Water In Parallel (part 2)

Last post I had just constructed these thick papery substrates on which I had not the foggiest idea what was to happen.

Which is a really exciting place to be!

When in doubt, I like to make a big move: a doing or an undoing, doesn’t really matter which. Time to make a change: lose the colors.

They were there to serve a purpose: get focused on the theme of Water. Now move along!

Diluted white gesso on scrumpled paperis just lush – all those lovely rivulets and wrinkles were already there, but they needed shining up and showing off!

Next installment coming soon….!

Water in Parallel (part 1)

I’m working on a project over the next 6 months, part of which is to produce a collection of eight works, two at a time through each six week cycle.

So…. 6 weeks, huh?

I’m just into week 2. The logical, ordered part of my mind says ‘so you’re like about 25% done, right?’ Then when I stop laughing, collect myself, I can get on with showing you where it began:

I’ve got a theme: Water. But I’ve got no limits, no plan, and no expectations. Apart from – this is gonna be so much FUN!

Experience tells me straight off:

Make it Big (I’ve gone A1, cos I have that sized cartridge paper, and post-masive-sort-out, I’ve got that sized working area, both on table and floor)
Make it Strong (I know me; paper gets dog-eared and crumpled just by touching it. If I’m playing with this for more than a few days it’ll get holes in and ripped and all manner of fucked up – unless it’s super-tough) So this substrate’s gonna need layers! That’s where the heap of other papers comes in to play.

Ooooh tearing paper – inner kid – she’s in her element here – construction from destruction (yeh – eventually – but first let’s relish a bit of ripping deconstruction!)

Like day follows night, gluing follows tearing.

Working the two in parallel (here’s the plan) will keep them in sync. It’s now layered two to four thick, much more substantial to hold up over the coming weeks!

More developments in due course…………….!

From Early Circles… (12/52)

When I set out on this page a week journal at the start of the year, I didn’t know what insights it would throw up. And just 12 weeks in, I’m sure there will be many more yet to surprise me.

Like, how much transformation can take place, in little bits of time, in some oddments of just seven evenings.

Beginning with no fixed picture and letting the ideas percolate silently round the back of my imagination. I don’t know… maybe just loads more circles? Keep doing circles til something else happens. Cos it will. Something will always happen.

Last week the New (Super) Moon, Vernal Equinox and Solar Eclipse all happened on Friday. There. See what I mean?

Another opportunity (if you’re that way inclined) to send wishes out to the Universe. Planted under the word Wish.

Reiterated in Big Bright Blue.

And surrounded by the meme I attached to my week.

And then an explosion of not-just-circles amid more spirals and scribble and circles.

That Big Bright Blue of the wish was the catalyst for the page to take shape.

My week began with a gathering of a newly formed tribe of creatives. And it closes today having taken up an extraordinary wealth of new doings and thinkings, which I’ll share with you in future postings.

From the sublime to the magnificent. Life is Love.

ideas about ideas about ideas…

I’ve been processing thoughts on and around the creative process over the weekend. Unravelling thought processes.

In my exploration I can across this article ‘Find your creative currency’. It invites us to explore where our ideas emerge from. Like the author I can happily binge on texture.

concrete. what's not to love. — concrete. Deliciously speckly – what’s not to love.

Tree bark, rocks, skin, textiles, metals (and everything else) – they all have the potential to release a new stream of wanna-make/draw/invent/etc.

But more so I get this from arrangements of color. A little grouping colors – a patch of nature or a window display, the clothes on a passing stranger or a row of parked cars. These are magical gifts to a color hungry mind. I have been known to stop and gaze at a stretch of brickwork or a row of books on a shelf for just this reason.

Really?

Really, no, not known to. Because I don’t generally tell people that’s what’s going on.

(But I do it, and that’s why.)

Dive in: Reach Out 11/52

We all face bravery in different ways.

It isn’t always a visible show of courage

oftentimes nobody else knows quite how much it took

We all develop our ways of stepping forward, facing up.

Bright, bold, audacious.

Then what?

Then you have no choice, you gotta jump:

This week, in my little way, I faced a bravery. And I dived in to a new phase. And it’s gonna be BIG

Full Moon Everything 10/52

Week 10 began on a full moon. It was a big full week.

Tidal changes of hope and spirit, plans formed and crashed with barely time to get a good grip on them.

It’s the first week I’ve really found difficult to ‘make’ – in terms of the page, but also I guess in terms of making sense of myself as well. Massive overwhelms kept colliding – giddy highs and their plummeting opposites. It was minimal in comparison with the other weeks in terms of word-spew. Just summed it up in a big fat EVERYTHING.

Again with all the eyes peering out at me. Even they are looking a bit more deranged than usual this week.

I can’t tell you how many layers of mismatched colours and unhappy paint coated these pages. It was a nothing’s looking right covered with another no that’s still not it under a coat of wtf really? And then some.

Then the Wednesday came to a close, and that was that, turn over and start again Thursday. Glad to report, this week’s looking more harmonious!

flutterbies

Playing about with a bit of animation…

Last year of college I dabbled a bit in film and animation. Oh my giddy days – this is a thing of wondrous possibility!! Instant LOVE for having the dimensions of time and sound as possibilities In art.

So a year on I’m reintroducing it, re-remembering the skills and techniques, re inspiring some of the ideas.

Bear with, I’m rusty (and only played a little to begin) but it’s coming back to me. I plan to use these butterflies as my test film, see what else I can make them into. Watch this space!!

butterfly overflow (9/52)

Week 9 of this year is made out of the colours of Spring, honoring the sense of Spring as the world comes back to life after her quiet dormant months. And some of last week’s butterflies have flitted across into this week too. I had a big old tidy up after finishing that project and all the left over butterflies have landed here. (I say all of them… a few got away as you’ll see on the next page).

The week fell on the crossover from February to March, so warranted another list. Seems like there’s a reason for a list pretty much every week now. It’s in the background, but it can germinate there. I’ll patiently await the first shoots of development as the month wears on.

Another week, another meme:

When you do what you fear the most you can do anything.

Ok, yeh, I can take that on as a challenge. I’ve crossed some metaphorical bridges lately, and my metaphorical-bridge-crossing skills are notably sharper as a result. I’ve also come to realise I can’t always tell the difference between the pit-of-the-guts anxiety feeling and its close cousin, the visceral buzz of anticipation feeling.

So I’ve actively decided that henceforth, if I’m in any doubt, I’ll assume its the latter.

It is the feeling of butterflies.

Free Will

Karen Wilson - AWAKEN

When you have a ‘negative’ thought,

fear/ worries or other,

ask yourself:

“Does this thought serve me?”

If it doesn’t,

change it.

Choose another one.

You have that freedom.

You have that power.

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New Beginnings

It’s that time of year, time of life, time of day.. it’s also the name of an exhibition I have some work in.

The title is open to interpretation but it got me thinking about the saying What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.

an untidy desk is the sign of... — an untidy desk is the sign of…

So with my fav kind of glorious inky messy, the divinely joyous, the snipping up of little bits of paper, the gluing bits accidentally to my sleeves, hair, floor… and the itsy small doodles on the wings… the magical making process, another project began to unfurl.

I remembered how I hadn’t done this for so long – let the inner kid out to play without any rules or boundaries – well, one – just do butterflies. We jumped in with both feet!

I began with 3 different butterfly images, digitally reduced to grey-scale, then high contrast mono before printing in a few different sizes. Some flipped over to fly in the opposite direction.

Enough of the tidy digital world, enough of the pristine pixel arrangement. Time for IK to make a mess with layers of inky goodness before cutting out the little beasties for collaging, and extra doodles.

So far there are 2 framed collages, and a series of cards. I’m in the process of setting them up over on DeviantArt so prints are available too ……….. and I’ve got another little side project where they’ll be flitting through too -> watch this space!