Uncategorized – Page 15 – Mixy's Art Blog

2015: Setting the Scene

Striding into January, this first Monday always has a first day back feel. Back to school, back to work, back to routine… and I love it. That fortnight of chaos just makes me relish the normal I’m all amped up and ready to run. Sure, I’ve got dull stuff to contrast with the fun, but it’s all in balance. The yin makes no sense without the yang, and flat-lining is no fun at all. And this week is so full of great intentions, which although they might not all last the course, I feel like if I run with them fast enough some will stick with me.

A little while back I was telling you about my Word for 2015 which at the time was Reach Beyond and the associated frustration that my word was in fact two words, and I was struggling to come up with a snappy substitute.

I pondered long n hard.

The Facebook group of some >1200 or so folk on a similar quest have been amazing – super supportive to each other’s stories and full of enlightening thoughts and amazing links off and about the internets to like-thoughted places. And helped me add a bunch of other contenders to the list of words.

I settled, finally, on Focus.
focus

My intention is to:

Focus on what I am doing at any one time – I am typing this post, I am mindful of my fingers on the keyboard. It’s all a little brighter and sharper when I’m just considering these words, nothing else. I’m not eating, not fretting, not rushing up to do the thing I forgot earlier because I was only part-minded on the thing I was doing then – part-minded on the previous part-minded task – and so on….

Focus on the bigger picture. Is what I am doing now contributing in a positive way – to my well-being, health, happiness, or is it a foolhardy shortcut, an excuse, another getting away with it? Does it matter? Can I be wiser? Can I act more in tune with this bigger picture I’m compiling, the picture I call my life?

I’m focussed on my path. I’m there in the now after now after now, footfall after footfall, mindfully aware. Moment to moment to moment. It’s all a bit Zen.

Of course it flickers in and flutters off – my concentration is a butterfly – but my intention for the year is to come back to the focus every time I remember.

Three Colour Challenge

Nuvofelt’s challenge was just what I needed this evening.

After a day of getting on with some long put off jobs about the nest, my reward for myself was an hour or so of de-rusting my painting skills.

The three colours I chose (without a lot of thought) were Magenta, Gold Ochre & Purple. Which for someone who has been in a rut of bluey greens for a loooong time, was probably a well balanced choice.

One at a time, on with the colour!

The artificial light doesn’t do the colour justice. It might be a work in progress or maybe a done thing, I’ll review it in the cold light of morning. Either way it was fun to do, I recommend it as a way to break colour habits!

Colour Prompt 10

You know me, I like a challenge….
So, restricting myself to just three colours was one I decided to rise to!

Creating something every day

Today’s colour challenge. How can you use it?

10 January 03

Choose at least three colours and use them to create something. You can add more colours if you wish – no limit to those. Please link back to this post if you blog about it – then we can all come and visit.

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Unstuckness

Do you guys know Jane Davies? I’ve just watched this video of hers. Really simple black and white mark making, so vibrant and lively and really ‘in the moment’. It made me think how great this would be as a kick-start when I can’t get going. A reminder: don’t try and make something just do.

I was reminded of the stuckness all us artistfolk get somewhile.

It’s a bitch: that art-void head space. Can’t think, can’t make, creatively constipated.

It’s tiresome, it’s draining, it’s vexacious, and until you’ve gotten through it a few times, it can scare the pants off you: “What if it’s all gone? Dried up? Never coming back?…”
When I finished school last June I got struck down by it big time, and it didn’t let up for AGES. Months.

I tried to to coax my mojo back into being by sorting out my art making space. I tidied and reshuffled and organised… I even had a fantastic commission to get on with, but I was stubbornly standing in my own way and refusing to budge.

So I waited it out, I lined up ideas in my head and on paper and physically in little heaps about the place. (I think the 2 years of intensive study and practice running in parallel with some big life shifts in my personal world had just run the tank dry and I needed this long while to regroup.) So I used the time to seek out and absorb new influences. I played more with words than colors. I began to enjoy the world outside the confines of my head.

I haven’t entirely got back in the art-swing still yet. Doesn’t seem to be an ON / OFF, more a growing appetite. But everyday I’m feeding the spirit with the nourishing goodness on tap here in the online community and in the books I’ve acquired over the years; The simple beauties around and about in nature and people-made-stuff.

Today I’m beginning a new year long project – a page a week art journal/sketchbook. I feel sore and rusty in the art-muscles, but it’s coming back. (I also bought a bunch of new colours to play with in the sales!)

New Wishes for the New Year

Happy New Day folks!

Yesterday (last year) I had a little rant about New Year’s Jumblings. Cos I don’t really understand a lot of it. Cos it doesn’t make sense.

But that was Then. This is Now!

And as I promised, here are the New Wishes I’m beginning my version of 2015 with:

To double the weight I can lift now.

I began weight training 3 months ago. It’s been damned hard, I hurt and ache more of the time than I don’t.

But I get the biggest buzz from it, and have squashed so many mental blocks and phobias along the way already. And I quietly amuse myself with thoughts of how absurd this seems in comparison to my first 4 decades on this planet.

If the previous version of me heard me wish this (even earlier last year), she would have fallen off the sofa laughing. Then asked me what I was on, and could she have some 😉

So, I’m small and flimsy, but I’m doing my best. And my best is (gradually) getting better. (For the record, I’m dead lifting 1/2 my OBW now. Just!)

And in turn my yoga practice is getting stronger and a whole lot less fally-over with my new found sense of balance!

To Live my Art.

Art has always been at my core.

It’s the centre of my being. It’s my purpose. I always knew this.

And for all that long time I dismissed it as frills and extras – when space and time permitted – to getting on with the serious job of not enjoying of life. WTF? Yes, old thinking, bad programming, obsolete life plan.

So if you’ve read my previous witterings you’ll know I embarked on the art school adventure just a few short years ago, and I now plan to move on from art student (my highest ideal when I began) to actual real live artist!

I’m joining the Dirty Footprints 21 Secrets in the Spring. Meanwhile I’ve got my Newest Sketchbook Project to begin today!

Let Go.

Whatever it is, FFS, just let it go!

The tension in my shoulders, the stupid things I did and said, the wanting things to be different from how they are, the wishing those wasted years back, the constant want of approval, congratulation, praise and ego bolstering.

Let it all go.

The need to make everyone laugh. Or think differently from how they are. Or be other than they are. All those judgements, the blame, the remorse, all that past – the whole darned lot of it!

There’s stuff I don’t know if I need to let go of, or persevere with – y’know that quandary? Yup, let that needing to know go too.

If it matters, it won’t go far.

So that’s the essence of my Three Big Wishes.

I also wish you well, as well. Be well, lovely folks! X

Holiday wishes

Dear digital friends,

Wishing you harmony, peace and joy today and all days. Be warm and lovely everybody! Big hugs to you all X

Old Year’s Wishes

I tend to think of the period from Winter Solstice as my New Year. That slow muddle of Sunday feeling holiday-days that ache on for the last ten days of the year, as the season turns and the days get longer, it seems the time for reviewing and recounting, consolidating and setting new hopes.

2014 has been a full and fast flung year in my world.

I finished college (for now) – I learnt a bunch of new skills including animation and film editing which I’ll show you some of soon.

I made some big changes with my ‘day job’ – the regular bill-paying part of my life, I’ve released some of the duties and in doing so I’ve also released some much needed hours each week not to mention a load of responsibilities which has sat uncomfortably on my shoulders for long enough.

I’ve gained an acceptance for some areas of my life that have been hanging in a state of limbo. I’m biding my time with equanimity and letting the future unfold in its own way.

I’ve made a radical lifestyle change, dropping old habits that were no longer serving any good purpose. (I even acknowledged they probably never did serve that much good.) And they are now in the past.

I’ve adopted some new regimes of a very healthful and positive nature. All these years I’d lived so much inside my head, like my body was just the transportation system used by the mind and spirit. So I’m addressing this misbalance. It aches and complains, but it’s just waking up. We are beginning to work together in better harmony.

Some old friendships rekindled, some new ones just beginning, it all feel right. I began to explore directions for my immediate future. It is very exciting times!

New Moon Solstice

All best wishes to you, dear digital friends! for the longest/ shortest day depending on your home hemisphere 😉 X

Ben Heine

I love this way of superimposing new details or whole new meanings to images. Inspirational!

power of h Weblog

Ben Heine’s work is so charming. You can’t help but smile. Its clever. And innocent. Every art class does something like this with pictures and pencil. But I’ve never seen it pushed to this point.You might think it is a miracle. But then. You may never have been to Brugge.