On finishing pages...

I wanted to talk today about finishing pages in my journal.

This is a picture of me, taken by my husband on his iphone of me blissfully unaware that he was about to take my photo. Look at me I am in my happy place just painting away in my journal one evening whilst Mr B watches a spot of telly. I know what page that is, why it was created and what it meant for me at the time. Excuse the poor lighting but I just wanted to share it with you because I think I look so content and to me that kind of epitomises why I journal in the first place.

For me I find that my journal is like a snapshot in time a photograph if you will capturing what you looked like, what you wore, what you were doing the moment the shutter went. It cannot change so once that page is created it is created. OK technically you could gesso all over it and start again but you know what I mean.

Sometimes I create for creating sake, i.e. sometimes I just want to doodle and paint and there is no pressure I just want to relax with a creative process because I enjoy it, I was born to create in some way or other, I just can't help it and I feel the pull if I have been away from it for too long. I get this itch that I just need to scratch, I need to get the paper out and make marks on it. I just have to!

I often journal because I want to process feelings, record what I was doing or what I felt at that particular moment in time. So what happens then when time runs out on you or something else happens and you don't finish the page that you were working on? That has happened to me many a time before and when I have gone back to it the next day it doesn't have the same meaning for me and I don't have the same connection to it, it is lost. So where does my page stand? Does it get left uncompleted or does it morph into something entirely different. Often both!

So that got me thinking, because of course I am an over thinker. Should I just create quick pages with not so much detail and in mediums that don't need to dry so that I can get it all done in one sitting? Or do I just go with the flow?

What do you do? How do you create?