"Are you where you are supposed to be?"

"Are you where you are supposed to be?" What a great question!

I heard a professional speaker/photographer ask this at a conference many years ago. He was referring to how, as a photographer, he relied not only on his skill and his experience but on his gut instinct to get the perfect shot. Getting that fantastic photo meant that he often had to wait hours for the sun to come up so it would shine on the landscape just perfectly. Sometimes it meant that he suddenly moved to a new location after waiting for hours because his intuition told him to.

For me, it means listening to my inner voice and acting accordingly. In order to listen, I have to stop running and breathe!

This weekend, I am relaxing and starting an art book.

I have chosen an old English book that I found at Value Village. I painted a light coat of Gesso on the page and let it dry.

On these pages, I used pastels and colored pencils for the designs and rubber stamps to add the letters. I sprayed each page with matte fixative to keep the pastels from smearing.

I enjoy the process of taking an old book and transforming it little by little.

If I make a mistake or dislike the results, I can just cut out the page. Ultimately, some pages will have to be removed anyway as the gesso makes the pages so much thicker.

I am not always 100% sure where I am supposed to be but I am pretty certain that if working on a project like this keeps my undivided attention so that I have no worries for a few hours, that I must be in a good place.