Safe in my colours and patterns,
protected by the armor of my art,
I keep on reaching out into the future,
Into the unknown.
Ready or not, here it comes.
resting (23/52)
I’ve been tired
Weary and lacklustre, and it’s shown in how much time I’ve spent in this book.
So this week was a mindful meditation on the mantra in my mind
Written in resist, repeating…
Release, Recuperate,
Recover, Rest
Be well, my friends X
in my element
raw sketches. Watch this space 😉
on being me.
I love to learn.
I take in as much information as I can every day.
It swims about inside my head,
It gets filtered (a little bit).
Forming together into cohesive chunks
I consider my ‘knowledge’.
TBH, it’s a bit cluttered in there.
Overgrown.
Oftentimes, when I extract some of these really interesting new things to share,
they get all mashed up on the way out.
One idea gets tangled up
with a theory from somewhere else,
In my mind it’s a beautifully crafted gestalt,
digested and distilled,
It’s the architecture of my reality.
But you only see a fin,
or a twig,
a remnant,
truncated from context.
It sounds like nonsense to you.
(I know this to be true)
Create Your Own Map (22/52)
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.
Two Views (21/52)
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.
Chapter Next: The Letter
Another week, another page in the altered book to show you.
I notice sometimes when I’m working on a project, just how little control I have. It’s not that I don’t know where it’s going, I’m not even steering the way. It’s going its own course and I’m simply wielding the brush or the pen or the whatever-it-is.
Some sort of external force does all the decision making. It took my inner control freak a long while to learn to rest back and let this happen. (Sometimes she worries so. I distract her with thoughts of cheese and music and cushions. She chills, we move on)
This page was a bit of a hotch-potch til the latter stages when it seemed to start coming together.
See what I mean?
I mean it’s not lost it’s hotch-potchery vibe, but I feel like it’s crossed the line from uncoordinated chaos to cohesive vision. Although you aren’t seeing what will be the finally finished thing, it’s a large part of the way there. More again soon.
Chapter Next: Mirage
Some the pages in my altered book are already conveniently titled. The book began as an orphaned volume of short stories, and some of the tales’ titles just appealed too much to cover up.
Doesn’t Mirage just conjure such magic?
I haven’t embarked on any of these pages with a plan. Planning just isn’t in my spirit. I didn’t get that gene.
So to begin I just do something, and let that define where it wanders next. The first something that happened on this page took the form of sprinkles of Brusho swept about in circles with a wet brush. 
Oh my how I love how these dusty crystals explode with colour. This stuff is the definition of less is more. More than a wee bit makes for a super rich gravy of an ink, which is gorgeous, but when you use an imperceptibly itsy amount each tiny trace of this magic erupts into zingy pigment on contact with moisture.
It is more than gorgeous. It is actual magic.
Another early layer was gesso scraped through a stencil, then extra messy gesso scraped haphazardly. If you’re a fellow scraper of gesso you’ll recognise those characteristic windshield wiper patterns of clearing excess off the scraper 😉
In the years preceding this project I accumulated a shed load of design magazines, rich full of the most gorgeous graphics and illustration. Just lately I embarked on transforming the knee high heap into 4 boxes of delicious collage ingredients, and a small mountain of recycling.
Thing is, I don’t know who this half a face belonged to, and as an artist I’d like to credit the creator. Any reference to the inventor got lost in the snippings. If it was you – thank you – and I hope that you like the new other half I made. In the spirit of self-portraiture I’ve mismatched the eyes for a familiar wonkiness!
Hope you’ve enjoyed this little trip through the putting together stages. Here’s how the page developed as a whole………
upsidedowneries (20/52)
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.
Chapter Next: Unity & Variety
I’m having so much fun with this altered book.
As it develops more meanings are attaching themselves. For instance, it h
as 42 pages, and as we all know 42 is the meaning of life, the universe and everything. So suddenly it has a theme attached… it’s a book with elements of life, the universe and everything. Reckon those are parameters I can keep within!
Plus I’ve brought in elements of Somerset Maugham’s writing. Seemed only fair as I’d already obliterated so many of his words in paint and collage and whatnots.
This page is titled from his quote:
“The Essence of the Beautiful is Unity and Variety.”
Here is how the page developed …………..
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