This recurring instruction: Create Your Own Map.
It’s what I’m endeavoring to do.
I’m mapping my way as I go.
I document when I remember,
I share when I think it might help.
Starting out in the usual fashion:
Colours and curls,
Cut outs, collaging the inconsequential,
daubs, dabs, smudgy smear.
State the intention.
Then populate:
Look up, look down. Look around
Remember it’s the journey not the destination.
Art journalers who embrace the unplanned,
who find their mojo in the serendipitous,
whose ideas bloom out of happenstance:
these folks will know this old trick: Squash that inky stencil between future pages of the book in which you’re playing and get the two-folded benefits of not wasting a drop of delicious colour and planting the seed for a creation yet to be born. That’s where this page began:
And another familar trick: glue in a load of the offcuts of paper that are littering the work table. Much of this was soon to be lost under layers of heavy paint. But that’s the nature of the ephemeral.
Last week’s pages were dominated by these faces. And where there are cut outs, there are the spaces from which they are cut. Add them to the gluings:
So I felt called towards bigger colors. More defining. Louder.
It came out as something a bit Easter Islandish, I like the way they are looking out:
One into the past, one into the future.
Life’s little upsidedowneries; they entertain, baffle, bemuse.
I considered not posting this page, tbh I was just relieved I took these first pics before I got too far in, so at least I had something to show for the week if I couldn’t bring myself to unveil the way it went from here….
Mmmmm yummy Golden fluid acrylics: I have like about 5-6 of these weeny little bottles. They are expensive, but they are so lush. Delicious. Mmmmmm…. And just a few little drops scrape out soooo much colour:
I love! I love these colours, I love the blending, I love so much about these paints. I recommend them wholeheartedly.
So maybe that’s exactly why it all seemed to fall apart when I began gluing other stuff all over this start to the page.
Eurgh. Hasty move.
But y’know what, I’ve been doing this for years and I’ve got good at letting go and moving along, overcoming those WHYDIDIDOTHAT?s and getting straight into the next OOHBUTNOWICANDOTHIS!
This week though, try as I might, they weren’t coming together for me. And then suddenly it’s the end of the week and I’m all WHAT!? where did that go? Cue: Massive flurry of activity.
So when I tried with some more of the lovely-insided envelope and a bit of Inktensity I just wound up covering over a load of what I had liked with something I liked a lot less. A lot less 😦
In a frenzied state of compulsive collage and paint scraping I hit it with all I could muster before I ran out of day. And I got this:
I didn’t like it much. And then I went to bed.
This morning I got to taking the photos and as I was looking at them, something odd happened: Do you get this sometimes?
A thing can be a thing, then with no warning, it becomes its opposite: It flips, reverses, and it nearly never gives you any warning.
All that was rushed, ugly and scratchy the night before was now curiously deliberate looking.
Almost artful…
The colours that were chosen by serendipity: what’s on the table in front of me…
they’ve flipped from hideous clashing mismatch to interesting contrasts.
In combination with taking photos at odd angles, I do believe this is really warming up to be something I like.
Even the ubiquitous eyes have evolved. And now I’m looking at it here, I can’t help see how the purples go with the purpley background on screen, Well whaddayouknow.
I shared recently how sometimes I’ll drop into the future and leave myself a note. Turns out I’d done it again for last week’s page:
“Each morning I am born again. What I do today is what matters most.” Last week hadn’t kicked off to the best start, so it was maybe just what I needed to read. (Well done me-in-the-recent past). That in mind, collage on:
Hey, d’u remember the whole paper-dying obsession I had a while back? (it continues, I just don’t go on about it so much these days). Of all the scrap paper I LOVE to make use of, I really like to use envelopes.
What is it? Idk, maybe how they’re so readily discarded, they appeal to the rescuer part of my character.
Also, so often have such pretty patterns hidden inside. So junk mail arrived this week and it was inside one of may fav prettily-insided style envelopes.
I’m aware that’s quite a niche in geekiness to have a fav prettily-insided style envelopes.
This week the page as a whole left me a little Meh, but if anything saved it from it’s feel of half-arsed mediocrity, it’s this tiny honeycomb patterns.
So here’s how the page evolved….
I feel like it isn’t really ‘done‘ and that’s why I don’t feel happy with it. But whatever, it’s last week and in the past now. I like the colours and the honeycomb and sometimes that just has to be enough.
Onward and upward!
Yesterday I was sharing about the ugly side of creativity. When it’s in that worse before it gets better zone.
The only way outa here is forward: Charge on forward through this zone.
If you can’t carry on right now, let it rest.Let it settle.
When you come back it’s going to look different:
—If it looks better – let this spur you on in hope.
—If it looks worse – take the nothing left to lose impetus to make changes:
Whatever you’re creating, from a painting to a song, a novel or a dance, a dress or a manifesto, try any variations of these things:
Do some radical dismantling, recreate with hope and a conscious understanding it’s only wrong at the moment; it’s maybe uncomfortable but it isn’t doomed.
Know that you’re through the worst because if you’re moving you’re making progress: It was the ugliest thing in existence, so by logical deduction it must be getting better, right?
Right. Then keep on going. If the bigger picture is freaking you out,
Just look at the detail…
Find some solace there, some shhhhh…some calm
Befriend the details. Examine them closely for inexplicable creatures.
The only thing not to do is sit and dwell on how a different course of action somewhere in the past would have made it different. That then is gone. Focus on the now of it.
Then see where you find yourself, recombobulate, know the process works, and carry on.
Y’know when you hear about a new thing, then you hear about it again within a really short time, and you think:
Hey, Universe, are you trying to tell me something here?
Well, this week I’ve read in more than 2 places the suggestion of freeing up your creative mojo by drawing freestyle, playing about at mark making, with your non dominant hand. It kicks the brain into action in a way doing the usual things in the usual way just can’t.
So with some degree of awkwardness I set about some cack-handed doodles. Scribbles. Scraping of pencil across page.
Not pretty, not descriptive, but after a bit of warming up the eye-brain-hand coordination came together a little better and it did at least begin to look and feel a bit more deliberate. And it’s only a first layer. With some more colour it’s already becoming much more backgroundier.
There it goes, merging behind, blending away.
Some collaged layers begin to add structure and I’m back to my usual right-fisted chaos. But…….
The other reason I’m posting these stages is to make the point that pages can go through really ugly phases; totally scrappy and uncohesive. I mean really, really URGH. Really WTF is going on, ‘I honestly thought I could make pretty, creative, loveliness…. then I go n do this thing and it’s just so… just so… I can’t even look at it….’ <sob>
The key to getting through this is to keep on going! Don’t stop here!! It’s just a phase. It’s easy to get despondent looking at such an incoherent ugliness. It’s a shambles. But it’s only a shambles at the moment.
It’s a very rare art that can’t be pulled back from the edge of ugly in some fashion or other.
I’ll be back tomorrow with how this got saved, there is ART after URGH.
Sometimes I’ll hear or read something I like, I have to write it down. Write it down quick before it escapes. Trap it. The weekly art journal is often to hand, and when the current week is getting full, I’ll drop in these new words somewhere in the future pages. Then when that week rolls around it’s there to remind me. This week remembered to me of this truth:
I took this photo for fear of the words getting buried. I wanted to show them to you. I love the simple truth of it. We’re so much more resourceful that we think, much of the time.
In this much collage there’s a risk of word burial.
I’ve still got the collage bug big time.
I love the build up of layers, the intensification of imagery.
As it turned out, those words just got bolder. Then became surrounded with eyes. (of course!)
This week, and how it took shape, began with these elephants who dropped through my letterbox on a leaflet for the zoo.
Amongst all the hoarded nonsense and clutter that accumulates our lives …. This week I found a box of old sheet music, and a bunch of books, all way too tatty and damaged to donate, but too much like art materials to discard.
But….Y’know, unless its actually contaminated with something that can’t be cleaned off or can make me ill / kill me, it’s almost always got a future as art materials. And if it’s paper, it’s collagable.
Still on the collage buzz (that’s here for a while. I reduced a knee high pile of magazines to 4 boxes of awe inspiring faces, backgrounds, patterns, colours and words recently. There’s a LOAD more of this to come!)
The elephants’ environment mainly consists the scraps on my table leftover from another little doing I’m working on in parallel. I’ll show you how that’s coming on soon. I like how fate and synchronicity get to choose the ingredients sometimes. It lets me off the hook, and they usually do a fine job.
I’ve found a Feeding Fascination: Feed My Soul ~ Feed My Heart ~ Feed My Being.
I’m so nourished by my art, and as of this week I’m also on a literal nourishment adventure too, I’m on a keto kick. I’m gonna give it a month and see how it pans out – day 5 is too soon to comment! – so watch this space.
From the start of this year I’ve been art journaling on a weekly basis. And it’s thrown up all kind of interesting thoughts I wouldn’t have pre-guessed.
Like how some patterns recur through so much I do and make. This checkerboard effect is an old fav. Especially this sort made up from snippy bits of text.
And the subconscious recurrences. There’s definitely an eye peering over from behind these guys. I only saw that in this photo just now! Since I chose Focus as my word for the year, I don’t think a week has gone by this year without eyes featuring to some extent.
Primarily it’s a place to doodle, spill words and thoughts, splash color with free abandon, and dabble about with techniques. I’m on mahoosive collage trip right now!
Collage and doodles. It’s my therapy de jour. I get utterly lost in the layers of cut out images, paint, doodle, ink splash….
This week’s page has been a really involved evolution.
Yes, there have been some important things I should have been doing. This book is a mirror of my procrastionationability
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