Journaling with Words and Images: Capture the Moment: Watercolor and Imagery

During the workshop, we experimented with three watercolor techniques:

• Wet-on-wet
• Resist
• Salt

WRITING PROMPTS

Maybe it’s the dapple of light from the open window that you see playing across the bare toes of a peacefully sleeping child.

Perhaps it’s the way that the gusts of wind from an approaching storm make you giggle or grimace with anticipation.

Or possibly you want to capture the scent of your favorite garden plant, or the texture of your favorite shirt.

Whatever it is - use your words to capture the moment.

BRAINSTORMING IDEAS

List as many words as you can to describe you in this moment – you physically and emotionally, your thoughts and plans and memories, your inward and outward appearance.

List at least twenty adjectives to describe things in your home or yard.

WRITING EXERCISES

Choose something – anything – to describe. Then use your words and imagery to capture it as fully as you can.

Think about yesterday. Specifically, think about a moment in time yesterday.

Experience it again in the pages of your journal and capture the moment using all of your senses.

INSPIRATION

Writing or watercolor or photography are all media for capturing the moment. Of the quotes below, which inspire you and why?

“A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.” — Ansel Adams

“To photograph is to hold one’s breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It’s at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.” — Henri Cartier-Bresson

“Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever… it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.” — Aaron Siskind

“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” — Elliott Erwitt

“For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity.” — Henri Cartier-Bresson

“You will see, in the future I will live by my watercolors.” — Winslow Homer

“My drawings at first were made altogether in watercolors, but they wanted softness and a great deal of finish.” — John James Audubon

"It's such a human condition, whether you're a great track star or a great knitting person or you paint watercolors - someone knows who you are.” — Tony Curtis

"Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all.” — Stanley Horowitz

Download the 1 page handout Capture the Moment October 2012 and the 1 page handout Inspirations for Watercolor and Photography October 2012

Our monthly journaling workshop offers ideas and encouragement for people pursuing personal writing with words and images. The workshop meets on the second Tuesday of each month at 10:00 am at the library. Everyone is welcome to attend and participate. Find upcoming topics announced on the library calendar or here