Over the last 12 days 2017 I’m sharing my year of color: 12 colors in 12 months. Today –
Twelvty-Seven: Violet
Twelvty-Seven: Violet
From plum to periwinkle, vivacious violet & majestic purples.
“Be eccentric now. Don’t wait for old age to wear purple.” ~ Regina Brett
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.
Each month I added more single color pages 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 or traded for magic beans. I promise.
Next year I’m revisiting the Twelvty project, but this time with some exciting additions! Find out more here
“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.” ~ Mark Twain
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.
Each month I added more single color pages 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 or traded for magic beans. 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-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 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 try to create fantastic things, magical things, things like in a dream. The world needs more fantasy.”
~ Salvador Dali.
100 days: 93-100
“I try to create fantastic things, magical things, things like in a dream. The world needs more fantasy.”
~ Salvador Dali.
100 doodles from 100 photos in my phone.
This is the final instalment of my extended summer project. I set out on this adventure on 1st June and I doodled the last doodle on 25th October. Life got in the way in the middle so it took longer than planned, but I’m so glad I saw it through. This is what the last week of pages look like…
day 93
Day 93 is another quirky animal, one of a pair of china cats in the Brighton Art Museum.
Here’s something I’ve noticed they all have in common: the facial expression that says “c’mon, aren’t you done yet?” Like they got somewhere else to be.
(China Cat Sunflower… You humming along?)
day 94
One of the lessons this project has taught me is that the images that look relatively easy to reproduce are almost always the trickiest. There are ways around this. One of the ways is to crop it down to just one detail, just a corner, or in this case, just one bird.
day 95
These last few days/months (maybe more) reality seems to be sharper and more tense. So a well timed word from Mr Salvador Dali himself seems to fit today.
I got this little clip-on fisheye lens doodad for my phone, this was its first outing, and what could be better to distort than the master of weirdness himself?
day 96
Practice, practice, practice… faces are tricky. The trickiest. The character lies in the lines and the details and something I can’t quite get. Yet. But I am getting closer.
This is is George Morris.
A while back I was scavenging the internets to find out about my family tree. I traced my mum’s mum’s side back 100s of years, but mum’s dad was not so easy. This might or maybe get not be my mum’s dad’s dad. (A long story, not for now). But if I’m right in my research then my great grandad was a jockey in the late 1800s. This photo was a newspaper I found on eBay. I know! The internet is amazing.
day 97
One day last spring, a last minute change of plan meant I had a free afternoon. so I took myself off to London to find the legendary Atlantis art store. I was not disappointed. This is their sign.
day 98
The part of the story where Alice is either to tall to get through the door, or small enough but can’t reach the key. Oh, Alice, I know this feeling so well. I’m there. How did the key get back up on the table? What is going on??
day 99
Time is such a curiously paradoxical thing. This project of 100 drawings feels like it’s been going on forever, in one sense, and yet these final days appeared so suddenly.
Huh? How does that even happen? I’ve literally been keeping count!
But the end was always forever-away right up until page 99. And then suddenly it was almost over. This day was a pyjama day. These are my pyjamas. Seems fitting for the evening of the project.
day 100
The final doodle from phone photos is a mural I found in Barcelona. What are these? Are they fish or are they space aliens? Or alien space fish? Whatever they are, they made a fun end to the book.
So that’s all, folks! I’ve learned so much in doing this. I’ll tell you more about the surprising lessons soon, but that’s for another day.
If you missed the previous parts, you can find them here:
“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere..”
~ Carl Sagan.
100 doodles from 100 photos in my phone.
This is the last but one week of my extended summer project. The last steps of a marathon. I have mixed feelings about it ending …
100 days: 85-92
“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere..”
~ Carl Sagan.
100 doodles from 100 photos in my phone.
This is the last but one week of my extended summer project, the last steps of a marathon. I have mixed feelings about it ending – I’ll be glad in a way – as all challenges need to come to a close. But as it’s become a part of my daily habits it will leave a gap. Already I’m looking forward to the next projects that will fill the void. I’ve been eying up new sketchbooks online…
Meanwhile, the story continues:
day 85
As this project moves on I’m exploring more than just straight drawing from photos. By playing with scale, finding a detail I like, making a drawing more than just copying some shapes. As the days and the pages mount up I’m looking for more challenges.
Have you ever done something like this project? I’d love to hear what you learned in the process.
day 86
There’s looking at a thing, then there’s looking with a view to drawing a thing.And then there’s the kind of looking while drawing a thing. And there’s a subtle, but big difference.
In redrawing this illustration of a duck I noticed it was made up of things. But until I came to draw it, I didn’t see that that thing that made it’s head was a tomato. Or the thing that made it’s eye was a spider. (Not really, but that’s what it looked like as I drew it)
This will stay with me every time I see a duck now. And every time I see a tomato. Just one example of how drawing enriches the everyday things in life.
day 87
I saw this poster outside an exhibition I didn’t go in to see, by fashion designer Mary Katranzou. All sorts of metaphors here: emptiness – butterflies – blindness – you make your own story up. For me on that day it stood for the empty vagueness I’ve still got lingering after being sick, a sense of merging invisibly into the background. I feel like I’m here, but not entirely. The parameters are visible, the boundaries still in place, but the essence isn’t showing through like normal.
day 88
I’m trying as many techniques and styles as I can find and remember though this project. Today we have a blind contour drawing. I figured as faces and hands are the trickiest things to draw, how much harder can it be to draw without looking?
(not so much, as it turns out)
day 89
Today’s drawing is from an 18th century Indian shadow puppet in the Brighton Museum. Oh those eyes!!
day 90
It’s all about nuance in capturing a face. The angle and weight of the line can totally change the expression and the character. And the species too, sometimes. Today’s curious beast looks like a dog in my drawing but the photo is more furious sheep (I think – can’t be certain.)
day 91
Anything orange makes me happy so this time of year is one of my faves. These jellyfish are everywhere in October 😉
day 92
One of the tricks to drawing I’ve discovered is not to be deterred by images that are way too complicated to accurately capture. Because accurate capture is what the camera is for. This thinking really takes away the pressure; it doesn’t matter if the proportions are skewed, the bits don’t line up, the missed details, the shapes and shadows that aren’t as they are in real life. Once those expectations are set aside it’s much easier to get on with the actual drawing. And that’s how the practice gets done.
Join me back here next week (-ish) for the final exciting instalment!
If you missed the previous parts, you can find them here:
“Only that in you which is me can hear what I’m saying.” ~ Ram Dass.
100 doodles from 100 photos in my phone. The story continues…
100 days: 78 – 84
“Only that in you which is me can hear what I’m saying.”
~ Ram Dass.
100 doodles from 100 photos in my phone. The story continues:
day 78
I saw this funky door handle in Casa Batlló, the modernist building designed by Gaudí in Barcelona. Is it me or does it look like a slightly surprised, cross eyed Disney character? I guess being grabbed repeatedly by the nose would do that to any of us.
day 79
This tiny snail. I love how patterns repeat in nature, it’s a constant source of inspiration for my art.
day 80
Life might be a bowl of cherries, it might be a bowl of chillies. This is a bowl of chillies. I think I took this photo for the color, but I like the shapes too.
day 81
I saw this dude at the Brighton Museum last week (he’s a Javanese puppet). Another character in the book.
I write little notes to myself on some of these pages, some while I draw, some are on future pages. Mostly I don’t remember why. Today’s is one of them “decisions and beliefs. That’s all”.
Maybe it’s a message for another day.
day 82
Here is a wonky eyed lion. I fell in love with his smile although I don’t think it came across in the drawing… See what I mean? It’s one of those derpy smiles you can’t help smile back at.
day 83
This drawing is inspired by a close up of a tiny detail on these most incredible beaded wall hangings at Waddesden Manor, a house overflowing with outrageous opulence! Seriously – these are just tucked away in a corner of a hallway …
day 84
I chose this one from a whole collection of gift shop zebras. What’s not to love about a zebra? All the best animals are stripy (or cats) (stripy cats being the ultimate in animal perfection, of course).
Join me back here next week (-ish) for the next exciting instalment!
If you missed the previous parts, you can find them here:
100 doodles from 100 photos in my phone. The story continues:
It’s past 100 days since I began this project now, but I’m going to see it through..
100 days: 71 – 77
“We all have 10,000 bad drawings in us. The sooner we get them out the better.”
~ Walt Stanchfield.
100 doodles from 100 photos in my phone. The story continues:
It’s past 100 days since I began this project now, but I’m going to see it through. I lost most of a month being sick and I’m still going slowly to catch myself up. It’s a lesson to learn, to accept the speed life moves at, with grace.
day 71
This sculpture is in the gardens of Claydon House. I love how the middle face is floating, and the serenity, which now I look again I see more as a sadness. Even though it’s one time I did seem to recreate the expression in the drawing, I didn’t really see it until now.
day 72
This is “Pinkle” on account of her pretty nose and ears, a visiting cat who seems to have made herself at home in an almost perfectly camouflaged spot. (We later found out which neighbour she (mostly) lives with. She is now called “Mr Pinkle”)
day 73
Another day, another lizard. This glitzy lizard (that’s his name) lives on my bathroom door. His nose is a bit beaky in the drawing, but I like his shadow. I’m learning more about drawing and more about observation with every day’s drawing practice. …
When I set out on this 100 day project of daily doodles from the photos in my phone, I had no idea what the 100 pictures would be of, so it’s interesting to see what emerges. More animals than I expected, and more little corners of my home….
day 74
This is a project I’ve been secret-squirrelling on this summer. I will tell you all about it very soon, because it warrants a post of its own.
This is the 3rd evolution of what I’m calling “Wishes“. They are something a little bit magical. And I think I’ve finally nailed the design. More on these soon!!
So here’s what I’m noticing in this one: how balanced I got the proportions. Translating from the size and dimensions of a phone screen to a 5 inch square page is one of the challenges I’ve had throughout (sometimes I’ve cropped the photo to a square to make it easier to draw).
You know the saying – ‘the way you do one thing is the way you do all things’ – I think of this when my drawings are utterly out of proportion and disjointed… so perhaps I’m improving on that too.
day 76
This is possibly one of my favs so far.
I love the patterns in obscured glass, and the patterns it makes of all that it obscures. And in this case, the leaf pattern obscures the view of actual leaves.
day 77
Remarkably more difficult to draw that it should’ve been, this one, too many lines.
This is one of the many faces I always see when I look at this batik fabric.
Join me back here next week (-ish) for the next exciting instalment!
If you missed the previous parts, you can find them here:
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.
Color is an integral part to all types of creativity.
Mixy's Art Blog 