I’ve spent so many hours in the world between the pages of this book.
From the layers of drawings and doodles, to reliving the experience via editing the videos I made for the 100 days project, each page has developed a narrative.
I work fast because one thought spawns a dozen new ideas and I have to run to catch as many as I can.
In this spread it was the stitches along the page edge that generated the triangular patterns, then the edges of the paint streaks which wanted more attention, emerging into solid shapes that demanded stripes, squiggles & spots.
Before I knew it, there were faces emerging.
I’ll be honest – right from the moment they began to appear – I wasn’t quite comfortable with this crowd.
As small and flat as their grinning faces were, I felt outnumbered, and until I redressed this balance I had an uneasy sense here.
Having looked thoroughly disgruntled throughout, the character who remained at the end took on a certain poise and dignity when the others left. Now she clearly owns this spread.
The rest of the characters in this art journal also have a destiny that’s yet to be fulfilled. Catch my August Studio Musings Newsletter to find out more. If you haven’t already done so – hop in here!
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Since I finished my 100 days project I’ve been editing together some of the time lapse process videos to look back at the evolution of these pages. Here is part 5.
Ink over gesso never fails to make me happy.
water splashes on ink on gesso make magical patterns
In this spread I began by gessoing over a page of scribbled color. Then came pebeo colorex inks running through the gesso texture, then ecoline brush pens for their juicy transparent colors that layer like nothing else.
If I’d left this page there, I would have been happy, but this challenge involved pushing through a few ‘finished already’ stages into new territory, in this case it was with water-soluble graphite and watercolor pencils, then lastly a white chalk marker.
It’s curious to relive the visual journey. There’s nothing like filming the process to relive the ‘why did I do that?’ moments.
Time Lapse Compilation: part 3
If you’ve been here before, you’ll know that lately I’ve been documenting my art journaling process through a series of time lapse videos.
It’s curious to relive a visual journey. There’s nothing like filming the process to relive the ‘why did I do that?’ moments. These came up a lot early on but I’m noticing a desensitising effect with practice, and letting go of expectations. Process is process.
Nonetheless, the push and pull of loving/hating the direction it’s taking remains real. It took a really long time for me to catch on where this one wanted me to lead it.
The irony of the words that fell onto this page is not lost on me, from an interview with Sabrina Ward Harrison: “Splendidly Imperfect and Alive”.
This video is a compilation of little time lapse videos taken over a few weeks of back-and-forth-ing on this spread.
The more time I spend in art making, the more I find parallels between a creative practice and all the other everyday-everythings. Seems to me, how we make tends to mirror how we live – bravely – messily – stubbornly – inconsistently… all of these are here!
Releasing the butterfly
This particular spread got so sticky because I reeeally didnโt want to lose that butterfly. I painted and drew around him until I had such a mess there was no other option, ultimately burying him under a new layer of paint to ease the intensity of so much going on. I was resisting letting go.
I’ll post the next in this series soon. To catch it ahead of everyone else + get monthly-ish updates on my other colorful studio antics, join up for my newsletter here.
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This year’s contribution to the Brooklyn Art Library’s Sketchbook Project got filled with a great outpouring of ideas in the final couple of weeks before the deadline. If you already saw the first flip through – this is a longer version – with close ups and all!
This year’s contribution to the Brooklyn Art Library’s Sketchbook Project got filled with a great outpouring of ideas in the final couple of weeks before the deadline.
The book itself had been sitting on my desk, quietly waiting for months. Since the start of this year I got waylaid from almost everything else in the studio by the epic paper dying experiments.
I knew, as the weeks ticked by, that I’d be spending those last days in a flurry of paint and collage bits, stitching in new pages and sequins, hidden notes, and whatever else was flooding out of my thoughts onto the pages.
My first idea was to extend my ink dying experiments directly into these pages, but the paper of the sketchbook doesn’t absorb the ink the same way and it just wasn’t working how I wanted it to.
So instead I adapted the ink splotches, like finding patterns in the clouds, I found faces and magical made up animals in the splashes.
On the Library Shelf…
For all you folks local to New York (or passing through) – this book can now be found on the shelves of the Brooklyn Art Library, with a call number of: 360.55-6
Digitised Version…
In a few weeks time my book will be scanned and digitised to see online (like last years, which you can see here).
But you really need to see in her motion to get a sense of her cut out pages, her frills and flounces…
Because sometimes ink blob people and creatures aren’t enough…
Sometimes you need to stitch in extra pages, fold out bits, with secret notes, meaningless messages and nonsense.
So the next best thing to a trip to Brooklyn to meet this creation, is this little filmed flip through I made you.
(If you already saw the first flip through – this is a longer version – with close ups and all!)
While I’m still buzzing on the high of making this book, I’m channeling this energy into daily pages for the #100dayprojectwhich you can follow over on Instagram.
You can be first to find out what I’m busy making and doing with monthly-ish updates direct to your emailbox. Like magic. Just tell me who you are:
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It’s that time of year again , Instagram is full to bursting of 100 day projects. I love the variety of ideas that populate this challenge. This is my third year of participating. ๏ปฟ
โComing back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.โ ~ Sir Terry Pratchett
It’s that time of year again, Instagram is full to bursting of 100 day projects. I love the variety of ideas that populate this challenge.
Previously…
In 2017 I missed the start date by a long way. I didn’t know this was an annual event, or anything much at all except it was a hashtag that intrigued me. I took the next 6 months to complete 100 daily pages of art journal.
In 2018 I was all amped up to go from day one. I decided on a hugely ambitious project. I even wrote myself a manifesto. For real!By day sixty-something I was utterly spangled and my group of 100-day-canvasses* are still ‘resting’ in a not quite complete stage.
*that’s 5 canvasses for the 100 days. Not 100 canvasses. I’m over ambitious, for sure, but not that much…
I’ll circle back round to them some day. When they’re ready.
Opting Out…
This year I had no plans to join the project.
I love watching everyone else’s projects in all their iterations play out and develop. I’m fascinated by the broad reach of the themes; the devotion and the grace; the patience and the determination. [Is this you? Leave a comment below with your IG handle so I can follow you too ๐ ]
My 2019 is a time of stepping away and of setting aside, I’ve been deliberately disengaging from social media, opting out and resisting. I’m doing my darnedest to play more offline than online to help de-frazzle my achy brain.
This year I planned watch and absorb instead.
Oh. Surprise!
So no-one was more surprised than I was to find myself getting all zinged up on April 2nd – day one of the project – when I determined the thing I wanted to do more than anything else was to join in again!
I made a commitment to myself already to make some sort of art every day in this little Moleskine book. It’s been with me over a year and I especially while I’m still a bit high on the fun of the sketchbook project book I just completed (more on that soon) this feels like a gift of accountability- momentum I just can’t ignore.
Will I last out for 100 days? I’ll post updates here as and when [ or you can check the daily doodles I add on Instagram ] for now I’m enjoying it, and that’s all that matters to me ๐
Meanwhile, If you want to be first to know about my colorful antics on and offline, join up for monthly news direct by email.
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Early in my blogging days I was documenting my experiments in ink dyed paper. Earlier this year I began playing about with these old book pages and something in my creativity woke up. I began what’s turned out to be an epic adventure into paper dying.๏ปฟ
Happy Blog-iversary to me!
I began this blog to keep a (slightly) ordered record of my creative doings and makings. I figured the self-accountability of posting about my various colorful doings would prompt me into more regular habits. At the very least, it would create an ordered timeline of events I could take a backwards look at and track this meandering journey.
In fact that’s become a bigger part than I had reckoned on.
That was SEVEN years ago.
Much of my early blogging was to document my experiments in dying paper.
The idea arrived in my mind as I was pouring another bucket of colored water away, post-fabric-dying process.
Fabric dye remains ‘active’ for a relatively short time. Leaving cloth to soak for a long time will allow it to absorb deeper into the fibres, giving richer more intense colors, but the major part of the dying magic occurs in the first half hour or so. That pretty colored water will do nothing else. I got wondering – this is no good for fabric – but what about paper…?
In the passage of these 7 years I forget how I evolved to using inks instead of recycled dye water… something to do with the salt in the dye water being corrosive to the paper, and (more likely) the very dilute colors not suiting my bright vivid world. But I come back to these experiments again and again.
Way back, my first experiments were with an old dictionary. She’d already lost her cover and was very loose at the bindings. She was ready to become art paper.
Earlier this year I began playing about with these old book pages and something in my creativity woke up. I began what’s turned out to be an epic adventure into paper dying.
Revisiting ink dying with the remaining pages of that dictionary from years ago.
Life spirals around in familiar patterns – have you noticed this too?
The paper I’ve been using recently has also been from retired dictionaries. I remember these books from when I was a kid, they were falling-apart-old even then.
I’ve also got this 2 volume set of ‘The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary’. Huge books with multiple pages of regular sized print reduced into one. Barely visible words, the books actually come with a magnifying glass.
They’re so weighty [2 volumes of 4000+ pages!] They really feel like they’re holding the mass of an entire language.
I remember finding these books fascinating as a kid, but they were barely ever used, they’re just absurdly impractical. Instead they served as a doorstop for a while, and eventually found their way into a box of stored things in a damp garage. An unhappy demise for any book. Many years later, re-emerging, covers tatty and box almost destroyed, but pages miraculously almost intact.
This year these two gigantic tomes transcended into their latest incarnation: ART.
Afforded the freedom that this quantity of paper – literally thousands of pages from these dismantled books – I’ve really explored the ways the different types of paper take up different types of ink.
โThe thoughts we choose to think
are the tools we use to paint the canvas of our lives.โ – Louse Hay
2018’s been a soupy sort of year, it feels like all the days and weeks swirled up together, undefined and drifty. It’s fun to go back and look at these memories I caught as they floated by. It feels like a reset: Ready to begin again.
New year: new art journal. Finding connections, exploring rabbit-holes.
โWhat the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.โ
Gustav Klimt in Paris, piles of pebbles in Cyprus. Shavasana.
โJust for now,without asking how, let yourself sink into stillness. … Just for now, be boundless, free, with awakened energy tingling in your hands and feet. Drink in the possibility of being who and what you really are โ so fully alive that the world looks different, newly born and vibrant, just for now..โ
When I’ve got just a few minutes to spare I go to my art journal, find a blank page or a space, and doodle.
These are the background layers that inspire what comes next.
This is how I fill the scraps of time while I’m waiting for paint to dry, or a file to upload, or just waiting for ideas to land.
There’s a real freedom in knowing it will get covered in sketches or collage, more doodles and scribbles. I don’t plan this, I don’t even choose the colors, I use whatever pens, paints and brushes are there on my desk.
Sometimes you just got to let art happen.
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Where do you find your inspiration? how do you stretch your creativity to include new patterns and shapes?
While I took a long pause from painting and drawing through the summer, seems maybe my muse melted in the heatwave,ย I was all out of inspiration for weeks.ย Instead I turned my attention to sewing and spent my spare time adding to this ongoing project .
Then, as suddenly as the ideas had dried up, they began to repopulate my thoughts.
The pages are beginning like usual, with splashes and washes of color from messy brush wipes, patches of color to use up left over paint.
BUT, the next step is the new part: every page is has space for drawing something I’ve beenย inspired by.
So often I take photos of patterns and shapes, so often I save images from artists and designers.
All the things that light up my imagination and set off a new train of doodles.
So I’ve got an enormous catalogue of inspiration tucked away in my phone, my bookmarks & favs.
When I get a spare few minutes, or when I want to warm up my drawing brain, I go to my art journal to add drawings and doodles inspired by someone or something in my list.
I was fascinated by the shapes and lines of these rocks on the beach in Cyprus last month. Dozens of photos of these wonderful wobbly lines. This is the first of a series they inspired.
Meanwhile, other artists have been drip-feeding ideas into my mind too.ย I invite their influence to stretch my skills, to let their style add new aspects to the way I doodle.
Alisa Burke creates fabulous flowery mandalas and often shares her process in Instagram. It’s such a meditative process, watching the patterns unfurl onto the page.
This is the first ofย my inspired by Alisa spreads.
art journal spread inspired by Alisa Burke
Where do you find your inspiration? how do you stretch your creativity to include new patterns and shapes?
If you’d like to be first to see what I’m making & doing, hop onto my email list here:ย
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