Vanishing words

Had great fun with this one. Isn't it what it's all about? I often dream about school or college - I'm taking notes but I can't make sense of my own handwriting, or I'm struggling to keep up with the lecturer, whether it's Latin in school or English and Russian in college. Typical anxiety dream, I'm sure! So I dug up my old Russian phrase book and photocopied elements from the first few lessons. Who is it? It is Ivan. What is it? It's a house - "dom" in Russian (obviously, the alphabet is different, but I don't know how to include cyrillic letters in my blog!) means house. Think "domestic". All from the latin dominus etc. So you see, Russian isn't so hard! And diachronic linguistics was my favourite subject in college!

I glued the pages in my journal, then applied my lovely Neocolor II pencils and added small amounts of water. It didn't look so good, so I applied clear gesso mixed in with cadmium yellow acrylic, using a (old) credit card to create a vertical texture effect. Then more Neocolor II. And then, something I just discovered on YouTube - this lady has got tons of good advice for journal artists! - applied flexible modelling paste over a stencil. Now, the alphabet stencil I have is quite heavy, so the resulting ABC is a few mm thick. Not ideal for a journal page, but hey, does it matter?

And by the way, I used to love that Russian textbook "Russian for everybody". Before going to college, where I studied translation from English and Russian into French, I went to evening classes in my hometown, and did Russian for a year (I've always been a believer in being prepared!). And when I started the Institut Supérieur de Traducteurs et Interprètes, I was just so thrilled to see that they were using the same textbook! It was such a bonus - it meant I could focus on English and everything else, without having to put in too much work for Russian, at least for the first couple of months. Enough of a head-start to make that first year in college bearable. And that picture on the ISTI website, it's such a blast from the past. That big room with rows upon rows of seats - it hasn't changed one bit. It sends shivers down my spine! No wonder I have anxiety dreams!