Archetypes are interesting

archetype - a very typical example of a certain person or thing.

What exactly is an archetype anyway? Even after reading the Webster's definition I was left confused. I mean, how was I going to art journal an example of a certain thing anyway? BUT curiosity ( the seeker ) always gets the best of me and I got this book. I cannot begin to tell you how much fun this has been for me! I hope it will be for you too.

You can buy the book from Amazon or order it for your library if they let you do that sort of thing. Mine does and I order library books for their art department on a regular basis. As a Seeker I am always looking to further my art, along with  Gabrielle Javier-Cerulli's Art Journal Your Archetypes here are the latest books I have added to my local library and currently reading:

Creative Girl Mixed Media Techniques for an Artful life by Danielle Donaldson

Drawing and painting Beautiful Faces by Jane Davenport

You can also enter a chance to win a book given away by MaryBeth Shaw ( one of the participating artists ) over on her blog The Common Denominator. 

There is a test in the book to take so you can figure out what your archetypes are and I am really glad because it cleared everything up for me. And like I do, I did an art journal page listing all my archetypes that were highest ranked.

I took it a step further ( which I love to do The Seeker  that I am ) and wrote out all my archetypes, and then started deciphering them into patterns of how they fit into my life and my art. I discovered 4 groups...so far.

1. Art journal ( art ), do I already use these archetypes in my journaling? I figured I should since they were what came up with when I took the test. So I went through just my current art journal and made a hash mark beside every archetype as it was recorded. And in order of this ranking, Nature, Mother and Goddess really stand out the strongest. ( Mother surprised me as I don't consider my myself "nurturing" yet I use a lot of quotes that do nuture and encourage...interesting. Goddess also surprised me, I guess cause I think of that term as being "all that and a bag of chips" symbol but it pertained to supporting females and using the female form. Nature was the only that came as no surprise.

 2.  HOME (personal values) - As you can see I have a lot of archetypes, but that didn't surprise me as I am a strong person. I would have been more surprised to find only a few were represented but I was surprised to find some were not related to my art in any way and upon further research discovered these were my personal values or my way of life. ( engineer, Queen, hermit, judge, Princess )

3. Spotlight - Yeah, this one was easy for me to recognize, I love being on design teams, blogging and making videos for You Tube. So while this is art related it is not "art journaled", if that makes sense to you, it does to me but I am all up in my head right now. ( Performer )

4. Knowledge (self awareness)- I'm always taking tests, trying to figure out things about myself, what makes me tick and all so this one has it's own category. You'll notice I didn't even mark it on my chart as self awareness because it didn't dawn on until I started writing this post and began thinking about all the things I love to learn...about myself, my personality...oh and did you know I was a Sociology major. Learning about why man does what he does has always been interesting to me.

I wonder what I'll figure out next...isn't this fun?