Over the last 12 days of the year I’m sharing my year of color: 12 colors in 12 months. Today –
Twelvty-Five: Blue
Twelvty-Five: Blue
awash with all things cool, fresh and blue!
“Blue color is everlastingly appointed by the deity to be a source of delight.” ~John Ruskin
Color is an integral part to all types of creativity, it influences our moods and emotions, it’s linked with memories. Colors have been assigned meanings and connections throughout history and around the world.
When we tune our eyes in to notice the colors around us, life becomes brighter and more vibrant.
2017 has been a year full of color, an adventure I’m sharing in an online program called TWELVTY. Every month I’ve been playing just in the month’s colors, and each month I added to this mixed media art journal.
Over the last 12 days of the year I want to show you a glimpse of this project.
If you’re interested in understanding more about color, get my ebook A Year full of Color as well as regular monthly updates on my latest colorful antics, delivered right to your inbox:
Your email is utterly safe to me. It will not be sold, eaten or accidentally lost down the back of the sofa. I promise.
Next year I’m revisiting the Twelvty project, but this time with some exciting additions! Find out more here
Over the last 12 days of the year I’m sharing my year of color: 12 colors in 12 months. Today –
Twelvty-Four: Blue-Green
Twelvty-Four: Blue-Green
Teal, Turquoise, Mermaids & Peacocks
“A turquoise given by a loving hand carries with it happiness and good fortune.” ~ Arabic proverb
Color is an integral part to all types of creativity.
Colors have been assigned meanings and connections throughout history and around the world.
Sometimes these overlap and sometimes they are contradictory. Color is a great metaphor for so many aspects this wildly paradoxical trip we call life.
Through 2017 I’ve been exploring color in a year long visual adventure: devoting myself to just one color each month.
In Twelvty-Four I had the most fun making a series of layered stitched collages, made from dyed paper and fabrics, embellished with beads and buttons and shiny things.
Each month also has a few pages of single color doodles in this mixed media art journal.
Over the last 12 days of the year I’m sharing a glimpse of this 12 month project.
We began with Yellow, Yellow-Green, then Green tomorrow we’ll step around to Twelvty-Five: Blue
If you’re interested in understanding more about color, get my ebook A Year full of Color as well as regular monthly updates on my latest colorful antics, delivered right to your inbox:
Your email is utterly safe to me. It will be guarded at all times by dragons.
Next year I’m revisiting the Twelvty project, but this time with some exciting additions! Find out more here
Over the last 12 days of the year I’m sharing my year of color: Today –
Twelvty-Three: Green. And green is tricksy!
Twelvty-Three: Green
Emerald, Jade & Verdant Viridian!
“They’ll sell you thousands of greens. Veronese green and emerald green and cadmium green and any sort of green you like; but that particular green, never.”
~ Pablo Picasso, 1966.
Color is an integral part to all types of creativity, it influences our moods and emotions, it’s linked with memories. Colors have been assigned meanings and connections throughout history and around the world.
When we tune our eyes in to notice the colors around us, life becomes brighter and more vibrant.
Through 2017 I’ve been exploring these aspects of color in a year long visual adventure: one color each month.
Every color has certain characteristics, both in appearance, but also in the way it behaves. This month I discovered: Green is tricksy!
I really enjoyed playing in the colors either side – Yellow-Green & Blue-Green – but Green itself was strangely difficult. Whatever I tried in just green alone stubbornly refused to take shape.
It came as no surprise to me that I enjoyed using Green’s neighbours in the color wheel (the tertiary ‘in betweening’ colors are my favs), but didn’t anticipate Green presenting such unsettlement. Of course there’s always a way to adapt, the projects I began in Green spilt over into the following month and I shifted the colors into blue green.
Meanwhile, back in the art journal, the single coloured spreads continued.
Over the last 12 days of the year I want to show you a glimpse of this project.
We began with Yellow, then Yellow-Green tomorrow we’ll step around to Twelvty-Four: Blue-Green.
If you’re interested in understanding more about color, get my ebook A Year full of Color as well as regular monthly updates on my latest colorful antics, delivered right to your inbox:
Your email is utterly safe to me. It will be guarded at all times by dragons.
Next year I’m revisiting the Twelvty project, but this time with some exciting additions! Find out more here
Over the last 12 days of the year I’m sharing my year of color: 12 colors in 12 months. Today –
Twelvty-Two: Yellow-Green
Twelvty-Two: Yellow-Green
From luscious lime to opulent olive: the color of spring time.
“I am going to try to pay attention to the spring. I am going to look around at all the flowers, and look up at the hectic trees. I am going to close my eyes and listen.” ~ Anne Lamott
Twelvty-Two: Yellow-Green
Color is an integral part to all types of creativity, it influences our moods and emotions, it’s linked with memories. Colors have been assigned meanings and connections throughout history and around the world.
When we tune our eyes in to notice the colors around us, life becomes brighter and more vibrant.
Through 2017 I’ve been exploring these aspects of color in a year long visual adventure: one color each month.
Every month I’ve worked just in the month’s colors, this month I made a series of textile collages and each month I added some more to this mixed media art journal.
Over the last 12 days of the year I want to show you a glimpse of this project.
Yesterday we looked at Yellow, tomorrow we’ll step around to Twelvty-Three: Green
If you’re interested in understanding more about color, get my ebook A Year full of Color as well as regular monthly updates on my latest colorful antics, delivered right to your inbox:
Your email is utterly safe to me. It will be wrapped up snug in a blanket until the spring arrives.
Next year I’m revisiting the Twelvty project, but this time with some exciting additions! Find out more here
Over the last 12 days of the year I want to show you a glimpse of this project, beginning with….
Twelvty-One: Yellow
Color is an integral part to all types of creativity, it influences our moods and emotions, it’s linked with memories. Colors have been assigned meanings and connections throughout history and around the world.
When we tune our eyes in to notice the colors around us, life becomes brighter and more vibrant.
Through 2017 I’ve been exploring these aspects of color in a year long visual adventure: one color each month.
One part of the adventure has been the creation of a mixed media art journal. Each month I’ve added a few more pages, using just in that month’s colors.
Over the last 12 days of the year I want to show you a glimpse of this project, beginning with….
Tomorrow we’ll step around to Twelvty-Two: Yellow-Green
If you’re interested in understanding more about color, get my ebook A Year full of Color as well as regular monthly updates on my latest colorful antics, delivered right to your inbox:
Your email is utterly safe to me. It will be wrapped up snug and nestled with a hot water bottle until the spring arrives.
Next year I’m revisiting the Twelvty project, but this time with some exciting additions! Find out more here
I love Brighton but not visited for a long time. So when I saw Suzanne Vega would be playing there in September I just had to book, and we had a break by the sea for a couple of days.
14 year old me sang her little heart out along to Marlene on the Wall & Left of Centre amid all the architectural frills and froo-froo of Brighton Dome. Bliss!
Just before the trip I got alittle clip on fish-eye lens contraption for my phone. When I wasn’t taking pictures distorted into circles, I was finding round things to take photos of too (seems to be the way my mind works, it latches onto a theme and won’t let it go. Often it’s completely unconscious at the time, then I notice when I look back.)
Back home I made a new friend – a visiting cat I named ‘Pinkle’, because of her very pretty pink nose and ears. Some while later Pinkle’s otherhumans informed us she’s a he-cat, so he’s now known as ‘Mr Pinkle‘.
October saw the end to a few projects, releasing some brain-RAM to take stock of where I was and what was to come next.
This notebook is home to the lists of lists, the home to my brain dumps. It reminds me of the Hitch hiker’s guide to the galaxy. The HHGTTG has the simple instruction on the cover Don’t panic, the cover of the guide to my universe has Begin at the beginning, Go on till you come to the end, then stop.
This was the month I completed my 100 day project I started back in June. It taught me lots of indirect lessons, way more than just practising the motor skills of drawing. I began the under-doodles in my sketchbookprojectsketchbook
ROYAL ALBERT HALL – CHRISTMAS AT KEW – DIGITAL COLLAGE POSTCARDS
Teenage me had another giddy moment in November, Imelda May at the Royal Albert Hall. I didn’t know her music at all before, and it’s not quite my bag, but the gig ended with her being joined by her ‘special surprise guests’: Ronnie Wood & Bob Geldof!Holy Moly!
I had the biggest crush on Bob Geldof when I was a young thing (and – relatively speaking – so was he), it’s strange to see him as a grey haired old man. There’s a part of me that remains unconvinced the last 20-30 years have really gone by,I see him circa 1980.
I spent some time revisiting art I’ve made over the yearsand designed aset of postcards this month which was a lot of fun and I was so pleased with how they came out I designed and ordered another set straight away. There are still a few left in my Etsy shop if you’re interested
This month I finally got the set of Daniel Smith watercolors I’d been daydreaming over since I saw them reviewed online! Yes, they are pricey, yes they are totally worth it! I’ve had a word with Santa, and I believe I’ve some more headed my way very soon! Thesecolors are vibrant and lush, and I’m using them in my Sketchbookprojectsketchbook (more on that in the near future!)
Finally I got my antlers on & the holiday buzz began with a trip to see the Christmas lights at Kew Gardens.
Of course as I type this to you, the month is just half way through, but already we’ve had some snow (this is England, land of the bland weather, we get very excitable when it snows!)
The holidays are just around the corner, the tree is up, the pressies are wrapped, everything is feeling sparkly.
I met up with a bunch of my family in London at the weekend (there are many of us – just 12 at this little gathering) – some I hadn’t seen in more years than I like to remember, and some were so young at the time they didn’t remember. It still feels weird being one of the grown ups at a gathering like this.
I’m almost at the end of my year full of color, TWELVTY. Although it wasn’t my intention when I set out, I’m really looking forward to taking another trip around the color wheel in 2018. As I finish this year I’m honing and polishing the content for next year. It’s gonna be so much fun – if you’d like to know more you can find out here!
What a year it’s been! I hope your 2017 has brought good things to your life, and you’re able to find some time in the coming weeks to reflect and plan ahead for what’s to come next.
In the last 12 days of the year (beginning tomorrow) I’ll be sharing the 12 months of color that have made up TWELVTY. Meanwhile…
If you’d like regular monthly updates on my latest colorful antics, delivered right to your inbox (all the good stuff I don’t share here on the blog + special discounts on my classes and Etsy things) Hop on my mail-list right here:
and I’ll send you my ebook A Year full of Color
Your email is utterly safe to me. It will be wrapped up snug and nestled with a hot water bottle until the spring arrives.
Artings and outings, what I was listening to and watching. May-August 2017.
May
PINK FLOYD – GIACOMMETTI – KEW GARDENS
More outings – Kew Gardens to see the Rhododendrons (so much love for these flowers!) and the Tate modern to see Giacometti with friends from art school. These are sculptures I’d only seen in photographs – I get a star-struck giddiness when I see art I ‘know’ from pictures in real life. They were oddly both smaller and larger than I’d imagined.
This was also the month I went to the Pink Floyd retrospective at the V&A. This band played the soundtrack to my teenage years and on through my 20s, they still hold a special place in my heart.
Some few years ago I began looking into my family tree. An uncle began researching years before the internet which makes it so easy, and in June we began comparing our findings.
In searching out my mum’s side of the family I found out my great grandfather was a jockey, and by the power of Google and then ebay I acquired this newspaper page from the 1880s with a photo of him.
Stranger yet, both mum and dad had family who lived within a couple of streets of each other in Bethnal Green in the 1800s. Both families moved to other parts of London long before my parents were born, I can’t help wondering if they knew each other.
This is the month I began my 100 day project of daily drawings and doodles inspired by the photos in my phone. I take pictures wherever I go – not just of people and places and things, but of patterns and textures and colors too.I have a lot of photos in my phone. I started out with a photo from the Pink Floyd exhibition.
My year full of color is still progressing at the pace of a color a month, July moved into purple/violet. At the start of the year I’d planned to create a body of working each color/month. Sometimes my plans are bigger than I can fulfil, and by July I decided to merge two month/colors together. The blue-violet-purple project was a series of little hanging 3d textile pieces I call “Wishes”.
This is the month I took possession of my Sketchbook Project book. That’s another work in progress, which I’ll update you on soon.
August’s plans were turned upside down when my appendix exploded, leaving me in hospital for half the month.
I have immense gratitude for the NHS and for free Wifi that kept me sane through sleepless nights and boring days. I wasn’t able to do a lot, but I could distract myself with youtube and get my daily creativity hit by playing with the Diana photo app that randomly picks photos from your phone and does double exposure magic with them.
I’ll be back with the next instalment of reflections tomorrowish. Meanwhile………
If you’d like regular monthly updates on my latest colorful antics, delivered right to your inbox (all the good stuff I don’t share here on the blog + special discounts on my classes and Etsy things) Hop on my mail-list right here:
and I’ll send you my ebook A Year full of Color
Your email is utterly safe to me. It will be wrapped up snug and nestled with a hot water bottle until the spring arrives.
Looking back at 2017, First 4 colors of the year, some artings, outings & adventures.
January:
TWELVTY – YELLOWNESS – ETSY
Beginning in January and running all through 2017 I’ve been travelling around the color wheel with a group of fabulously inspiring artists and creatives. 2017 is the first time I’ve shared this journey, although it’s by no means my first Year full of Color.
January was the month of Yellow, and the month I opened the doors to my Etsy shop.
February is my birthday month and this year I took a trip to the Tate Modern and then had a few days in Barcelona. Sunshine, paella, and the Gaudi buildings I’ve wanted to go and see for the longest time. I was giddy with excitement all trip. There just aren’t enough superlatives!
This was the month I began in earnest, my quest to declutter my space. Spurred on my podcasts and youtubery, I began shifting bags and boxes of stuff out of my life. It’s a process, I’m uncovering layers of past (not just mine, I’ve the bequeathed hoardings of others amid this mess.) It’s gonna take some time.
This month I revisited a design I came up with ten (no – wait – is it?…. yup, ten) years ago – the Tree of Life– and I recreated a new version to celebrate. This design started out as a watercolour painting that I developed in Photoshop – which is how I still see it in my mind – so it’s kinda cool to see it reinvented again as a design on leggings and phone cases and all these things!
(I’ve got Santa on board this year and he’s ordered me a set of the zippy bags in “Tree of life Blues” for Chrimble. I’ve heard good things about these bags – I’ll let you know when they arrive)
March was also the month I really began exploring time-lapse as a way to share my art. I love sharing what I do and make, but even more I love to show you the process, the stages it goes through – the lost layers – the ephemeral bits.
That’s what this blog was all about to begin with (that’s how it got it’s name) this month was the fifth anniversary of my very first post here.
watch a painting come to life, and see the hidden layers that are out of sight forever now!
After a long hibernation, finally springtime … trips out to London to the V&A and museums, walks in the woods with the bluebells. TWELVTY was all about blue-green in April and this teal-turquoise range is my happy place in the color wheel (well… maybe one of them)
I began playing with paper dying again – messy fun – a technique I shared with my Twelvty group and it’s inspired me to create a mini ecourse in paper dying for the new year(watch this space)
I’ll be back with the next instalment of reflections tomorrowish. Meanwhile………
If you’d like regular monthly updates on my latest colorful antics, delivered right to your inbox (all the good stuff I don’t share here on the blog + special discounts on my classes and Etsy things) Hop on my mail-list right here:
and I’ll send you my ebook A Year full of Color
Your email is utterly safe to me. It will be wrapped up snug and nestled with a hot water bottle until the spring arrives.
I love to mix my drawings and graphics in with my photography experiments … these are glimpses into the dream scape of my imagination.
In the digital re-imagining of my art that I was telling you about yesterpost, I’m creating one of these collage postcards series entirely from the images in the 100 day project from earlier this year.
I’m finding the journey of a creative practice follows a spiral path, revisiting and reinventing along the way, enriching and inspiring from the past into the future.
These drawings nestle up together in their new arrangements as one edge blends into another.
They contain hidden messages and fragments of found poetry from the words and phrases that wandered through my mind as I drew.
These are glimpses into the dream scape of my imagination.And I’m only just beginning!
If you’d like regular monthly updates on my latest colorful antics, delivered right to your inbox (all the good stuff I don’t share here on the blog + special discounts on my classes and Etsy things) Hop on my mail-list right here:
and I’ll send you my ebook A Year full of Color
Your email is utterly safe to me. It will be wrapped up snug and nestled with a ring tailed lemur until the spring arrives.
If you’d like regular monthly updates on my latest colorful antics, delivered right to your inbox (all the good stuff I don’t share here on the blog + special discounts on my classes and Etsy things) Hop on my mail-list right here:
and I’ll send you my ebook A Year full of Color
Your email is utterly safe to me. It will be wrapped up snug and nestled with a hot water bottle until the spring arrives.
Color is an integral part to all types of creativity.
Mixy's Art Blog 