out of that habit. The expectations of others are the bars used to build my cage, or something like that.

This piece came from covering up an older art journal piece that I really hated because I did it to look like all the pretty and happy visual journals I see out there. You know, the beautiful stuff about happiness and butterflies (which, I LOVE butterflies, don't get me wrong), and not at all scary or dark or weird.

We know I'm all about the weird.

At any rate...

I pieced together this one, and had the thought of redacting most of the words on the page remnant. I left the part about likes and dislikes because it definitely applies to me.

To finish it off, I added the "why are you censoring yourself?" label, but really didn't feel that finished it. Anyone who knows me knows that I have the vocabulary of a well-educated sailor, and my two favorite colorful words aren't acceptable in proper company. And when it comes to my art, I'm making the effort to stop censoring myself and stop feeling certain ways about things just because those feelings or expressions might make someone else uncomfortable. So I added the colorful phrase to remind myself to cut that shit out, and make art how I mean to make art.