Week 5

Someone falls to pieces
Sleeping all alone
Someone kills the pain
Spinning in the silence
To finally drift away
Someone gets excited
In a chapel yard
Catches a bouquet
Another lays a dozen
White roses on a grave

To be yourself is all that you can do
To be yourself is all that you can do

Someone finds salvation in everyone
And another only pain
Someone tries to hide himself
Down inside himself he prays
Someone swears his true love
Until the end of time
Another runs away
Separate or united?
Healthy or insane?

To be yourself is all that you can do
To be yourself is all that you can do
To be yourself is all that you can do
To be yourself is all that you can do

And even when you've paid enough, been pulled apart or been held up
With every single memory of the good or bad faces of luck
don't lose any sleep tonight
I'm sure everything will end up alright

You may win or lose

But to be yourself is all that you can do
To be yourself is all that you can do

I think one learns a lot by copying. I also believe that one cannot do anything but one's own work. Unless one is after forging someone else's work or plagiarizing, which is something very different. We are talking about art journals. Art journals are sort of a visual diary. You should be wanting to art journal to express what's inside you, and if you do that by copying someone else's work... fine. The more you make art, the more authenthic and own your expression becomes, and the day will arrive, when you don't want to copy anyone any more, because you have your own pictures to make. But - I assume we aren't there yet, and that's why it's wonderful that the mixed media art community is so open, friendly, warm and generous and show how they do things.
One of my "ideals" is Julie Fei-Fan Balzer, and here's a guest post by Carol Mahy-Merveille, where she shows how she made an art journal page step by step.