My word for 2016 is Flow. I made a pinterest board for my word when I started doing this last year, but this time I’m amping up the imagery by having these pins printed out and in one of my journals.
This way it’s something I see most days, and I guess is more Vision-Board-y like this.
There’s space left for words and gaps for more images. I like to think it will develop as the year goes on.
The pace of this project is slow but steady, marching through time at 1 inch per day. And already since the start of the year it’s a past the first page.
And the book is teaching me lessons already: Page one’s squares were measured and neatly spaced. Page two’s are are more in keeping with my style: eye-balled, uneven, bit wonky in places.
After the first few weeks I’ve wandered off from just doodle/painting to include collaged bits – fragments of that day’s doings. It intrigues me how different the mood of each day looks. It intrigues me to see how the coming weeks and months will look, and the lessons they will bring.
2015 was tied up in this book, in the rigidity of one page: one week, when some weeks felt empty of expression and some pages felt too small for all that was flooding out of my imagination.
By mid year it had taken on a thick, heavy persona with paint all gooey and chewy and some weeks where no amount of layers would cover up the uncomfortable truths of ugly: a parallel to the world it was illustrating. Something intangibly off. Something meh. Some things I didn’t like, didn’t like confronting, didn’t like to witness. I didn’t want to relive, repeat, or even properly acknowledge.
The book served a purpose: A lesson in being a grown up is knowing when to persevere, and when to stop. I persevered. And when the year was up I was glad the book was full. Finished. Finally time to move on. Onto what next.
What next?
I found myself cutting out shapes from magazine pages, scrap paper and junk mail. Something was stirring, I didn’t know what…
Last week I fell into a new facebook group run by the gorgeously art journally Orly Avineri. It was the catalyst I needed to jump into this new book.
This book is different, there are no limitations and no rules.
Free to fly in and out, land a while –
– chat with my thoughts, flit off again.
It takes as long as it takes.
I’m getting more and more aware that by pouring out my unconscious I can steer myself through this life in a fashion not like anything else.
It’s a compulsion.
You get this too, right?
Everything that was feeling stale and sludgy has dropped away since just this first page.
Yesterpost I shared an exploration into the evolution of an abstract photo. If you liked that, you might like this too: My regular post on Dirty Footprints Studio gives a bit of insight into the process of gathering these images.
Happy idea-gathering, folks 🙂
Cooking dinner one evening last week, waiting for the pot to boil:
The condensation forming on the lid was developing into this fabulous leopardskin effect. Too good to miss. I love the ephemeral beauty in the everyday. It’s everywhere, once you start to look.
So I took this photo and shared it on social media in the circles who see abstract art more than the crazed doings of some weirdo who takes photos of her dinner before it’s even made 😉
And it made me think.
How far can I chase this one idea?
Where could it go?
How far can it evolve?
So today (following the theme – waiting for dinner to cook) I tweaked the colour a bit and printed it out.
And then I began to play: Doodles, re-photographed… leopard spots are evolving into seashells…
more doodles, different camera angle, slight colour tweaks…
more doodles, new camera angle, colours inverted…. I love the way the pen lines seem to sit on top of the photo, they’re in a different dimension of contrast.
Or shape shift: add dimension with concertina folds and photographed from every which way.
I’m sure given more time I could play with light and shadows for more drama. You get the idea, the possibilities go on… I hope this might spark some ideas for you too.
Some weeks were easier, some were colourful, some were hard to start and some were hard to finish. Both in terms of the art, and in terms of the weeks out of which the pages emerged.
This year I’m revisiting my year of mixed media, and bringing the pages to life in a different form. Here I was, one year ago:
Starting out here, in January 2015, a blank book (year) ahead – full of possibilities 
Week 1 unfolded, bright, wordy and eye-filled.
Week 2 was a big ole brain dump. Funny how this process cements moments into the memory.
I remember listening to podcasts and YouTube things as I doodled this out. Words and phrases filtered through my ears down, out through my drawing hand – sometimes verbatim – sometimes slightly altered by the messages I heard inside the words.
‘Make 2015 the year you question everything’, said the scrap of paper. Glued into my book, glued into my imagination, this phrase was to inform the way the coming months played out. Question Everything.
Week 3: Comfortably into the new year I was setting myself some targets. I achieved the specific ones – way quicker than I expected too. But reflecting from a year further into this life, I see how woolly and unquantifiable some were. Lately I’ve been listening to Leonie Dawson. Do you know her? She’s also loud, smiley, fun and colourful. I like her a lot. She’s big on goal setting. I’m following her wisdom this time round.
Week 4 found time to pause for thought. I was brimming with optimism, which mirrored again this year as a time so rich in potential and beginningness. As much as anything else, I’m getting to know me a while lot better through doing this. Turns out that’s my happy place: just on the cusp of an ending and a beginning. (Oh, and in case you’re wondering – the computer came back in full health – having not forgotten anything).
Week 5 – the cross over from January into February. Another big week. (They’re even bigger looking back – it’s a trick of perspective, maybe).
So as we turn into the next month today, this seems a good point to pause. Part two will follow along soon.
I’ve had this book, Alphabetica by Lynne Perrella, on my shelf for a long time.
It’s a gorgeous reference for folks like me who play with mixed media art, and who love language, lettering, and for things to be organised alphabetically.
This year I’m taking a 12 month course by Carla Sonnheim called Y is for Yellow, where we have a new class each fortnight, one for each letter of the alphabet (26 fortnights: 26 letters)
So here two aspects of my creativity have overlapped beautifully and I’ve dived right into the All the A-things. Abstractly Adding All the A-things that come to mind here……
3 weeks into this year, I’m learning to adapt to this new structure that’s unfolding.
I live by metaphors, they are the framework of all my understanding. The skeleton on which I hang my beliefs and theories.
Since January 1st 2016 I’ve filled one of these 1″ squares each day. They are in a book with enough pages to carry this daily practice over a few years. Will I do that? I hope to. The project is entitled Self Love 365 and everyone who shares their daily squares has a unique interpretation. I love to see how our days are represented and recorded.
I’m looking at my first 3 weeks of squares and seeing a good degree of haphazardness, conflicting colours, but a bigger pattern is beginning to emerge.
When I drew out the grid I left a little gap between each square – it allowed one week to fit tidily across the width of the page that way, every day has a margin of breathing space. Except I’m scrappy and resistant to constraint by edges. Some days expand and overflow, some are linked by doodled extras.
To begin, I had trouble connecting the project to self love. Now I’m starting to understand. Here are some aspects of kindness I’m extending to myself:
One of the things I want to achieve in 2016 is a greater sense of cohesiveness.
A few weeks ago I adopted a new (to me) method of ordering my days, weeks, things, lists and such: Bullet Journalling the ‘analog system for the digital age’.
While I reside on the edge of digital geekfulness where I appreciate I nicely formulated spreadsheet, some tidy code, but all too easily get weighed down in flipping between fonts pixel to pixel tweaks, and then endless subdivided minutiae.
Unlimited possibility in limited time.
But I’m also the girl who drools at the thought of the stationery store, giddily thinking about books, the kind I can write and draw and scribble in….. Mmmmmm… and All Those Pens. In All Those Colours.
The type of rules and systems I like are the flexible ones that adapt and evolve in a forgiving fashion.
And lists appeal to my sometime dithering confusion of too much to do/can’t remember if I did it/had an idea that I put down somewhere and can’t see it now for all the shit and kerfuffle that heaps up in my head….
And so far bullet journalling is fitting my contradictory character and fulfilling pretty much all the hopes I had for it. Organised chaos, checked off detail by detail. Coupled with an inconsistent colour-coding system that I reckon might figure itself out over time.
Many, many part-duplicated lists, notebooks, digital documents, scribbles on envelopes, diaries, journals, sketchbooks and whatnot occupy my world. I’m gonna keep them, but they’re going to rest quietly for future reminiscences while this episode plays out.
The current paradigm is one in which all the brain-dumps are contained between the covers of this delicious A5 turquoise leuchtturm 1917. 6 weeks and 51 pages in, me & book are getting along swimmingly. I’m enjoying the process of joining the dots of my thoughts, skimming back through old notes and scavenging usable information, ongoing plans and wishes.
All these sandwiched between pages of What To Remember in annual, monthly & daily sized chunks.
The magic of it is: once they’re in the book they no longer take up space in my mind.
My word for the year this year is FLOW. Last year it was FOCUS.
So I smiled when I happened across this from the king of motivational sound-bites himself, Mr Tony Robbins “Where focus goes energy flows”.
Clearly I’m onto something.
But did I skip past the ENERGY part?
Darn it, I’d like some more of that right now! I’ve been feeling distinctly un-energetic for quite a while. No apparent cause or reason, I’m otherwise completely healthy. Just a bit too floppy and lacklustre.
So I’m exercising my word, and I’m going with the FLOW of it. From Friday night until this morning I’ve been pretty much asleep. I get up for some small meals, but really that’s been about it. I’m listening to my body, and she just keeps saying ‘let me sleep’. So I did. After years of insomnia, perhaps I’m catching up to some degree.
In my few days off from life I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts. I recently found Summer McStravick. Her thing is flowdreaming, she describes as not meditation, not visualisation, not hypnosis, kinda somewhere in between. I think this was partly where my word emerged from.
I’m trying to honour the flow of my life.
Today I managed to get up, showered, dressed and out to the office. Just a half day. Bit by bit.
Tonight I’ll do some drawing. I’ve sketched a little something every day in my selflove365 book, but tonight I’ll go back and add some colour. Now life feels a bit more colourful again. I’ll show you the latest tomorrow. Sleep well, lovely friends X
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